Priyanka Malik
17 Best Customer Success Software in 2023
- Published: November 23, 2022
- Updated: September 13, 2023
Customer success teams are in a challenging position. A lot of work goes into ensuring your customers are satisfied and fully utilizing your product. There are dozens of complex customer success metrics to track, analytics to study, and onboarding flows to create and optimize. If you don’t find solutions for managing all these tasks efficiently, you’ll find it impossible to deliver value to your customers and, by extension, meet your business goals.
To achieve long-term growth, customer success teams need dedicated software that accurately paints a comprehensive picture of customers and their needs. Using these tools helps you stay on top of the above tasks more effectively than performing them manually, as they prevent errors and slowdowns. As your teams grow, adopting customer success software becomes more important to ensure everyone is on the same page and meeting their objectives.
When you aren’t spending most of your time collecting data and manually calculating complex formulas, you’ll have more time to build more meaningful relationships with customers, which is what your team would rather be doing.
What Is the Best Customer Success Software in 2023?
- Gainsight
- Custify
- ClientSuccess
- Planhat
- Whatfix
- Hubspot Service Hub
- ChurnZero
- Catalyst
- Medallia
- Totango
- Intercom
- Zendesk
- Salesforce
- Freshworks
- Help Scout
- Zoho
- Vitally
What is Customer Success Software?
Customer success software is specialized software that takes the customer data you have in your existing tech stack and automates the process of combining it to give you a 360-degree view of your customers. These platforms provide a holistic view of your customer’s experiences and reveal important clues that show you if your current strategies are working and where you need to make adjustments.
This type of software offloads the heavy lifting of tracking and managing your metrics by uncovering actionable insights you can use to increase adoption and drive growth. By collecting accurate data and comprehensive information about your customers, you can improve customer retention, uncover additional sales opportunities, and boost your customer health scores.
With the right customer success software in place, you’ll be able to automate your onboarding and customer journeys, optimize product adoption, instantly check on the health of your customers, and accurately track and report on the metrics that align with your company’s goals.
TIP: Pair your customer success software with next-gen strategies such as proactive customer service and self-service customer support to provide an unmatched customer experience.
Importance of Choosing the Right Customer Success Software
The customer experience has never been more critical in the business world than it is today. As the market becomes increasingly saturated and competitive, the difference between a loyal, satisfied customer and a lost opportunity often boils down to the quality of the customer journey. Choosing the right customer success software can significantly enhance this journey, cementing your relationship with customers and driving your business forward.
1. Improve customer relationships
Customer success software allows businesses to engage with their customers in a consistent, proactive, and personalized manner. By using customer success software, businesses can anticipate customer needs, resolve issues before they arise, and deliver tailored experiences that result in increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.
2. Streamline operations
The right customer success software automates and streamlines many manual, time-consuming tasks associated with managing customer relationships. By reducing the administrative load on your team, they can focus more on strategic tasks, leading to increased productivity and efficiency.
3. Gain valuable insights
One of the most critical components of customer success software is the analytical capabilities it offers. By tracking and analyzing customer behavior, preferences, and feedback, businesses can gain valuable insights into what drives customer adoption, satisfaction, and retention. These insights can guide strategic decision-making, helping to optimize their offerings and approach to align with customer expectations.
4. Boost revenue growth
When businesses prioritize customer success, they’re more likely to keep their customers for the long term. This not only saves money compared to constantly acquiring new customers, but also encourages loyal customers to refer new business. By using the right customer success software, businesses can foster these valuable relationships.
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Top 18 Customer Success Software in 2023
With hundreds of customer success software options out in the market, it can be challenging to figure out which tools offer what type of features and benefits. Here are the top 17 customer success software options that can help your team build a solid tech stack for your customer-facing teams:
1. Gainsight
G2 rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Custom pricing is available upon request
Gainsight is targeted toward mid-size to enterprise companies and is one of the most highly rated customer success software products on the market today. Their customer success software suite consolidates data from multiple sources into a central view and provides 360-degree layouts that show different views depending on the customer’s attributes or the user’s role. You can also analyze your company’s activity with a customer and view a customer’s entire chronological history.
One of Gainsight’s most desirable features is the ability to create customer health scorecards that can be customized to reflect the data points that are most important to your company. It can also study your customer’s behavior and predict possible outcomes with the help of AI.
2. Custify
G2 rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars
Pricing: starts at $199/month
Custify is a customer success platform designed for B2B SaaS businesses. This software is popular with customer success teams because it offers views of your product usage and adoption and provides a comprehensive picture of your customer’s lifecycle. It will also let you know if a customer is stuck onboarding or about to churn by sending you a message or email.
One of Custify’s most interesting features is the ability to automate tasks. For example, it can identify triggers when customers hit certain milestones, so you reach out to them at the appropriate time. In addition, their relatively low pricing makes them attractive to new bootstrapped companies and startups.
3. ClientSuccess
G2 rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Available upon request
ClientSuccess is a customer success software platform that provides visibility across all customer activities, from onboarding to retention to growth. This software will track your customer through the lifecycle and give you several options for tracking your customer’s overall health. It also includes features that let you share updates with your entire team in real-time.
A key feature of ClientSuccess is their pre-built integrations for many of the most popular CRM, support, and communication platforms, which means your customer success teams can get set up on their platform quickly.
4. Planhat
G2 rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars
Pricing: $1,150/month (+ from $1 to $10 per customer)
Planhat is another comprehensive customer success platform that allows you to unify your customer data, track and visualize customer usage data in real-time, set goals and ideal outcomes, and enhance your customer’s experience with features like playbooks and collaboration. Additionally, you can see where your customers are in your lifecycle and find out which ones are doing well or need assistance.
Their customer portal is a notable feature that lets you create playbooks and share them with your customers to create collaborative workspaces. You can also construct custom metrics that are visible to your customers so they have visibility into their own adoption rates.
5. Whatfix
G2 rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Custom pricing is available upon request
Whatfix is a digital adoption platform that includes several tools to optimize your customer experience with in-app guidance for more effective customer onboarding and self-help capabilities for continuous, on-demand customer support.
Whatfix provides teams with a no-code editor to create in-app walkthroughs and guides that overlay on the screen for specific user segments, at specific moments within the app. For example, new users launching an app may receive a basic tutorial, and returning users get more advanced guides relevant to whichever feature they’re exploring at any given moment. It also provides advanced analytics that can measure your customers’ engagement with your product.
One of Whatfix’s standout features is the ability for customer success teams to create interactive product tours, step-by-step walkthroughs, onboarding task lists, and interactive guidance with no coding required.
6. HubSpot Service Hub
G2 rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Starts at $45/month or a limited free version
Service Hub is HubSpot’s customer service management platform. With this platform, you can build conversational tools, construct help desk automations, and create a knowledge base for your customers. Their support ticketing tool gives customers a way to contact you and offers ticket routing to make sure the right team sees your support requests.
One benefit of Service Hub is that it allows you to collect feedback from your customers using their feedback tool. This tool lets you quickly send customer support, customer satisfaction (CSAT), and Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys.
7. ChurnZero
G2 rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Available upon request
ChurnZero is a real-time SaaS platform designed to reduce churn by helping customer success teams better understand customers. It monitors usage statistics to provide visibility into how your customers are using your product, analyzes your customer’s overall health and probability of renewal, and can automate your customer’s experiences.
One feature that’s particularly helpful for customer success teams is taking customer data and turning it into customizable reporting dashboards. Another helpful feature is an API that can pass data directly from your ChurnZero account into the rest of your tech stack.
8. Catalyst
G2 rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Available upon request
Catalyst is a customer success platform that offers a 360-degree view of your customers and builds customer health profiles tailored to specific customer segments using data from your existing tools. It also provides one-click integration with several other pieces of software, including Salesforce, Segment, Zendesk, and Slack.
If you’re a Salesforce user, you may be very interested in features designed to help you streamline your processes. For example, you can use shortcuts inside Catalyst that automatically update Salesforce fields and create next steps and tasks to ensure timely follow-up. Catalyst can also automatically log meetings to Salesforce.
9. Medallia
G2 rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Available upon request
Medallia, formerly known as Strikedeck, is highly customizable customer success software that includes several advanced tools for reducing churn and improving your customer’s health. Their Customer 360 tool provides a complete view of your customers in real-time. In addition, the algorithm inside their health tool can be customized using key customer insights. They also incorporate tools that can track and measure product usage in real-time.
One of Medallia’s features that stands above others is its advanced segmentation capabilities. For example, their query builder can create detailed segments based on attributes such as profitability, utilization, vertical, and geography. You can then use these segments inside their health scoring, dashboard reporting, and workflow automation tools.
10. Totango
G2 rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Zero for their forever-free version; request a quote for their Enterprise version
Totango is a feature-rich software platform that mainly targets SaaS enterprises. They offer a suite of tools, including their Spark tool, which monitors customer health signals in real-time. Their SuccessPlays feature allows you to set up tasks or actions that automatically trigger when a defined set of rules is matched. Those triggers send an action plan to your customer success team so they can address any situation quickly.
While Totango targets enterprise, its free version is quite extensive, excluding only a few of its many features. This makes Totango an attractive option for growing SaaS companies or teams getting started with customer success.
11. Intercom
G2 rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Pricing: starting at $65/month for very small companies, request pricing for other companies
Intercom is a live chat solution designed for customer success, marketing, and sales teams. Their platform offers three main solutions — Conversational Marketing, which lets you target website visitors and greet them with personalized messages, Conversational Engagement that can onboard and activate new customers, and Conversational Support that provides self-serve, proactive, and human support.
Intercom’s software can be complex to set up, so they offer several resources to learn how to maximize the use of their product. They provide comprehensive setup instructions, a help center, a developer hub, and even an academy where you can learn advanced tips from others who have mastered their tools.
12. Zendesk
G2 rating: 4.3 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Tiered pricing model starting at $19/user/month with other monthly subscriptions available
Zendesk is a customer service software that offers comprehensive solutions to meet various customer support needs. Its services include Support Suite (for multi-channel support), Guide (knowledge base), Chat, Talk (call center software), and more. These tools allow businesses to manage their customer interactions seamlessly and offer personalized services. Its interface is also highly user-friendly, and the capability to integrate with other tools enables streamlined workflows.
Zendesk’s strength lies in its machine learning-powered automation and AI, which ensures efficient and personalized customer interactions. Zendesk’s analytics platform also provides comprehensive insights that can be used to optimize customer service strategies.
13. Salesforce
G2 rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Tiered pricing model starting at $25/user/month with other monthly subscriptions available
Salesforce offers a variety of features to manage customer interactions. Its wide range of offerings includes the Sales Cloud (for sales automation), Service Cloud (for customer service and support), Marketing Cloud (for marketing automation), and more. This suite allows businesses to track customer information, manage marketing campaigns, provide customer service, all from one unified platform.
Salesforce provides highly detailed analytics and customizable dashboards, delivering insights into customer behavior and preferences. This information can be used to create more focused and effective marketing strategies. Salesforce’s pricing structure varies according to the suite of services chosen, which ensures scalability for businesses of all sizes.
14. Freshworks
G2 rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Available upon request
Freshworks is a cloud-based customer support software that offers multi-channel support including email, phone, and social media. This helps businesses automate mundane tasks and streamline their support processes. Freshworks’ suite also includes Freshsales, a robust CRM solution, and Freshchat, a live chat software.
Freshworks’ software is known for its intuitive user interface and easy setup process, which greatly enhances the user experience.
15. Help Scout
G2 rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Tiered pricing model starting at $20/user/month with other monthly subscriptions available
Help Scout is a help desk software solution that aims to deliver excellent customer service experiences. Its multi-channel communication platform enables efficient team collaboration to ensure that customer requests are addressed quickly and effectively. Help Scout also has robust reporting features that offer valuable insights into customer satisfaction and agent performance.
Help Scout’s offers shared inboxes that help teams collaborate and respond to customer queries, Docs, a knowledge base creation tool, and Beacon, a tool for live chat and customer messaging.
16. Zoho
G2 rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Tiered pricing model starting with a free version, with other monthly subscriptions available
Zoho provides a robust suite of business software applications including Zoho CRM, which helps businesses manage customer relationships more effectively. The CRM solution provides features like lead and contact management, deal management, workflow automation, and advanced analytics. This helps businesses streamline their processes, increase productivity, and make data-driven decisions.
Zoho’s other offerings include project management, helpdesk, and email hosting services. Zoho’s strength lies in its ability to provide a comprehensive suite of integrated business applications, making it a one-stop solution for many businesses.
17. Vitally
G2 rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Available upon request
Vitally is a powerful tool designed to help SaaS businesses ensure their customers’ success. Its platform comes with a wide range of features, including tracking customer health, understanding product engagement, and managing onboarding processes. With Vitally, businesses can gain a complete view of their customer’s journey, allowing for proactive customer success strategies.
Vitally provides businesses with powerful analytics to track important metrics such as KPIs, churn prediction, and customer segmentation. This data is crucial for making strategic decisions that can improve customer retention and drive growth.
9 Tips for Choosing the Best Customer Success Software for Your Team
Once your team decides it’s time to implement customer success software, you need to lay some groundwork before rushing into selecting a platform.
1. Check on software integrations
Make a list of your tech stack and have it handy when doing your research. If the software solution you purchase doesn’t fully integrate into your existing tech, you won’t realize any benefits. Specifically, look into integrations with your CRM, live chat, marketing automation, and customer onboarding software tools.
2. Collect advice from team members
It’s also helpful to pull in the people who will be implementing your integrations to make sure you don’t miss any potential conflicts or shortcomings.
3. Determine must-have features
Before you start demoing platforms, take the time to figure out which features are must-haves and what goals you expect to achieve by implementing software.
4. Conduct scenario workshops
An effective way to align your needs with the right software is to build out several scenarios that walk through the process of accomplishing that goal inside a particular platform. For example, if you want to get an alert when a customer becomes a churn risk, determine what data you need to signal that risk, how various software would find the risk and trigger the alert, and how and when your team will receive the message depending on which you select.
5. Thoroughly evaluate potential vendors
When selecting a software vendor, it’s important to assess their reputation and customer support reliability. It’s also crucial to check if they regularly update and improve their software while taking their customers’ feedback into consideration. Your vendor should be a partner that’s committed to helping you succeed.
6. Consider pricing and scalability
When selecting a customer success software, it’s important to consider its pricing structure and value for money. It should be affordable and offer good value while also being scalable to accommodate the growth of your business. This means it should be able to handle an increased workload without requiring a complete system overhaul.
7. Assess ease of use
Choosing user-friendly software is critical for your team’s daily productivity. Complex navigation and difficulty in using the software can lead to frustration and decreased productivity, so look for software with intuitive interfaces, clear navigation, and an easy learning curve.
8. Take advantage of trial periods or demos
To make an informed decision about your next customer success software choice, try out the trial periods or demos offered by most providers. This way, you can test the software’s features, functionality, and user-friendliness in a real-world setting. Use this opportunity to evaluate whether the software is suitable for your business needs and easy for your team to use.
9. Consider security and compliance
Depending on your industry, there may be certain security standards or regulations you need to comply with. Check that the software you’re considering adheres to these standards to protect your customers’ data.
Drive ROI from your software stack with Whatfix
Choosing the right customer success software is a decision that impacts every aspect of your business, from day-to-day operations to long-term growth. As you navigate the complexities of this decision, remember that the goal is to enhance customer relationships, streamline processes, and ultimately drive your business forward.
Whatfix emerges as a powerful contender in this landscape, offering a comprehensive suite of features and an intuitive interface that empowers your team to deliver exceptional customer experiences. Tailored to meet the needs of businesses of all sizes, Whatfix brings scalability and versatility to your customer success operations. With Whatfix, create interactive, in-app guidance and notifications to provide your customer success team with on-demand support to get the most out of their customer success software.
Elevate your customer success strategy with Whatfix and witness a transformation that goes beyond software today.
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What Is Whatfix?
Whatfix is a digital adoption platform that provides organizations with a no-code editor to create in-app guidance on any application that looks 100% native. With Whatfix, create interactive walkthroughs, product tours, task lists, smart tips, field validation, self-help wikis, hotspots, and more. Understand how users are engaging with your applications with advanced product analytics.
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