Learn about Customer Success tools and how they can streamline your CS efforts for better results.
The Velaris Team
July 17, 2024
Tired of your customer data being scattered across systems? Can’t get a full view of your customer base? Is your CS team busy fielding questions all day instead of proactively driving value for customers?
It sounds like it’s time to invest in a Customer Success Platform.
Customer Success software can be instrumental in transforming your CS operations, especially if you’re facing problems like:
Lack of visibility due to scattered data and disparate systems
Highly manual workflows dependent on low-value tasks and admin work
Inability to understand the health of customers, leading to surprise churn and missed expansion opportunities
Difficulty reporting on CS activity and impact
Inconsistent or non-existent processes that don’t scale
If you're a Customer Success professional looking to build out a proactive and scalable Customer Success function, you should consider tools that offer the following features:
Customer health scoring Gives you a quick snapshot of customer wellbeing by combining product usage, sentiment, and engagement signals into a single score. This helps CSMs prioritize accounts that need attention.
Playbooks Standardized action plans that trigger whenever common scenarios arise, like onboarding or low adoption. They keep your team consistent and scalable.
Automated workflows Automation builders let you string together actions—like sending alerts, assigning tasks, or updating CRM fields—without manual effort. This reduces repetitive work and ensures nothing slips through the cracks.
Customer 360 view Brings all customer data, interactions, and history into one place so teams can make decisions with full context. No more jumping between tools to piece together the story.
Churn predictions and alerts Uses historical data and behavioral signals to flag accounts at risk before it’s too late. Real-time alerts give teams a chance to intervene early.
Team workspaces Shared digital spaces where Customer Success teams can collaborate, track progress, and align on account strategies. This reduces silos and boosts accountability.
Task and project management Keeps day-to-day work structured with clear deadlines, ownership, and dependencies. It makes complex customer initiatives easier to manage.
Integrations Connects with your CRM, product analytics, support tools, and more to create a seamless data flow. This ensures your CS platform fits neatly into the existing tech stack.
These capabilities help Customer Success teams reduce churn, improve retention and grow your revenue through your customers.
Comparison of Customer Success tools
To make the evaluation process easier, here’s a side-by-side look at some of the leading Customer Success tools. The table highlights what each platform offers and the type of team it’s best suited for, so you can quickly identify which solutions align with your company’s size, goals, and resources.
Platform
Description
Best for
Velaris
An AI-first Customer Success Platform with strong integrations and services
Mid-market and enterprise teams looking to scale CS with deep customer visibility and unlock high efficiency gains with AI
Gainsight
A legacy Customer Success Platform with a highly robust and complex feature set
Enterprise companies looking for an exhaustive feature set and are able to invest in dedicated platform administrators
Totango
A multi-tool software offering a range of products for various CS activities
Mid-market and enterprise companies looking to streamline their CS processes
ChurnZero
A complex Customer Success Platform offering customer journey mapping and digital CS tools
Mid-market and enterprise companies looking to manage customer journeys
ClientSuccess
A simple, plug-and-play Customer Success platform for early teams
Small businesses with simple data structures and processes
Planhat
A CRM for sales, CS and professional service
Midmarket companies looking to consolidate tools across functions
Custify
A lightweight Customer Success tool with an easy-to-use interface
Small businesses that need lightweight tools to improve efficiency
Medallia
A customer data analytics platform for understanding customer behaviour
Product-led teams seeking to better understand customer behaviour
SmartKarrot
A basic CS tool with outcome-based pricing and limited integrations
Small teams looking for a low-cost solution with limited integration needs
Hubspot Customer Success
Hubspot’s new product designed for SMB Customer Success teams
SMB teams requiring a basic tool set for managing customers
Velaris
Velaris is an AI Customer Success software tool designed to consolidate customer data, automate busywork and gather customer intelligence on autopilot. Mid-market and enterprise teams use Velaris to scale their CS operations with better visibility, deeper analytics and agentic AI workflows. In addition to its AI features, Velaris also offers a strong set of integrations across 70+ tools, hands-on implementation and a premium onboarding experience.
Key features:
Data consolidation and customer visibility: Velaris consolidates all your scattered data so that you can manage your Customer Success operations in one place. It accommodates complex data hierarchies and connects with any tool in your tech stack across 70+ integrations. AI Account Intelligence generates quick account summaries on historical activity.
Customer health monitoring: It combines all your health data points into a customizable health score formula that helps you predict churn and drive more expansions. Velaris synthesizes data from AI-generated sentiment scores, product usage metrics, NPS scores, support ticket volumes and more to offer a full picture of health.
Digital CS and customer journey orchestration tools: Its visual drag-and-drop automation builder makes it easy to orchestrate customer journeys and implement digital CS workflows. Send automated emails for tech-touch engagement, trigger playbooks to streamline onboarding journeys and upsell sequences, and automated tedious data entry tasks. Use a cross-tool integrator to automate across your other systems and incorporate LLMs into your workflows.
Flexible reports on anything you need: Velaris Dashboards can be used to report on any type of data you need - both quantitative and qualitative. Whether it’s renewal forecasts, product usage trends, number of expansions created over time, or underserved customer segments, you can build it all.
AI-powered analytics: Velaris’ AI monitors customer sentiment, analyzes communications, identifies trending topics, and generates action items to help your team stay proactive.
Gainsight
Gainsight is a leading Customer Success platform that focuses on customer health scoring, automated outreach, and journey mapping to help businesses proactively manage customer relationships and improve engagement.
Key features:
Customer health scoring: Gainsight provides advanced algorithms to assess customer health, helping CSMs identify at-risk accounts before they become problems, leading to higher customer retention rates.
Automated customer outreach: This feature allows CSMs to automate communication workflows, ensuring timely, relevant, and consistent engagement with customers.
Customer journey mapping: Gainsight helps visualize the customer journey, making it easier to understand customer interactions and optimize their experience at each touchpoint.
Totango
Totango is a Customer Success software that offers real-time customer data, segmentation, and automated workflows, allowing businesses to personalize interactions and streamline Customer Success processes.
Key features:
Customer segmentation: Totango enables CSMs to segment customers based on various criteria, allowing CSMs to tailor their approach to different customer groups, improving engagement and satisfaction.
SuccessPlay automation: This feature automates the execution of best practices and predefined workflows, ensuring consistent delivery of Customer Success strategies and reducing the risk of human error.
Real-time customer data: Totango provides up-to-date insights into customer behavior and engagement, enabling CSMs to make informed decisions quickly.
ChurnZero
ChurnZero is a Customer Success platform that provides tools for monitoring customer health, automating playbooks, and facilitating in-app messaging to reduce churn and enhance customer communication.
Key features:
Customer health dashboard: ChurnZero offers a comprehensive dashboard that provides real-time insights into customer health and engagement. This helps users predict issues, reducing the likelihood of churn.
Automated playbooks: These playbooks guide CSMs through predefined workflows and actions, ensuring consistency and effectiveness in customer management.
In-app messaging: ChurnZero allows CSMs to communicate with customers directly within their application. This ensures that customers receive relevant information and support exactly when they need it, improving their overall experience.
ClientSuccess
ClientSuccess is a Customer Success software that helps businesses monitor customer satisfaction, manage tasks, and streamline the renewal process through pulse scoring and efficient task management.
Key features:
Customer pulse scoring: This feature helps CSMs monitor customer satisfaction levels by collecting and analyzing feedback. With real-time insights into customer happiness, pulse scoring allows CSMs to take proactive measures to maintain and improve satisfaction.
Task management: ClientSuccess offers robust task management capabilities, enabling CSMs to organize their workload and stay on top of customer needs.
Renewal management: The platform provides tools for managing renewals, ensuring that CSMs can track and optimize the renewal process effectively, reducing the risk of lost revenue.
Planhat
Planhat is a versatile Customer Success software that offers customizable dashboards, Customer Success planning, and health scoring to tailor success plans and visualize customer data effectively.
Key features:
Customer Success planning: Planhat allows CSMs to create detailed success plans tailored to each customer’s needs and goals. These customized plans ensure each customer receives personalized attention and support, enhancing their experience and satisfaction.
Customizable dashboards: The platform offers flexible dashboards that can be customized to display the most relevant metrics and provide a comprehensive view of customer health and engagement.
Health scoring: Planhat provides tools for assessing and tracking customer health, helping CSMs prioritize their efforts.
Custify
Custify is a customer success platform built specifically for SaaS companies, focusing on driving product adoption, reducing churn, and maximizing customer lifetime value through a highly automated, data-driven approach.
Key Features:
Automated Onboarding and Task Management: Custify allows you to automate onboarding flows and assign tasks to CSMs based on customer behavior and lifecycle stage.
Health Scoring and Alerts: It provides dynamic health scoring models and real-time alerts, enabling teams to act early when customer engagement or usage drops.
Customer Segmentation: Segment customers based on lifecycle, product usage, or MRR, and trigger tailored workflows or messaging for each segment.
Medallia
Medallia is a Customer Success software platform that leverages advanced analytics and real-time feedback to help businesses understand and improve customer experiences across all touchpoints.
Key features:
Real-time feedback collection: Medallia captures customer feedback in real-time across various channels, helping businesses stay attuned to customer sentiments by providing immediate insights.
Advanced analytics: The platform offers robust analytics tools to interpret feedback, uncover trends, and identify areas for improvement. This provides a deeper understanding of customer behavior and preferences, guiding strategic decision-making.
Actionable insights: Medallia translates feedback into actionable insights, enabling businesses to make proactive, informed decisions that enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty.
SmartKarrot
SmartKarrot is a Customer Success software that offers advanced analytics, engagement automation, and customer feedback tools to analyze customer data, automate engagement, and improve customer satisfaction.
Key features:
Customer Success analytics: SmartKarrot provides advanced analytics to help CSMs gain deep insights into customer behavior, allowing them to make informed decisions.
Engagement automation: The platform automates customer engagement processes, ensuring customers receive timely and relevant communication, enhancing their overall experience and satisfaction.
Customer feedback: SmartKarrot collects and analyzes customer feedback, providing insights into customer satisfaction and areas for improvement.
HubSpot Customer Success
HubSpot, widely known as a CRM and marketing automation platform, also offers features that support customer success teams, especially through its Service Hub. It’s designed to help teams manage customer relationships, streamline support, and drive long-term engagement and retention.
Key Features:
Ticketing System: Centralizes customer issues in a shared inbox, making it easier for teams to track and resolve support requests.
Customer Feedback Tools: Built-in survey tools (like NPS, CES, and CSAT) to collect and analyze customer feedback.
CRM Integration: Native integration with HubSpot’s CRM connects customer success activities to broader sales and marketing efforts, providing a full view of each customer.
Now that we’ve been over the whole list, let’s look at some criteria to consider when selecting a Customer Success software tool for your SaaS business.
How to Pick Customer Success Software for SaaS Products
When selecting Customer Success software for a SaaS business, it's crucial to consider both general and specific needs to ensure the software aligns with your business objectives and operational requirements. Here’s what you should judge each tool by:
Scalability: The software should be able to handle an increasing number of users, accounts, and data as your business grows, without performance issues or the need for frequent upgrades.
Integration capabilities: The software should seamlessly integrate with your existing tools and platforms, such as Customer Relationship Management systems, marketing automation tools, and analytics platforms. Integration ensures that data flows smoothly between systems, providing a unified view of customer interactions and enhancing efficiency.
User-friendliness: The software should have an intuitive interface that is easy for your Customer Success team to learn and use. A user-friendly system reduces the learning curve, increases adoption rates, and improves productivity by minimizing the time spent navigating the software.
Customization options: The software should offer flexibility to tailor features and workflows to your specific business needs. Customization ensures the software can adapt to your unique processes and requirements, providing a better fit for your operations.
Customer support: The vendor should provide high-quality support, including availability, responsiveness, and expertise. Reliable support is crucial for resolving issues quickly, ensuring minimal disruption to your operations, and maximizing the value of the software.
Handling subscription models: The software should efficiently manage subscription plans, billing cycles, and renewals. SaaS businesses often operate on subscription models, so managing these effectively is vital for revenue stability and customer retention.
Monitoring usage metrics: The software should provide detailed analytics on how customers are using your product. Understanding usage patterns helps identify which features are most valuable to customers, uncovering opportunities for upselling or highlighting areas needing improvement.
Proactive customer engagement: The software should facilitate timely and relevant interactions with customers to prevent churn and enhance satisfaction. Proactively engaging customers, especially at critical points in their journey, helps address issues before they lead to dissatisfaction and churn, ensuring long-term customer loyalty.
By considering these criteria, you can select a Customer Success software that not only meets your current needs, but also supports your SaaS business's growth and strategic goals
Conclusion
Customer Success software is essential for SaaS businesses. These tools address common pain points for CSMs by streamlining processes, centralizing data, and providing real-time insights into customer health.
As you consider which software to choose, assess your specific needs and how well each tool aligns with them.
Velaris stands out as a comprehensive solution, offering robust features that cater to the unique challenges of CSMs. To experience its capabilities firsthand, book a demo today.
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The Velaris Team
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