Published on: 21 Nov , 2024
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In today’s SaaS-based economy, the difference between thriving businesses and struggling ones comes down to the fact that happy customers stay, grow, and become your advocates.
Hence, customer success is no longer a nice-to-have; it's a must-have. However, managing customer relationships and engaging proactively at scale becomes overwhelming as your company grows.
Enter Customer Success Software: it can help you streamline operations, automate tasks, and gain valuable insights to deliver exceptional customer experiences.
But with countless options available, each promising to revolutionize your customer success operations, how do you choose the solution that aligns with your business needs? This guide will walk you through everything you need to know about customer success software, from essential features to detailed comparisons of leading platforms, and helping you make an informed decision that propels your customer success strategy forward.
Customer success is a proactive strategy focused on helping customers achieve their goals and experience meaningful success with your product. Customer success software is a platform that empowers businesses to manage, nurture, and optimize customer relationships across the entire customer journey, from onboarding to renewal and growth.
Customer success software centralizes customer data, providing a 360-degree view of each customer’s experience and analyzing key metrics. This helps the customer success team understand customers, address their issues and uncover expansion opportunities. Ultimately, this leads to happier customers and even happier customer success managers.
Here, are some important functionalities to be considered while choosing the right customer success software.
Here are six customer success software providers in the market for you to evaluate:
ChurnZero is a comprehensive customer success platform offering automation, in-app communications, health scoring, and revenue forecasting to deliver value and succeed at scale.
Top features of ChurnZero:
Customer Success AI™
Launchpad:
Renewal and Forecast Hub :
Success insights:
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
60+ native integrations | Inability to reply within an email thread |
Command center - single view for CSMs on daily tasks | User-interface lacks intuitiveness |
Collaboration chatbot for customer success teams to access customer data | Steep learning curve |
Real-time alert |
Pricing Plans | Free Plans Features |
---|---|
ChurnZero provides custom pricing based on your needs. | No free trial is available. |
Gainsight’s customer success platform helps to build retention-focused customer relationships and drive long-term growth. The platform combines 360-degree customer insights, AI-powered analytics, and workflow automation, to enable proactive engagement and data-driven strategies.
Top feature of Gainsight:
Staircase AI
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
Automatic LinkedIn profile synchronization for customer contacts | Performance issues with large datasets |
Revenue forecasting with dollar-value precision | Analytics view is a bit clunky |
Pricing Plans | Free Plans Features |
---|---|
Gainsight has two tiers - Essentials and Enterprise. Each tier has custom pricing based on the customer’s needs. | No free trial is available. |
Totango's customer success platform helps to achieve customer success goals and outcomes. It offers tools for the integration of data sources, portfolio management, and AI-enhanced engagement and reporting tools.
Top features of Totango:
SuccessBLOCs -
Successplay :
Campaigns:
AI:
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
Customizable data reporting | Integrations having technical bugs |
Comprehensive data stream integration | Difficult to send emails |
Transparent success plan sharing with customers | Health scores are not always accurate |
Limited reports and insights capabilities |
Pricing Plans | Free Plans Features |
---|---|
Totango has two-tier plans - Enterprise and Premier. Each tier has customizable add-ons and custom pricing. | No free trial is available. Provides a 3-minute product tour. |
Planhat’s customer success platform enables data-backed decisions and maintains strong customer relationships. It equips CS teams with comprehensive data tools, automation capabilities, integrations, workflows, and presentation tools.
Top AI features of Planhat:
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
Unique analytics architecture - reports data in a structured way | Limited email formatting capabilities |
Customizable application architecture | Limited data visualizations |
30+ pre-built metric templates |
Pricing Plans | Free Plans Features |
---|---|
Planhat has three tiers - Startup, Professional, and Enterprise. Each tier has custom pricing based on their needs. | No free trial is available. |
ClientSuccess offers a streamlined solution for implementing and enhancing customer success strategies, focusing on simplicity and effectiveness. It provides features on insights and analytics, customer journey management, AI and automation, customer onboarding and portals, and integrates with CRM, support, and communication tools.
Top features of ClientSuccess
SuccessCycles -
SmartCS™- AI-powered features
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
AI-powered health score analysis | Limited task reminder functionality |
Detailed customer portals with collaboration features | Poor UI/UX experience |
Comprehensive customer segmentation |
Pricing Plans | Free Plans Features |
---|---|
ClientSuccess has three tier plans - Startup, Growth, and Enterprise. Each tier has custom pricing based on their needs. | No free trial is available |
Velaris’s customer success software streamlines operations through flexible AI-powered analytics, success plans, collaboration tools, and automation functions.
Top features of Velaris:
Velaris AI
Custom object:
Automation Builder:
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
Comprehensive task time tracking | Steep learning curve |
Unlimited data point tracking | |
Manual ratings for health scores from CSMs | |
Automate actions based on conditions set |
Pricing Plans | Free Plans Features |
---|---|
Velaris provides a custom pricing plan based on your needs. | No free trial available. |
Need help to pick the right customer success software? With so many options available, making the right choice can feel overwhelming. Let’s break the process into simple and actionable steps.
Before diving into your many customer success platform websites, step back and list why you require a customer success solution.
Consider answering these questions:
Example: Customer health scoring and alerting for risk accounts
Pro Tip: Create a checklist for ‘Must have’ and ‘Nice to have’ feature lists to prioritize your requirements.
Look beyond their fancy marketing and focus on the functionality offered. Narrow down your customer success platform by ticking the features that align with your requirements.
Also, consider the following while browsing platforms
Example: If you use HubSpot for marketing, Zendesk for support, and Stripe for billing, ensure the software can pull data from all these sources to give you a complete customer view.
Pro Tip: Discuss with your team members and consider their feedback throughout the decision process to ensure the solution meets everyone’s needs.
Make the most out of this evaluation period. A demo call helps you understand the CSP’s (customer success platform) workflow better and check whether it aligns with your needs. Clearly articulate your use case during the discussion call, to find and ensure a good-fit platform.
Based on your previous evaluation, create a checklist that has to be asked or considered during the demo call.
Some platforms do not offer free trials, so request free trials to test your workflow with the platform.
A strong customer success platform builds satisfaction and loyalty, but integrating powerful customer education software elevates customer enablement and success.
Trainn simplifies customer success by offering a unified platform for self-serve onboarding, product training, and technical support. It equips customers with essential knowledge, improving their experience and fostering long-term success with your product.
Your customer success platform serves as the roadmap, directing customers toward their goals. Trainn acts as the vehicle and fuel, enabling them to follow that path with confidence and ease.
Regardless of your choice, integrating your customer success software with Trainn creates synergy to boost product adoption, reduce churn, and build loyalty. Investing in customer education goes beyond product knowledge—it supports the long-term success of both your customers and your business.