Building a Winning Customer Success Tech Stack: A Guide for CS Teams

A Customer Success tech stack is the set of tools CS teams use to manage customer data, monitor account health, automate workflows, and communicate with customers throughout the lifecycle. 

When this stack is missing or poorly designed, teams end up juggling disconnected tools, manually updating spreadsheets, and reacting to problems only after customers are already frustrated. 

In this article, we will explore what a well-built tech stack looks like. We’ll also recommend the best tools in each category that will help you enhance your team's efficiency, and drive higher customer satisfaction and retention.

Key takeaways

• A Customer Success tech stack is essential for managing customer data, monitoring account health, automating workflows, and scaling proactive engagement as your customer base grows.
• The strongest stacks combine core categories like CRM, customer success platforms, communication tools, analytics, onboarding software, and collaboration tools.
• Platforms like Velaris can serve multiple functions by combining customer data, automation, project management, analytics, collaboration, and built-in AI in one workspace. 
• Tool choice should be driven by workflow fit and customer lifecycle needs, in addition to feature lists. The right stack reduces manual work, improves visibility, and helps teams act before churn risk appears.
• AI-powered customer success platforms are increasingly valuable because they transform raw customer data into insights, risks, and next steps without heavy manual analysis.

1. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System

CRMs store and manage customer data, track interactions, and streamline the sales process. They give customer success teams a central place to view account history, manage contacts, monitor the customer journey, and spot upsell or risk signals early.

Below we take a look at how some common CRM options compare in practice.

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Salesforce

Salesforce is the most powerful and flexible CRM option for large and complex organizations. It excels at handling detailed customer records, multi-team workflows, custom objects, and advanced reporting.

Compared to other tools, Salesforce offers the deepest functionality and scalability, but it also comes with higher costs, longer setup times, and more administrative overhead. It’s best suited for mid-market and enterprise teams with complex sales and customer success operations.

HubSpot

HubSpot is a strong all-round CRM that balances usability with solid functionality. It performs well for tracking customer interactions, managing pipelines, and maintaining clean contact and company records.

Compared to Salesforce, HubSpot is easier to implement and maintain but less customizable at scale. Compared to spreadsheets, it’s vastly more reliable and automation-friendly. It’s a popular choice for startups and growing SaaS teams that want structure without heavy complexity.

Spreadsheets (Google Sheets or Excel)

Spreadsheets can function as a basic CRM in the early stages by storing customer names, emails, deal stages, and notes. Their main advantages are simplicity, zero or low cost, and flexibility. 

Most teams already know how to use them, they require no setup, and they can be quickly adapted to different workflows. For very small teams or early-stage startups, this makes spreadsheets a fast and accessible starting point.

However, compared to dedicated CRM tools, spreadsheets perform poorly for automation, real-time collaboration, activity tracking, and data integrity. They work as a temporary solution, but quickly become a bottleneck for customer success teams.

2. Customer success platforms (CSPs)

Customer Success platforms help teams monitor account health, manage lifecycle stages, track engagement, and take proactive action to reduce churn and grow accounts.

Velaris 

Velaris, which is highly rated on G2, performs strongly across core CS use cases (health scoring, lifecycle tracking, automation, and 360° account views) and stands out for its built-in AI layer.

Its AI features automatically turn unstructured data such as calls, emails, tickets, and notes into structured insights:

• Headlines summarizes account-level activity and recurring themes so CSMs can understand the full customer context at a glance.
• CallSense analyzes call transcripts to generate summaries, action items, follow-up drafts, risk signals, and sentiment scores.
• Trending Topics groups customer conversations into recurring themes (e.g., integration issues, product feedback) to surface trends across accounts.
• Velaris Bridge uses AI to monitor, summarize, and enrich data flowing between Velaris and external systems like CRMs, ticketing tools, and data warehouses.

Compared to traditional CS platforms, Velaris reduces manual prep and analysis by automatically generating account context, risks, and next steps, which makes proactive customer management easier to scale.

Gainsight

Gainsight performs well for enterprise teams that need advanced health scoring, playbooks, and renewal forecasting.

It is powerful but often requires significant configuration and ongoing admin support. Gainsight is less AI-driven out of the box and relies more on manual rule-building and dashboard setup to surface insights.

Totango

Totango is strong in customer segmentation, lifecycle tracking, and rule-based automation. It works well for teams that want structured success programs and clear journey orchestration.

However, insight generation is mostly dependent on predefined metrics and workflows. It is commonly used by SaaS companies that prioritize consistency and process standardization across accounts.

ChurnZero

ChurnZero focuses heavily on engagement tracking, in-app messaging, and churn prevention workflows. It is effective for monitoring usage signals and triggering outreach at scale.

Teams might use ChurnZero for its ease of use and strong engagement tooling, particularly for high-touch or fast-moving customer environments.

3. Communication tools

Communication tools support real-time messaging, video calls, and collaboration between customer success teams and their customers. They play a key role in coordinating internally, resolving issues quickly, and maintaining clear, consistent communication externally.

Slack

Slack is one of the most widely used tools for internal team communication. It performs especially well for fast, asynchronous collaboration between CSMs, support, sales, and product teams.

For customer success, Slack is useful for:

• Sharing account updates and risk alerts internally
• Coordinating handoffs between teams
• Creating dedicated channels for key customers or segments

However, Slack is primarily designed for internal use. While it can support limited external collaboration via shared channels, most customer communication still needs to happen in email or dedicated customer-facing tools.

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is a strong alternative for organizations already using Microsoft 365. It combines chat, video meetings, file sharing, and calendar integration in a single workspace.

For CS teams, Teams works well for:

• Internal collaboration and meetings
• Cross-functional account reviews
• Video calls with customers

Its tight integration with Outlook and SharePoint makes it convenient for document-heavy workflows, though it can feel heavier and less flexible than Slack for quick, informal communication.

Zoom

Zoom excels at one thing: reliable, high-quality video meetings. It’s often the preferred tool for:

• Customer onboarding sessions
• QBRs and executive check-ins
• Training and enablement calls

While Zoom is essential for live conversations, it doesn’t replace day-to-day messaging or collaboration tools. Most CS teams use it alongside Slack or Teams rather than as a standalone communication platform.

4. Project management tools

Project management tools help customer success teams organise tasks, track progress, and manage deadlines. They are especially important for onboarding coordination, implementation projects, renewals, and long-running customer initiatives where multiple stakeholders and milestones are involved.

Velaris

Velaris approaches project management from a customer success perspective rather than a generic task-tracking one.

It includes:

• Task to-do lists tied directly to accounts and contacts
• Ownership, due dates, and collaboration inside customer records
• Time tracking for customer-related projects
• AI-generated tasks based on analysis of customer emails, calls, and activity

The key advantage is context. Tasks live alongside customer health scores, usage data, conversations, and success plans, so CSMs don’t need to switch tools to understand why a task matters. 

For teams that want project management tightly integrated with customer data and workflows, this reduces tool sprawl and manual coordination.

Asana

Asana is a powerful general-purpose project management tool that excels at:

• Complex task dependencies
• Workflow automation
• Cross-team project visibility

For CS teams, Asana works well for onboarding checklists, implementation projects, and internal coordination. However, it operates outside the customer system of record, so CSMs often need to switch between Asana and their CS platform or CRM to get full context.

Trello

Trello offers a simpler, visual, card-based approach to task management.

It’s useful for:

• Lightweight onboarding boards
• Simple workflow tracking
• Small teams that want minimal setup

While easy to adopt, Trello lacks deeper reporting, automation, and customer context, which can become limiting as CS operations scale.

Monday.com

Monday.com sits between Asana and Trello in complexity and flexibility.

It provides:

• Customisable workflows
• Visual dashboards
• Automation rules
• Timeline and workload views

It can be adapted for customer success use cases, but like Asana, it remains a standalone project tool. Customer context, health data, and communication history typically live elsewhere.

5. Customer feedback and survey tools

Customer feedback tools help CS teams understand how customers feel about the product, what’s working, and where friction exists. Surveys and questionnaires are commonly used to collect satisfaction data, product insights, and improvement ideas that guide retention and expansion strategies.

SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is one of the most widely used tools for creating and distributing surveys.

It’s strong for:

• Quick survey setup
• Standard templates (NPS, CSAT, CES)
• Basic reporting and exports

For customer success teams, SurveyMonkey works well as a lightweight option for collecting feedback at scale. However, survey results typically live outside your CS platform, which means insights often need to be manually connected back to accounts, health scores, or renewal planning.

Qualtrics

Qualtrics is an enterprise-grade experience management platform designed for deep analysis and large-scale programs.

It excels at:

• Advanced survey logic and segmentation
• Statistical analysis
• Enterprise reporting and dashboards
• Multi-channel feedback collection

For mature CS organizations, Qualtrics offers powerful insight generation. The tradeoff is complexity and cost. It often requires dedicated setup and integration work to feed results into customer success workflows.

Typeform

Typeform focuses on creating conversational, user-friendly surveys.

It’s especially good for:

• High completion rates
• Customer interviews and qualitative feedback
• Embedded surveys in emails or apps

Typeform is popular for relationship-driven CS teams that want more thoughtful responses rather than just scores. Like SurveyMonkey, though, feedback data usually sits separately from customer health and lifecycle data unless integrated into a CS platform.

6. Data analytics and Business Intelligence (BI) tools

BI tools help customer success teams turn raw data into clear, actionable insights. They’re commonly used to track KPIs, understand trends in customer behavior, monitor retention and expansion, and report on performance across accounts and segments.

Velaris 

Velaris includes analytics directly inside the customer success platform, centered around a real-time 360° customer profile.

It performs especially well for CS teams because it:

• Combines product usage, lifecycle stage, MRR, renewal dates, health scores, and engagement data in one view
• Allows teams to ask questions about customer data using AI Copilot, without building reports manually
• Connects insights directly to workflows, tasks, success plans, and playbooks

Compared to standalone BI tools, Velaris prioritizes actionability. Insights are immediately tied to accounts and next steps, instead of living in separate dashboards.

Tableau

Tableau is a powerful enterprise BI platform focused on deep data visualization.

It’s strongest for:

• Advanced dashboards
• Complex multi-source reporting
• Executive and company-wide analytics

For customer success teams, Tableau is useful when detailed, customized reporting is required across departments. However, it usually relies on data teams for setup and maintenance, and insights often need to be manually translated into CS actions.

Looker

Looker is a modern BI platform (part of Google Cloud) designed around data modeling and consistent metrics.

It works well for:

• Standardized reporting across teams
• Strong data governance
• Integration with large data warehouses

In CS environments, Looker is helpful for building reliable performance views, but it typically sits outside daily workflows. Like Tableau, it’s more analysis-first than execution-first.

Power BI

Power BI is Microsoft’s business intelligence tool, commonly used in organizations already in the Microsoft ecosystem.

It’s a good option for:

• Cost-effective dashboards
• Integration with Excel and Azure
• Basic to intermediate reporting needs

For CS teams, Power BI offers accessible reporting but usually requires manual effort to connect insights back to account management, onboarding, or renewal processes.

7. Knowledge base and helpdesk software

Knowledge base and helpdesk tools help customer success teams manage support tickets, document recurring issues, and offer self-service resources to customers. They play a key role in reducing support load while improving response times and consistency.

Zendesk

Zendesk is one of the most widely used customer support platforms, known for its robust ticketing system, automation rules, and reporting features.

It performs well for high-volume support environments and teams that need advanced routing and SLA management. For customer success teams, Zendesk is often strongest when tightly integrated with CRM or CS platforms to provide full account context.

Freshdesk

Freshdesk offers similar ticketing and knowledge base functionality with a simpler setup and lower entry cost.

It’s well suited for small to mid-sized teams that need reliable support workflows without heavy configuration. However, like most helpdesk tools, it focuses primarily on issue resolution rather than long-term account management.

Confluence

Confluence is primarily a documentation and internal knowledge-sharing tool rather than a traditional helpdesk.

It works well for maintaining internal playbooks, troubleshooting guides, and product documentation that CS teams can reference when helping customers. It’s typically paired with a ticketing system rather than used as a standalone support solution.

8. Email marketing and automation tools

Email marketing and automation tools help customer success teams deliver targeted, timely communication at scale. They are commonly used for lifecycle messaging, product updates, onboarding sequences, and re-engagement campaigns.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp is widely used for its ease of setup and user-friendly interface.

It performs well for basic segmentation, simple automation flows, and broadcast-style communication such as newsletters and product announcements. For CS teams, it’s often best suited for lightweight engagement rather than complex, behavior-driven lifecycle journeys.

Marketo

Marketo is a more advanced marketing automation platform designed for large-scale, multi-touch campaigns.

It excels at complex segmentation, lead scoring, and deep integration with sales and marketing systems. While powerful, it can be heavy to configure and is typically owned by marketing teams rather than customer success teams directly.

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign sits between simplicity and depth, offering strong automation features with a relatively accessible setup.

It works well for customer lifecycle emails, onboarding sequences, and triggered follow-ups based on user actions. CS teams often use it when they need more personalization and logic than Mailchimp provides, without the operational overhead of enterprise tools like Marketo.

9. Customer onboarding tools

Customer onboarding tools help guide new users through setup, early product usage, and key workflows. They focus on reducing friction, accelerating time to value, and ensuring customers reach meaningful milestones quickly.

WalkMe

WalkMe is an enterprise-grade digital adoption platform designed for complex products and large organizations.

It excels at creating detailed in-app walkthroughs, multi-step guidance, and contextual help for sophisticated workflows. However, it can be heavy to implement and maintain, and is often best suited for large teams with dedicated resources to manage onboarding content.

Appcues

Appcues is popular for building onboarding experiences without engineering effort.

It performs well for creating tooltips, checklists, modals, and simple product tours that help users understand core features. For CS teams, it’s a practical option when the goal is to guide users through common setup steps and basic workflows quickly.

Pendo

Pendo combines product analytics with onboarding and in-app messaging.

It’s particularly useful when teams want to link onboarding flows to real usage data, allowing them to tailor guidance based on how customers actually interact with the product. This makes it valuable for continuously optimizing onboarding based on behavior rather than assumptions.

10. Collaboration and document sharing tools

Collaboration and document sharing tools allow Customer Success teams to work with customers and internal stakeholders in real time, share onboarding materials and plans, and keep important documents organised and accessible.

Velaris Customer Portal

Instead of treating documents as standalone files, the Velaris Customer Portal connects shared resources, tasks, timelines, and discussions directly to each account. This makes it easier for teams and customers to stay aligned on what’s been shared, what’s in progress, and what’s coming next, without switching between tools or losing context.

For CS teams looking to reduce tool sprawl and keep collaboration tied closely to customer goals and onboarding progress, this can be more efficient than managing documents separately from customer data.

Google Workspace

Google Workspace is widely used for real-time document editing, sharing, and basic collaboration.

It performs well for teams that need fast, simple access to shared files and the ability to co-edit documents with customers. However, customer context, task ownership, and onboarding or success planning workflows live outside the documents themselves, which can lead to fragmented visibility.

Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 offers similar strengths, with robust document management through Word, Excel, SharePoint, and Teams.

It works well for organizations already embedded in the Microsoft ecosystem and needing structured file storage and permissions. Like Google Workspace, it handles documents well but does not connect collaboration directly to customer health, milestones, or success outcomes.

Dropbox

Dropbox focuses primarily on secure file storage and sharing.

It’s effective for distributing large files and managing access control, but offers limited support for real-time collaboration, task tracking, or customer success workflows beyond basic file exchange.

Building a Customer Success tech stack with these tools can help your team streamline their workflows, enhance customer interactions, and drive overall customer satisfaction and retention.

That being said, CS teams do face a few challenges when it comes to finding exactly which tools to work with.

Conclusion

A comprehensive Customer Success tech stack is crucial for delivering exceptional customer experiences and driving business growth. By leveraging the right tools and systems, you can streamline your processes, improve data visibility, and enhance customer engagement.

If you want to integrate the functions of a Customer Success tech stack in one place, consider adopting a unified platform like Velaris, a highly rated platform on G2, into your daily workflows. To test it out yourself, request a demo today.