Customer success management is essential when it comes to growing businesses. And the most effective way to handle these processes is by introducing a robust system that your teams can use.
But how to find the right customer success software for your company?
That’s what we’re here to discuss. So, here’s a comparison table presenting the tools we’ll review in this article:
| Name | Rating | Free plan | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tidio | 4.7/5 ⭐️ | ✅ | AI Chatbot |
| Gainsight | 4.5/5 ⭐️ | ✅ | Customer health scores |
| Churnzero | 4.7/5 ⭐️ | Free trial 14-days | Playbooks |
| Zendesk | 4.7/5 ⭐️ | Free trial available | Chatbot automation |
| Planhat | 4.6/5 ⭐️ | ❌ | Workflow capability |
| Vitally | 4.7/5 ⭐️ | ❌ | Customer 360 view |
| Salesforce | 4.5/5 ⭐️ | ❌ | Reporting & analytics |
| ClientSuccess | 4.4/5 ⭐️ | ❌ | Customer segmentation |
| Custify | 4.7/5 ⭐️ | ❌ | Customer data management |
| Totango | 4.3/5 ⭐️ | ❌ | Task management |
Now, let’s dive right in—
The best customer success software
From hundreds of choices available online, we collected the 10 top platforms you should have a look at. So, here are the detailed reviews:
1. Tidio
Rating: 4.7/5 ⭐️ (1,495+ reviews)
Tidio is an AI-powered customer success software great for fast-growing businesses with agile client support teams. It packs powerful features that fully automate and enhance client processes.
The solution offers AI chatbots that use natural language processing (NLP) capabilities to create human-like interactions that enhance customer engagement. It also offers a live chat feature, helpdesk tools, and many integrations so you can manage all of your client communication from one place.
Key Features:
- AI and NLP chatbots
- Live view of visitors
- Advanced helpdesk workflows
- Canned responses
- Variety of integrations
- 7-day free trial available
- Free version available
- Starter ($29/mo)
- Growth (starts at $59/mo)
- Plus (starts at $749/mo)
- Premium (starts at $2999/mo)
Improve your customer success strategy with the best software
Read more: Discover more about the help desk management. Also, learn how to use the pre-designed Tidio chat flow templates and how they can help your business streamline customer success management.
2. Gainsight
Rating: 4.5/5 ⭐️ (1,430+ reviews)
Gainsight is a powerful customer success management software that delivers an all-rounded solution for managing client relationships. It provides robust data analytics and insights consolidated from multiple sources.
This helps businesses uncover new trends and patterns that are key when developing strategies that result in better outcomes and experiences for customers. When scaling your business, this CRM ensures your efforts are optimized efficiently.
Pros:
- Easy interface to navigate
- Centralized data aggregation
- Clear centralized dashboard display
Cons:
- Slow onboarding process
- Limits on email signatures and attachments when using Playbooks
- Essentials → contact sales team
- Enterprise → contact sales team
Read more: Check out the best free CRM systems on the market.
3. ChurnZero
Rating: 4.7/5 ⭐️ (1,260+ reviews)
ChurnZero is among the highest-ranked customer success platforms. This SaaS solution has innovated around existing challenges faced by B2B subscription-based businesses and created a user-friendly, customizable CSM tool.
With a single click, you can generate AI-powered summaries for client accounts based on usage, customer communication, and engagement. ChurnZero is relied upon by top brands to boost user retention, increase renewals, enhance team productivity, and reduce customer onboarding times.
Pros:
- Integration with over 60 platforms
- Simple onboarding process
- Highly responsive support team
Cons:
- UX requires a learning curve
- Long set-up time
- Prices available on request
Read more: Check out the detailed reviews of the best SaaS helpdesk software. Also, be sure to examine the reviews of the top customer engagement software while you’re at it.
4. Zendesk
Rating: 4.7/5 ⭐️ (1,495+ reviews)
Zendesk’s help desk solution allows businesses to streamline customer support, boost satisfaction, and enhance response times. This is an all-in-one customer success automation with multiple integrations including social media, email, web widgets, and messaging platforms.
With Zendesk Messaging live chat feature facilitates conversations with visitors directly on the website’s front for increased real-time sales, enhanced engagement, and real-time support.
Pros:
- Variety of integrations
- Multilingual functionality
- Proactive engagement features
Cons:
- The complexity of the system requires a learning curve period
- Occasional performance issues during peak usage
- Free 6-month trial
- Basic Plan ($19/mo/agent)
- Suite Team ($69/mo/agent)
- Suite Growth ($115/mo/agent)
- Suite Professional ($149/mo/agent)
- Suite Enterprise → contact sales team
- Suite Enterprise Plus → contact sales team
Read more: Explore how to integrate Tidio with Zendesk and check out our review of top Zendesk alternatives for your business.
5. Planhat
Rating: 4.6/5 ⭐️ (590+ reviews)
Planhat is a next-generation customer success system allowing users to structure, manage, and directly interact with user data. Among the top features is the automation of the entire customer success process.
The platform also offers tools such as consumer playbooks. Through its data collection and analysis, Planhat equips your team with actionable insights that help identify revenue-generating opportunities such as upselling.
Pros:
- Reporting tools to track all touchpoints of the customer journey
- A responsive customer support team
- Simple-to-use bot APIs to integrate with other systems
Cons:
- The dashboards could be more user-friendly
- Occasionally, the system experiences slower loading times
- Start-up → contact sales team
- Professional → contact sales team
- Enterprise → contact sales team
Read more: Have a look at the best AI customer support software options.
6. Vitally
Rating: 4.7/5 ⭐️ (1,495+ reviews)
This B2B customer success platform consolidates real-time customer data from different workspaces. A key feature is a dashboard that aggregates data into summarized profiles showing product usage, conversations, subscription details, and NPS scores.
This platform also helps you to create custom health scores and automate your workflows to receive alerts on churn risks, account engagement, as well as in-app survey completions.
Pros:
- Well-designed product interface
- Automation of manual tasks
- Responsive support team
Cons:
- Setting up the playbook takes time
- Only one “owner” per account
- Tech-Touch → contact sales team
- Hybrid Touch → contact sales team
- High Touch → contact sales team
Read more: Discover the best AI help desk software available online.
7. Salesforce
Ratings: 4.5/5 ⭐ (1,930+ reviews)
Salesforce is one of the top customer success platforms that automate the entire sales cycle of your business. It’s best suited for large and scaling brands with sizable sales teams looking for customizable as well as all-rounded software.
On top of that, Salesforce offers several functionalities and over 1,000 integrations. Users can expect a simple-to-use customer service solution that empowers agents and sales teams with innovative features.
Pros:
- Robust reporting functions
- Highly customizable system
- Frequent platform updates
Cons:
- The setup process is quite complicated
- Maintenance is time-consuming
- Free 14-day trial
- Essentials ($25/month/user)
- Professional ($75/month/user)
- Enterprise ($150/month/user)
- Unlimited ($300/month/user)
Read more: See how to use live chat for sales teams to improve customer success and boost your revenue.
8. ClientSuccess
Rating: 4.4/5 ⭐️ (415+ reviews)
ClientSuccess is a customer success software tool for companies and organizations investing in client retention and growth. It consolidates overall client management by integrating the help desk ticketing system, spreadsheets, and all customer relationship management tools into one dashboard. In addition, it streamlines customer success workflows and allows you to manage your relationships more proactively.
Pros:
- Simple and easy-to-use interface
- Email automation available
- Playbooks for scaling the business
Cons:
- Difficult to generate accurate health score
- Unable to track usage of multiple products
- Startup package → contact sales team
- Growth package → contact sales team
- Enterprise package → contact sales team
Read more: Have a look at the best customer database software.
9. Custify
Rating: 4.7/5 ⭐️ (340+ reviews)
This is one of the CSM tools that businesses rely on to reduce churn, keep their existing customers, and generate more revenue. It provides real-time customer health scores that help your team identify risky accounts and act on them right away. As a CRM system, it packs many features from automated workflows, task management, and custom alerts that streamline the customer support processes.
Pros:
- Automate tasks via playbooks
- Streamline onboarding processes
- 360-degree view of progress
Cons:
- The learning process is fairly complicated
- Documentation for API checkpoints is lacking
- Contact sales team for pricing
Read more: See how to leverage customer service automation to your advantage.
10. Totango
Ratings: 4.3/5 ⭐️ (900+ reviews)
This customer success management tool fully automates the sales support process for businesses. The system sends real-time email notifications to customer success managers with important developments such as new onboarding requests or accounts becoming at risk.
This helps in account management and customer segmentation. Moreover, the dashboard is user-friendly and fully customizable, giving many overviews with details on the entire customer journey.
Pros:
- User-friendly interface and dashboards
- Visibility of client interactions with the platform
- Flexible and customizable tools
Cons:
- Limitations when creating custom email lists and segments
- Downtime and performance degradation are very disruptive
- Starter→ contact sales team
- Enterprise → contact sales team
- Premier→ contact sales team
Read more: Learn all you need to know about customer success, what it does, and why it’s important for your business.
We have just covered some of the top customer success tools relied upon by support teams globally.
Now—
Let’s go into detail on what features to look out for when choosing a tool for your business.
5 key features of client success software
In the past, there were hardly any automated systems to improve conversation rates or boost customer loyalty. Nowadays, customer success solutions maximize the value of all client interactions and CRM tools optimize the customer journey.
Here are the top features when picking a client success software:
- Customer data management—assists users in efficiently managing and arranging data
- Account management—streamlines the tracking and analysis of customer interactions to gain a full understanding of the customer experience
- Success metrics and customer insights—offers valuable perspectives on customer experience and highlights opportunities for enhancement
- Opportunity management— identifies and nurtures upselling or cross-selling opportunities driving revenue growth while contributing to customer satisfaction
- Customer self-service options—includes knowledge base, chatbots, and more which help customers to find answers in real-time before interacting with an actual agent
Read more: Explore the top customer experience management tools for your business.
Now that we are conversant with the top features of customer success software, we can examine the main benefits.
Benefits of CSM software
Customer success software has many benefits designed to help customer success teams manage their daily activities.
Here are the most important ones:
1. Prevents customer churn
If a customer shows a significant decrease in product usage over a certain period, the CSM software will alert your team members. The agents can then directly engage the client, addressing any issues that might lead to them discontinuing the product adoption. The same goes for people that put items in the cart but are at risk of leaving your site before checking out. This is important, as on average, over 70% of shoppers abandon their shopping carts.
2. Improves customer satisfaction
Customer success is more about the outcome of the sale than the actual sale. Understanding your customers’ needs and challenges is important when converting visitors to satisfied clients. The right software helps your team automate and standardize the onboarding process, which is key to sealing the deal. In fact, about 23% of consumers blame poor onboarding as the leading cause of churn.
4. Adds referral revenue
Happy customers spread the word about your business to others. And a recommendation from a friend is always more valuable to potential shoppers than a review from a stranger online. In fact, a Nielsen survey found that 84% of people consider organic marketing as the most trustworthy and convincing way of influencing their purchase decisions.
5. Increases employee productivity
CSM software supports agents with features like a summarized dashboard, customized ticket workflows, and task automation. These features allow agents to focus on their level and quality of customer support. And a well-crafted customer success program can deliver a 91% return on investment for your business.
Best customer success platforms: key takeaway
When customers feel genuinely valued by a business for a product or service they purchased, they stick around for the long run. Consequently, the right customer success software helps you generate recurring revenue without compromising on customer acquisition and retention.
And the top customer success software include:
- Tidio
- Gainsight
- ChurnZero
- Zendesk
- Planhat
- Vitality
- Salesforce
- ClientSuccess
- Custify
- Totango
So, why not try one of the best players on the market and start scaling your business today?
Improve your customer success strategy with the best software
Frequently Asked Questions
Companies use customer success software to track, manage, and optimize their customers’ experiences, generating more valuable sales outcomes. This platform helps businesses increase loyalty while reducing customer churn.
Customer success software integrates with your business’s CRM system, website, and communication channels. It tracks product user activity and data, utilizing intelligent algorithms to identify trends, generate reports, and make predictions.
With customer success software, your support team monitors customer feedback and behavior in a way that identifies their needs and pain points. This knowledge makes customer follow-ups more targeted and results in better client satisfaction.
The top CRM for customer success includes Salesforce, and Zendesk.
The best customer success tools are Tidio, Gainsight, and ChurnZero.
To choose the best customer success platform for your business you should consider your budget, look for a system that satisfies your needs, and run a demo. These practices will ensure you pick the right software for your brand.
