handbook: improve CS new hire onboarding content by danazou · Pull Request #16997 · PostHog/posthog.com

danazou · 2026-05-22T16:09:43Z

Summary

WIP rewrite of two CS handbook pages, opened as a draft for early review.

customer-success.md — replaces the four-principles framing with: who CSMs manage, the value of CSM (NRR-anchored, proactive, account-specific), and a flat list of 8 levers linking out to deeper pages. Tone matches how-we-work.md / lifecycle-csm.md.
new-hire-onboarding.md (the "spine") — restructures around the first month: Week 1 (how we talk about PostHog), Week 2 (in-person + your customers), Weeks 3-4 (start working with customers), plus "what good looks like" at end of week 4 and month 2-3 milestones. Merges the old PostHog curriculum into a new Learning PostHog section.

Status

Draft — there are a few inline TODOs:

Pre-start reading list (Phil) (though I'm partial to not adding this)
responding-to-signals.md link (not yet written)
Cost-reduction page link in customer-success.md (handbook PR not yet landed)

Test plan

Read both pages end-to-end
Check the cross-links between them resolve correctly
Sanity check the lever list in customer-success.md (order, naming, anything missing)
Sanity check the first-month sequencing in the spine

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

Replaces 4-principles framing with: who we manage, value of CSM (NRR-anchored, proactive, account-specific), and a flat list of 8 levers linking out to deeper pages. Tone matches how-we-work / lifecycle-csm. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

Restructures the CSM onboarding page around the first month: Week 1 (how we talk about PostHog), Week 2 (in-person + your customers), Weeks 3-4 (start working with customers), plus a "what good looks like" bar at end of month 1 and month 2-3 milestones. Merges the curriculum into a new Learning PostHog section with framework + per-product reading list, dropping the Fundamental/Intermediate/Advanced labels. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

github-actions · 2026-05-22T16:09:56Z

Deploy preview

Status	Details	Updated (UTC)
🟢 Ready	View preview	May 25, 2026 02:39PM

github-actions · 2026-05-22T16:10:42Z

Vale prose linter → found 22 errors, 25 warnings, 0 suggestions in your markdown

Full report → Copy the linter results into an LLM to batch-fix issues.

Linter being weird? Update the rules!

contents/handbook/cs-and-onboarding/customer-success.md — 3 errors, 4 warnings, 0 suggestions

Line	Severity	Message	Rule
7:28	warning	'CSMs' is a possible misspelling.	`PostHogBase.Spelling`
17:1	warning	'CSMs' is a possible misspelling.	`PostHogBase.Spelling`
30:149	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	`PostHogBase.EnDash`
31:173	warning	'CSMs' is a possible misspelling.	`PostHogBase.Spelling`
31:290	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	`PostHogBase.EnDash`
34:63	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	`PostHogBase.EnDash`
34:163	warning	Capitalize 'Session Replay' for PostHog's product. Use 'session replay' for the general industry concept.	`PostHogBase.ProductNames`

contents/handbook/cs-and-onboarding/new-hire-onboarding.md — 19 errors, 21 warnings, 0 suggestions

Line	Severity	Message	Rule
9:36	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	`PostHogBase.EnDash`
11:42	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	`PostHogBase.EnDash`
15:125	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	`PostHogBase.EnDash`
19:49	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	`PostHogBase.EnDash`
22:139	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	`PostHogBase.EnDash`
23:34	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	`PostHogBase.EnDash`
28:15	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	`PostHogBase.EnDash`
41:49	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	`PostHogBase.EnDash`
42:35	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	`PostHogBase.EnDash`
45:31	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	`PostHogBase.EnDash`
46:23	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	`PostHogBase.EnDash`
48:10	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	`PostHogBase.EnDash`
55:59	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	`PostHogBase.EnDash`
56:38	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	`PostHogBase.EnDash`
58:53	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	`PostHogBase.EnDash`
99:420	warning	Capitalize 'Session Replay' for PostHog's product. Use 'session replay' for the general industry concept.	`PostHogBase.ProductNames`
101:126	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	`PostHogBase.EnDash`
101:130	warning	Capitalize 'Product Analytics' for PostHog's product. Use 'product analytics' for the general industry concept.	`PostHogBase.ProductNames`
106:16	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	`PostHogBase.EnDash`
109:77	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	`PostHogBase.EnDash`
111:5	warning	Capitalize 'Product Analytics' for PostHog's product. Use 'Product analytics' for the general industry concept.	`PostHogBase.ProductNames`
111:5	warning	'Product analytics' heading should be in sentence case, and product names should be capitalized.	`PostHogBase.SentenceCase`
112:21	warning	Capitalize 'Product Analytics' for PostHog's product. Use 'Product analytics' for the general industry concept.	`PostHogBase.ProductNames`
126:5	warning	Capitalize 'Session Replay' for PostHog's product. Use 'Session replay' for the general industry concept.	`PostHogBase.ProductNames`
147:5	warning	Capitalize 'Feature Flags' for PostHog's product. Use 'Feature flags' for the general industry concept.	`PostHogBase.ProductNames`
147:5	warning	'Feature flags' heading should be in sentence case, and product names should be capitalized.	`PostHogBase.SentenceCase`
150:24	warning	Capitalize 'Feature Flags' for PostHog's product. Use 'feature flags' for the general industry concept.	`PostHogBase.ProductNames`
151:20	warning	Capitalize 'Feature Flags' for PostHog's product. Use 'feature flags' for the general industry concept.	`PostHogBase.ProductNames`
152:22	warning	Capitalize 'Feature Flags' for PostHog's product. Use 'feature flags' for the general industry concept.	`PostHogBase.ProductNames`
159:35	warning	Capitalize 'Experiments' for PostHog's product. Use 'experiments' for the general industry concept.	`PostHogBase.ProductNames`
161:62	error	Hi, Andy here... use an en dash ( – ) with spaces. On Mac, holding down the Option and hyphen key will give you an en dash.	`PostHogBase.EnDash`
166:20	warning	Capitalize 'Experiments' for PostHog's product. Use 'experiments' for the general industry concept.	`PostHogBase.ProductNames`
176:5	warning	Capitalize 'Error Tracking' for PostHog's product. Use 'Error tracking' for the general industry concept.	`PostHogBase.ProductNames`
176:5	warning	'Error tracking' heading should be in sentence case, and product names should be capitalized.	`PostHogBase.SentenceCase`
177:18	warning	Capitalize 'Error Tracking' for PostHog's product. Use 'error tracking' for the general industry concept.	`PostHogBase.ProductNames`
186:5	warning	Capitalize 'Data Pipelines' for PostHog's product. Use 'Data pipelines' for the general industry concept.	`PostHogBase.ProductNames`
191:11	warning	Capitalize 'Surveys' for PostHog's product. Use 'surveys' for the general industry concept.	`PostHogBase.ProductNames`
191:30	warning	Capitalize 'Feature Flags' for PostHog's product. Use 'feature flags' for the general industry concept.	`PostHogBase.ProductNames`
191:44	warning	Capitalize 'Experiments' for PostHog's product. Use 'experiments' for the general industry concept.	`PostHogBase.ProductNames`
199:17	warning	'automations' is a possible misspelling.	`PostHogBase.Spelling`

# Conflicts: # contents/handbook/cs-and-onboarding/customer-success.md

phildelgobbo · 2026-05-25T15:47:33Z

-  - We fill in a GitHub issue every week before this meeting so we are prepared for the discussion topics. Dana will add your GitHub handle to the template.
+**Focus on:**

+- Setting up the day-to-day tools you'll be using - Vitally, Gong, Slack, Metabase. See [sales and CS tools](/handbook/growth/sales/sales-and-cs-tools).


Suggested change

- Setting up the day-to-day tools you'll be using - Vitally, Gong, Slack, Metabase. See [sales and CS tools](/handbook/growth/sales/sales-and-cs-tools).

- Setting up the day-to-day tools you'll be using - Vitally, Gong, Slack, Metabase. See [sales and CS tools](/handbook/growth/sales/sales-and-cs-tools) for set-up, and start copying other CSM's views and automations (or even better, build your own!)

phildelgobbo · 2026-05-25T15:47:39Z

+- Reading the [CS](/handbook/cs-and-onboarding/) and [sales](/handbook/growth/sales/) sections of the handbook.
+- Preparing your PostHog demo.
+- Picking a recent customer call on Gong/BuildBetter to watch, and asking team members to add you to as many of their live calls as you can - the goal is exposure to how we talk about PostHog and how we talk to customers.
+- Nailing the product fundamentals - use the [framework](#learning-posthog) as a guide and work through the [onboarding exercise](/handbook/cs-and-onboarding/new-hire-onboarding-exercise).


Suggested change

- Nailing the product fundamentals - use the [framework](#learning-posthog) as a guide and work through the [onboarding exercise](/handbook/cs-and-onboarding/new-hire-onboarding-exercise).

- Nailing the product fundamentals - use the [framework](#learning-posthog) as a guide and work through the [onboarding exercise](/handbook/cs-and-onboarding/new-hire-onboarding-exercise). Use the demo environments or your own PostHog project to test different features and use cases.

phildelgobbo · 2026-05-25T15:47:51Z

-   - For familiarization and self-led training, follow the [curriculum](/handbook/cs-and-onboarding/new-hire-onboarding#posthog-curriculum). You can work through this with the [HogFlix Demo App project](https://eu.posthog.com/project/29925) which is already populated with data. Alternatively, you can create a new [project](/docs/settings/projects) in [EU](https://eu.posthog.com/) PostHog instances and [hook it up](/docs/getting-started/install) to your own app or [HogFlix instance](https://github.com/PostHog/posthog-demo-3000).
- - Read all of the CS section in the Handbook as well as the Sales section, and [update it as you learn more](https://posthog.com/handbook/company/new-to-github#creating-a-pull-request).
- - Meet with [Charles](/community/profiles/28625), the exec responsible for Customer Success.
+- The value add - why a customer would care


Suggested change

- The value add - why a customer would care

- The value add - why a customer would care

- Common use cases to demo

phildelgobbo · 2026-05-25T15:47:55Z

+**Focus on:**

-This typically happens in Week 2 or 3 and runs 3-4 days with a few existing team members, covering:
+- Walking through your book of business with Dana - prioritisation, where to start, who to reach out to first.


Suggested change

- Walking through your book of business with Dana - prioritisation, where to start, who to reach out to first.

- Walking through your book of business with your team lead - prioritisation, where to start, who to reach out to first.

phildelgobbo · 2026-05-25T15:48:03Z

- - Be leading customer calls and demos on your own
- - Successfully made contact with _everyone_ in your book of business
- - Update this page and other relevant handbook pages with what you learned during onboarding
+**Ship your first handbook PR.** Somewhere in here you'll hit something that wasn't documented, or that's documented wrong. Write it up and open a PR. The point isn't the PR itself, it's that the handbook only stays useful if everyone adds to it. Not knowing something isn't a failing, but leaving it undocumented for the next person is.


Suggested change

**Ship your first handbook PR.** Somewhere in here you'll hit something that wasn't documented, or that's documented wrong. Write it up and open a PR. The point isn't the PR itself, it's that the handbook only stays useful if everyone adds to it. Not knowing something isn't a failing, but leaving it undocumented for the next person is.

**Ship your first handbook PR.** Somewhere along the way you'll find a gap or mistake in the handbook, or want to add a new page entirely. Write it up and open a PR. The point isn't the PR itself, it's that the handbook only stays useful if everyone adds to it. Not knowing something isn't a failing, but leaving it undocumented for the next person is.

phildelgobbo · 2026-05-25T15:48:06Z

+## What good looks like at the end of week 4

-By the end of month 3:
-  - Be independently working with your entire book to solve tricky technical problems with minimal assistant
-  - On track to consistently hit your retention targets
-  - You've suggested and made changes to our systems that enable you to do your job better
-  - Think about customer health scores and add/change anything you learn here
+This is the bar for end of month 1.

-## PostHog curriculum
+**You have a clear read on your book:**

-PostHog has a lot of products! To help you figure out how to start and continue building your knowledge, here's a recommended list of topics to work through. Do not feel as though you need to learn all the products through your first few weeks. Learning is best done working through customer use cases and requests.
+- Who's responsive and who isn't
+- Who you'd build a strong relationship with
+- Who knows you're there
+- Where the expansion opportunities sit

-Add and modify this list as you work through it! Products are added frequently, likely making this list outdated.
+**You're up and running with customers:**

-### Fundamental
+- Handling tickets and customer questions across the products your book uses, with help when needed
+- Doing demos for those products
+- Evaluating customer implementations and seeing where to improve them
+- Understanding how pricing works and the levers you have for cost optimization

-#### Product analytics
+**You're working with Vitally signals.** You know what the signals are and have a sense of how to prioritise and work through them.
+


Suggested change

## What good looks like at the end of week 4

By the end of month 3:

- Be independently working with your entire book to solve tricky technical problems with minimal assistant

- On track to consistently hit your retention targets

- You've suggested and made changes to our systems that enable you to do your job better

- Think about customer health scores and add/change anything you learn here

This is the bar for end of month 1.

## PostHog curriculum

**You have a clear read on your book:**

PostHog has a lot of products! To help you figure out how to start and continue building your knowledge, here's a recommended list of topics to work through. Do not feel as though you need to learn all the products through your first few weeks. Learning is best done working through customer use cases and requests.

- Who's responsive and who isn't

- Who you'd build a strong relationship with

- Who knows you're there

- Where the expansion opportunities sit

Add and modify this list as you work through it! Products are added frequently, likely making this list outdated.

**You're up and running with customers:**

### Fundamental

- Handling tickets and customer questions across the products your book uses, with help when needed

- Doing demos for those products

- Evaluating customer implementations and seeing where to improve them

- Understanding how pricing works and the levers you have for cost optimization

#### Product analytics

**You're working with Vitally signals.** You know what the signals are and have a sense of how to prioritise and work through them.

## What good looks like at the end of week 4

This is the bar for end of month 1.

**You have a clear read on your book:**

- Who's responsive and who isn't

- Who you'd build a strong relationship with

- Who knows you're there

- Where the expansion opportunities sit

**You're up and running with customers:**

- Made contact with every customer in your book of business

- Handling tickets and customer questions across the products your book uses, with help when needed

- Doing demos for those products

- Evaluating customer implementations and seeing where to improve them

- Understanding how pricing works and the levers you have for cost optimization

**You're working with Vitally signals.** You know what the signals are and have a sense of how to prioritise and work through them.

**You're sharing with the team.** You're posting wins, learnings, opportunities for feedback, and anything else valuable in our shared channels. You were hired because we think you can improve our team, so don't be afraid to share opinions and approaches.

phildelgobbo · 2026-05-25T15:52:39Z

+- Saved your first 'we're going to churn' - it's going to happen, but you're going to save them!
+- Be independently working with your entire book to solve tricky technical problems with minimal assistance


Suggested change

- Saved your first 'we're going to churn' - it's going to happen, but you're going to save them!

- Be independently working with your entire book to solve tricky technical problems with minimal assistance

- Saved your first 'we're going to churn' - it's going to happen, but you're going to save them!

- Be independently working with your entire book to solve tricky technical problems with minimal assistance

- Focusing strategically on your customers - engaging with accounts based on risk and growth opportunity, not just reacting to tickets and signals

phildelgobbo · 2026-05-25T15:55:11Z

Added some notes to be a bit more prescriptive about expectations (and replace "Dana" with "your team lead" hehe).

I agree, shouldn't add a pre-read list (feels a little anti-labor), but added a couple notes in the week 1 expectations that were really helpful for me.

concernedsebster · 2026-05-26T20:05:54Z

+- Setting up the day-to-day tools you'll be using - Vitally, Gong, Slack, Metabase. See [sales and CS tools](/handbook/growth/sales/sales-and-cs-tools).
+- Preparing your PostHog demo.
+- Picking a recent customer call on BuildBetter to watch, and asking team members to add you to as many of their live calls as you can - the goal is exposure to how PostHog CSMs talk to customers.
+- Nailing the product fundamentals - work through the [curriculum](#posthog-curriculum) further down this page and [getting started with customers](/handbook/cs-and-onboarding/getting-started-with-customers).


I think we should clearly define "product fundamentals" so we can help them focus the scope of their initial learning period:

Events

Persons

Session Replay

Feature Flags

Experiments

Product Analytics

and... MCP (thinking about 2030-shaped software, imo we should consider this as a fundamental way of interacting with PH and preemptively become experts on it for our customers)

Dana Zou and others added 3 commits May 22, 2026 11:56

first pass on updating new hire onboarding

c1e40eb

danazou self-assigned this May 22, 2026

danazou requested a review from phildelgobbo May 22, 2026 16:20

Dana Zou and others added 2 commits May 25, 2026 14:19

Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/master' into cs/improve-cs-handbook

3aab04d

# Conflicts: # contents/handbook/cs-and-onboarding/customer-success.md

update cs overview page

51943d4

danazou changed the title ~~handbook: rewrite CS handbook spine + customer success page~~ handbook: improve CS handbook navigation and content May 25, 2026

danazou changed the title ~~handbook: improve CS handbook navigation and content~~ handbook: improve CS new hire onboarding content May 25, 2026

add mention of slack as a resource

9d749e6

danazou marked this pull request as ready for review May 25, 2026 14:22

Merge branch 'master' into cs/improve-cs-handbook

44ae8df

phildelgobbo reviewed May 25, 2026

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	- Setting up the day-to-day tools you'll be using - Vitally, Gong, Slack, Metabase. See [sales and CS tools](/handbook/growth/sales/sales-and-cs-tools).
	- Setting up the day-to-day tools you'll be using - Vitally, Gong, Slack, Metabase. See [sales and CS tools](/handbook/growth/sales/sales-and-cs-tools) for set-up, and start copying other CSM's views and automations (or even better, build your own!)

	- Nailing the product fundamentals - use the [framework](#learning-posthog) as a guide and work through the [onboarding exercise](/handbook/cs-and-onboarding/new-hire-onboarding-exercise).
	- Nailing the product fundamentals - use the [framework](#learning-posthog) as a guide and work through the [onboarding exercise](/handbook/cs-and-onboarding/new-hire-onboarding-exercise). Use the demo environments or your own PostHog project to test different features and use cases.

	- Walking through your book of business with Dana - prioritisation, where to start, who to reach out to first.
	- Walking through your book of business with your team lead - prioritisation, where to start, who to reach out to first.

	Ship your first handbook PR. Somewhere in here you'll hit something that wasn't documented, or that's documented wrong. Write it up and open a PR. The point isn't the PR itself, it's that the handbook only stays useful if everyone adds to it. Not knowing something isn't a failing, but leaving it undocumented for the next person is.
	Ship your first handbook PR. Somewhere along the way you'll find a gap or mistake in the handbook, or want to add a new page entirely. Write it up and open a PR. The point isn't the PR itself, it's that the handbook only stays useful if everyone adds to it. Not knowing something isn't a failing, but leaving it undocumented for the next person is.

		- Saved your first 'we're going to churn' - it's going to happen, but you're going to save them!
		- Be independently working with your entire book to solve tricky technical problems with minimal assistance

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