Hi CS Community! We are in search of a Customer Sucess management software (Gainsight, ChurnZero, C

Right now SalesForce and Intercom are not doing enough to decipher the customers in need! We need health scoring, and to identify clients in risk of churn. Does anyone have direct experience with any Customer Success Management tools and can share their experience? I would love to pick your brain on what worked and what didn't before making the investment! Many thanks!

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David Nedohin

Hi Dana, I have a slightly different experience, in that we are currently using one of the more popular tools you mentioned and about to switch back to a combination of Salesforce + Monday.com. I think it depends a lot on the type of customers you have, and what you are hoping to "see" that you cannot now. We have High Touch customers, that often have many opportunities for each customer. I believe that if we were a less High Touch, that the automations and integrations to ensure we have healthy customers would have been a lot more useful. We did get some value, but the cost of implementation, maintaining, and have another tool outside of our Sales and Service environment was not justified. Simplifying for us makes more sense at this point even though we are growing quickly.

Christopher Simpson

In the process of implementing Client Success now. Will share thoughts and feedback when we are farther in. So far, I really like it. We are a small company with a very high touch service model, so the relationship focus of Client Success versus emphasis on automation was attractive to me.

Happy to share additional thoughts.

Chris

Dana Gibilaro

Hi Bora,

Thanks so much for reaching out. We had found that ChurnZero did not actually have the tools we needed to drill down in the very specific way we needed to but we overall loved the tool otherwise. Thanks for helping!

Dana

Bora Lee

Hi Dana,

Full disclosure: I am on the ChurnZero team.

I know this post was from a while back, but I did want to share that have several methods of easily accessing Contact level usage. We have a Contact section that shows specific Contact Level usage and an Account level aggregated usage chart and detailed breakdown. We are also able to manage one to many automated workflows based on their individual behaviors, usage, and attributes.

It sounds like there are a lot of great options to fit your needs! Happy to connect if you are curious about anything.

Best,

Bora

[Deleted User]

Chris is great! And I echo Jarren's comments about Planhat. I rolled it out in early 2019 at a Series B startup and later did a webinar about how we accelerated time to value. Happy to share more if you have any questions.

Dana Gibilaro

Hi Chris,

We still have not yet implemented anything (some internal struggles we are working through) but have found PlanHat I think to be the best fit for us. ChurnZero was also at the top of our list but lacked one major point for us, which was an easy way to see usage not only per account by per each individual member in an account! Every software is different, so that may not matter as much to you!

Let me know if you have any specific questions about any of the platforms, happy to chat in more detail!

Dana Gibilaro

Thanks @Markus Siebeneick great article!

MarkusS

Hi @Dana Gibilaro - I published an article not long ago where I covered many topics that might be of interest as you go through the decision making process - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/tooling-customer-success-diving-many-options-markus-siebeneick/?trackingId=RMLMjNNWTFOva4kj2iiMrw==

Also, if you missed the #CSDemoDay https://summit.csdemoday.com/ you might still be able to via the recordings from the majority of the tools out there.

@Devon Lee Tagging you as you were also were exploring options.

I also have implemented Catalyst in the past and happy to discuss if you want.

Christopher Simpson

@Dana Gibilaro I am in a similar boat in terms of trying to find a solution that will fit our unique needs. Met with Churnzero this morning and was impressed.

Curious if you selected a partner or are still evaluating?

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Original Message:
Sent: 06-23-2020 14:03
From: Dana Gibilaro
Subject: Hi CS Community! We are in search of a Customer Sucess management software (Gainsight, ChurnZero, CustomerSuccessBox, etc.) to add to our company!

Scott Roth

@Dana Gibilaro Full disclosure I work for Medallia (MDLA), Strikedeck is a Medallia owned software product and we use our own technology. I have been on Strikedeck since July 2019, I am impressed with its ability to connect to other systems. I currently have Strikedeck connected to Salesforce for opportunities and support tickets, Netsuite for invoice information, data feed from our PSA solution and I have it wired into our platform monitoring tool to track customer usage. Strikedeck is flexible as it allows my CSMs to denote customer health and it has an automated health score it will calculate (you just tell it the inputs and the %s weight you want it to assign to each and you are set).

We create health plans for each customer and track via tasks in Strikedeck how they are getting done. As the leader I am able to see my global renewal book broken down by customer health per quarter, number of opps and dollar values.

Happy to talk more about Strikedeck if you like.

Good luck and please let us know where you land.

Kevin Mitchell Leonor

Hi @Dana Gibilaro I was wondering if you would be willing to have a discussion about this because I am also trying to learn more about what people are looking for in a CS Platform. I sent a connection on Linkedin and would hope to contact you soon.

Ben Winn

Thanks @Devon Lee! @Dana Gibilaro I manage Community at Catalyst and if you're interested in speaking with our team I'm happy to facilitate

Jeffrey Nadeau

Currently I also use both Salesforce and Intercom. -- To supplement those tools, I am working with my BI team and they use SiSense to help build the reports I need that take into consideration the health score, which for us is more product focused. So if you have anyone on a BI team and Data team that can help you, that could also enable you to get what you need.

However, I know longer term, I will need a CRM better built for CS outside of using Salesforce which is the path you're on now.

Jarren Pinchuck

@Dana Gibilaro reach out to Chris at Planhat and mention you spoke with me. Shout if you have any questions.

Dana Gibilaro

I am finding the same thing, @Jarren Pinchuck! We are growing rapidly, but something like Gainsight is beyond what we need at the moment. I would like to start with a platform meeting our current needs and grow with it! Thank you for the feedback - I will meet with Planhat and circle back around with questions. I really appreciate it!

Devon Lee

@Jarren Pinchuck our organization looked at Planhat before I joined the team. Would love to hear about your experience with them.

Jarren Pinchuck

Hey @Dana Gibilaro I spent several months reviewing and interviewing a bunch of CSM platforms for our business and I ended up going with a platform called Planhat. Terrible name but their product is excellent and the rate of advancement was impressive; they were constantly evolving and improving. Excellent integrations and superb customer service.

Something worth thinking about is what stage your company and the CSM department is at. Some of the bigger platforms like Gainsight are extremely complex and a better fit for larger clients. We (as a series A-B start up) wanted a smaller platform to partner with and get more personalised attention and roll out.

Happy to chat further if you'd like to know more.

Kyle Bennett

Always great to hear when the alignment isn't quite right and not forced by either side! Good luck in your search!

Dana Gibilaro

Hey @Rob Stevens - great point! One of our biggest challenges is the inability to pull everything together (even into an excel) at this point to show exactly what we need. I am hoping one of the tools can help. We are being very selective about who we go with since it will be lots of work to get one working to our exact needs! Great to know you are working with Gainsight. Which one of their products do you use out of curiosity?

Dana Gibilaro

Thanks @Kyle Bennett . They were one of the first tools I reached out to! On our first call the sales professionals suggested that Client Success wasn't the right tool for us... so we went on looking at others!

Rob Stevens

Everything everyone has suggested here is great. But make sure you know why you think you need a tool. What is the challenge you're looking to solve? I started with data dumps from our platform pulled into Excel, and built a Customer Health model on that long before we rolled out Gainsight. That helped us figure out what we really needed out of a tool.

Personally, I think integration across other systems of record is vitally important. Having Gainsight, Salesforce, and Zendesk (for Support) all integrated gave us a 360 view of the customer, from every department. Takes quite a bit of work to get there, but it's worth it.

Kyle Bennett

Hey @Dana Gibilaro! Another strong CS platform to checkout is clientsuccess.com - the crew over there under @Dave Blake's leadership has done a great job of building a CS platform from the perspective of Customer Success first (not sales, not marketing...). Happy to help answer any questions or introduce you to their amazing Director of Sales, TJ Ruff.

Shari Srebnick

Sounds good!

Dana Gibilaro

Thanks, Bettina! We have a call with Gainsight next week. I will likely have some questions for you!

Dana Gibilaro

That's good to know. I was familiar with Natero but unaware they rebranded. I'd love if you could connect me with someone! My email is dana@simpleshow.com or you can message me here with a contact! Thanks so much.

Dana Gibilaro

Hi Shari, I'd love to connect about Strikedeck! I will look into it and circle back with questions. I really appreciate it!

Dana Gibilaro

Thanks Devon. We also have somewhat of a 'home grown' tool that is not cutting it anymore! I will share any great tips I get.

Dana Gibilaro

Awesome! Thanks Brian, I will definitely reach out!

Sidd

Hey @Dana Gibilaro - not advertising but my company Freshworks has acquired CS software Natero (now called Freshsuccess) , would be happy to be connect you with the team if you want to have a look.

bettina_fowler

Hi Dana - we use Gainsight. Happy to discuss if you'd like