In Brief
Global cybersecurity and networking company Netskope was using an outdated community tech stack that had become inefficient and ineffective. To streamline community management, improve their customer support performance, and boost engagement, they switched to Gainsight Customer Communities (Gainsight CC).
Challenge
An Outdated and Costly Community Platform
Netskope, a worldwide leader in modern security and networking, helps their customers protect data and defend against cyber threats while maintaining network performance and a superior user experience. Thousands of organizations trust Netskope to reduce risk and gain unrivaled visibility into any cloud, SaaS, web, and private application activity—providing security and accelerating performance without compromise.
Netskope’s previous community platform challenged its team with unacceptable limitations. They had to rely on third-party developers to manage many aspects of the community, and the process was often slow, complicated, and costly.
Rohit Bhaskar, Community Program Manager at Netskope, summarized the challenge: “Our community platform used outdated technology. We would have to ask a developer to create a custom component for something as simple as a homepage title update—it caused a lot of challenges for us and prevented us from building new features as fast as we knew we should be able to.”
Community management complexity added up to high costs for Netskope. In addition to the high subscription fees for the platform itself, there were the additional costs for paying developers.
Relying on developers also caused long delays when releasing updates to the community. Bhaskar remembers: “Because it took so long to make updates, we were losing the trust of internal team members, which was a big loss for us because internal buy-in around a community—especially a young community—can be so tough to build.”
Another challenge was that the platform did not offer native or out-of-the-box integrations for important applications like Salesforce, which significantly limited data flow between systems.
The platform also lacked important features that hamstrung the community’s performance and its ability to achieve business goals. The platform’s metrics dashboard provided limited visibility into how the community was performing. And the absence of modern capabilities or a user-friendly design made it difficult for customers to navigate and interact with the community, leading to reduced satisfaction and participation, which led to sluggish adoption rates.
To upgrade their community, Netskope turned to Gainsight.
Solution
Easier Management with Gainsight’s Out-of-the-Box Tools
After making the decision to switch platforms, Bhaskar and his team worked closely with Gainsight to get Gainsight CC up and running in a very short time. As with any migration, Netskope was concerned about the impact it would have on engagement, but following Gainsight’s tight implementation process, Netskope was able to limit the community “freeze” to just 24 hours. As a result, they were able to maintain steady engagement during the transition. “It was very easy to go live and all of our data migrated seamlessly,” Bhaskar said.
Bhaskar continued: “Whatever we wanted to do with the new platform—for example, a quick update like an announcement banner—was very easy. It was very helpful for us to create awareness among our customers, partners, and employees about the new launch and gather feedback from users.”
Based on the feedback they received, Netskope was able to quickly make post-migration tweaks. “There were no major hiccups, everything went very smoothly,” Bhaskar said.
They made full use of Gainsight’s out-of-the-box integrations to connect their community with other software tools. For example, they imported customer data from Salesforce and Common Room, as well as product feedback from JIRA. They took advantage of Gainsight’s Zapier connection to implement automation through Slack, internal notifications, and email triggers. Connecting to other tools helped them align their community strategy with the company’s broader business objectives.
They also implemented Gainsight’s Federated Search feature and a new SSO Okta login for their customers. These tools enabled Netskope to create a single, secure, dedicated location for users to go when they needed support.
To start generating more community content, they launched the Netskope Global Technical Success Knowledge Hub. This resource provides customers with knowledge-base articles on best practices and diverse use cases. Not only did the content help existing customers, it also gave the Pre-Sales team a reference for prospective customers. So far, they have published more than 65 articles across nine categories.
Impact
Cost-Savings, Case Deflection, and Deeper Engagement
Within six months after the migration to Gainsight Customer Communities, Netskope experienced measurable impacts in terms of both the cost and the performance of their community.
Cost Savings from Streamlined Community Management
Gainsight CC delivered more flexible and cost-efficient community management, eliminating their dependence on third-party developers. As a result, Netskope reduced platform management costs by more than 20% annually. Not only was the base cost of the Gainsight platform lower, it also included many features that their previous platform had sold as add-ons, such as gamification, knowledge base software, and the Salesforce connector.
Gainsight’s built-in third-party connectors in particular were a significant source of savings, as Bhaskar explained: “Compared with the cost of building a connector yourself or purchasing a connector from a vendor, the cost reduction from Gainsight’s out-of-the box capabilities was huge.”
Increased ROI from Case Deflection
Enhanced community and integration features from Gainsight enabled Netskope to upgrade their approach to support case deflection. They reduced the volume of support tickets and saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in the first two quarters after implementation. And Gainsight allowed them to calculate and document their successes with tools that track monthly active users (MAUs) and unique views of support content.
Amplified Engagement from an Improved Customer Experience
After switching to Gainsight, they achieved a 12% increase in community engagement, with 40% user growth and a 50% increase in community visits over the course of one year. The introduction of new technical forums and user groups increased the number of best answers marked on support questions to 80%, further driving user satisfaction and confidence in the community.
Strategic Alignment with Customer Success
The improvements to the platform helped bring the community into alignment with Netskope’s broader Customer Success strategy. For example, their newly launched Knowledge Base, which included more than 65 use case articles, significantly contributed to product adoption and customer education for their customer base as a whole.
What’s Next
The next move for Netskope is a community redesign alongside a branding update. They also want to implement more robust gamification. Those two projects will help them continue to deepen engagement and drive user growth.
Most importantly, Gainsight technology provides the Netskope community with the agility they need to grow and adapt as market conditions change. Going forward, they plan to continue driving case deflection, retention, and other key objectives, while keeping costs under control.
