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As a Customer Success Manager (CSM), finding the right tool to support your workflows isn’t easy. With so many CRMs available – Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho, Microsoft Dynamics – it’s tempting to pick one and hope it’ll cover everything.
After all, these platforms promise customer data centralization, automation, and communication tracking – features that sound perfect for managing customer relationships.
However, not all CRMs align well with the daily needs of Customer Success teams. While they can handle some aspects of customer management, they often struggle to provide the specialized features needed to streamline onboarding, monitor customer health, or track success milestones.
In this blog, we’ll explore some popular CRM options and cover what they offer as well as where they fall short for Customer Success (CS). After that, we’ll explore more practical solutions that are better suited for managing CS workflows.
Widely used CRMs for Customer Success teams
Choosing the right CRM can feel like the logical first step when trying to organize customer relationships. However, not all CRMs are equally effective when it comes to supporting Customer Success workflows.
Below, we’ll dive into some of the most popular CRMs used by CS teams, examining their strengths, shortcomings, and the scenarios where they can work well:
1. Salesforce CRM
Pros:
- Highly customizable to fit different business needs.
- Provides robust contact management and reporting features.
- Offers visibility into customer data and interactions across departments.
Cons:
- Customization can become complex and time-consuming.
- Requires third-party integrations to support post-sale workflows like onboarding.
- Limited tools for tracking customer health and success milestones.
2. HubSpot CRM
Pros:
- Excellent for aligning marketing and sales efforts.
- Easy-to-use interface, suitable for smaller teams.
- Offers basic automation and customer journey tracking.
Cons:
- Lacks advanced tools for customer health monitoring.
- Limited functionality for managing complex Customer Success workflows.
- Better suited for follow-ups and communication tracking than post-sale management.
3. Zoho CRM
Pros:
- Affordable option with built-in automation and reporting tools.
- Provides basic CRM functionality at a lower cost.
- Flexible enough for smaller teams with simple processes.
Cons:
- Heavily focused on sales, with fewer options for Customer Success workflows.
- Limited advanced reporting and automation for post-sale activities.
- May require additional tools to support more complex CS needs.
4. Microsoft Dynamics 365
Pros:
- Strong analytics and reporting features, especially for sales teams.
- Integrates seamlessly with Microsoft’s suite of products.
- Highly customizable to fit specific business processes.
Cons:
- Requires significant customization to meet Customer Success needs.
- Lacks built-in tools for onboarding and customer health tracking.
- Teams may need to rely on manual processes or extra plugins for CS workflows.
When CRMs work for CS teams
- If the team’s primary focus is on acquisition, with fewer post-sale responsibilities.
- If the business manages a smaller number of customers, making it feasible to handle success activities manually.
- If the company is in an early growth phase and mainly needs tools to manage contact details and sales pipelines.
CRMs offer a solid foundation for businesses just starting out or those with lighter CS needs. They centralize data and streamline communication, making them useful in many contexts.
However, as CS teams grow and take on more responsibilities, the limitations of CRMs become more apparent. In the next section, we’ll explore where these tools fall short when it comes to managing Customer Success workflows efficiently.
Where CRMs fall short for Customer Success
While CRMs offer value in organizing customer information and tracking interactions, they don’t always align with the unique needs of Customer Success teams. As post-sale responsibilities grow – like managing renewals, onboarding, and proactive health tracking – CSMs often find that CRMs fall short in essential areas.
These gaps can lead to manual workarounds, miscommunication across departments, and missed opportunities to strengthen customer relationships. Let’s explore some of the most common challenges.
Lack of post-sale focus and health tracking
CRMs are primarily designed to support pre-sale activities, focusing on managing pipelines, deals, and contact data. However, they often overlook key post-sale elements like renewals, churn reduction, and customer health monitoring. Without clear metrics to assess customer happiness and risks, CSMs are left guessing when customers might churn or disengage.
To address this, CS teams need tools that go beyond tracking interactions. Monitoring customer health scores and automating risk alerts ensures that issues are identified early and resolved before they escalate. This allows CSMs to stay proactive and build stronger customer relationships over time.
Limited automation for CS processes
CRMs excel at automating sales campaigns, but CS-specific tasks like onboarding, success planning, and progress tracking are often left out. This forces teams to rely on manual work, which can be time-consuming and prone to errors.
Effective Customer Success management requires workflows that guide customers through every stage of the post-sale journey, from onboarding to renewal.
Using CS-specific automation ensures a smoother customer journey. With the right tools, teams can set up workflows to automate onboarding, create time-based success plans, and send automated check-ins. This frees up CSMs to focus on building relationships rather than managing repetitive tasks.
Challenges with cross-functional collaboration
Collaboration across teams – like CS, product, and support – is crucial, but CRMs often silo data within individual departments. This disconnect makes it harder for teams to align on customer needs, leading to miscommunication and delays.
For example, product teams may not be aware of customer feedback gathered by CS, or support teams may miss key insights that could prevent issues from escalating.
Unified communication is essential for keeping everyone on the same page. When all customer data and interactions are available in one place, teams can collaborate more effectively and respond proactively to customer needs. This alignment ensures a seamless experience for customers and avoids gaps in service.
As businesses grow and customer expectations rise, these challenges become harder to manage with a traditional CRM alone. This is where dedicated Customer Success software comes into play – offering automation, health tracking, and cross-team collaboration tailored to the needs of CSMs.
In the next section, we’ll explore why investing in CS-specific software can make a lasting impact on your workflows and customer relationships.
Why dedicated Customer Success software is essential
Traditional CRMs may help CSMs manage some aspects of their work, but as Customer Success processes grow more complex, dedicated tools become necessary. Software built specifically for Customer Success enables automation, better customer insights, and smoother collaboration across teams.
Here are some key reasons why investing in dedicated Customer Success software can make a real difference.
Streamlining success workflows with automation
Many CSMs spend valuable time on repetitive tasks, such as sending follow-up emails or tracking customer progress manually. These tasks can easily pile up, taking time away from more strategic work, like building relationships or developing customer strategies.
By automating these key processes – such as onboarding workflows, milestone tracking, and email campaigns – CSMs can reduce manual workloads and ensure smooth customer journeys. Automation also guarantees consistency, making sure nothing falls through the cracks.
For example, CS tools like Velaris offer automated email sequences that allow teams to schedule time-based or trigger-based messages, ensuring customers receive the right information at the right time.
Monitoring sentiment and customer feedback
Understanding how customers feel about your product is essential for proactive Customer Success management. Yet, collecting and interpreting feedback across different channels can be a challenge. Without a structured way to monitor sentiment, teams may miss early warning signs of dissatisfaction.
CS software helps aggregate feedback and sentiment data, allowing CSMs to quickly identify trends and risks. This makes it easier to take action before issues escalate, keeping customers engaged and satisfied.
Velaris provides custom NPS and CSAT surveys to gather feedback, while AI-powered sentiment analysis identifies key themes and flags concerns, helping teams respond faster and more effectively.
Using predictive analytics to drive Customer Success
Predictive analytics is becoming an essential tool for CSMs who want to stay ahead of potential issues and opportunities. Instead of reacting to customer behavior after it happens, predictive analytics allows CSMs to forecast trends and identify risks before they escalate.
This proactive approach helps teams focus on key accounts that might be at risk or ready for upsell opportunities, all while optimizing their efforts for long-term growth.
By using predictive analytics to analyze customer health scores, product usage patterns, and engagement data, CSMs can predict when customers are likely to churn or renew. This data-driven approach helps teams make more informed decisions, ensuring that they can allocate resources effectively and provide targeted interventions that keep customers satisfied.
For instance, CS platforms like Velaris use predictive analytics to monitor customer sentiment and behavior, flagging potential risks and suggesting next steps. This allows teams to take action early – whether that’s sending targeted support or offering additional resources – ensuring that no customer is left behind.
Tracking KPIs with success plans
Tracking KPIs and mapping out the customer journey are essential to delivering long-term value. CSMs need tools that provide a clear view of progress, making it easier to meet goals and ensure customers achieve success.
Success plans provide a structured way to align on customer goals and track KPIs in real-time. These plans help both the CSM and the customer stay focused on key milestones, ensuring accountability on both sides.
Velaris offers success plans that map out the steps needed to meet specific objectives, with the ability to track KPIs and tasks along the way. This ensures everyone stays aligned and nothing is overlooked.
Dedicated Customer Success software is designed to handle these core needs, giving CSMs the tools they need to operate efficiently and focus on building stronger customer relationships. Investing in the right platform can transform how teams manage customer journeys, providing better insights and more seamless collaboration across departments.
Conclusion
While CRMs can provide a helpful starting point for managing customer interactions, they often fall short when it comes to handling the full scope of Customer Success needs. Managing renewals, monitoring customer health, and streamlining onboarding are essential to maintaining strong customer relationships – and these are areas where CRMs struggle.
Dedicated Customer Success software equips teams with tools designed for post-sale success. It allows CSMs to automate workflows, track key metrics, and collaborate effectively across teams, ensuring smoother customer journeys and proactive management.
A platform like Velaris can help CS teams take control by automating processes, tracking KPIs in real-time, and identifying risks before they become problems. With everything managed in one place, CSMs can focus more on creating value for their customers and less on managing repetitive tasks.
If you’re looking for a way to streamline your workflows and stay ahead of customer expectations, book a demo today to see how Velaris can help your team stay organized and proactive.
