Split Cs software by tiers

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Rachel Provan
Rachel Provan Member Posts: 17 Thought Leader
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edited June 2021 in Metrics & Analytics

Hi All!  

I have just taken over customer success for a new company. They just implemented Gainsight last year and it is just getting off the ground. The renewal is quite an uptick in price and my boss wants to split cs software between Gainsight for our enterprise clients and Custify for our SMB. We have a LOT more SMB, which I understand makes it expensive, but the idea of two separate tools sounds like a nightmare to me. Has anyone had experience doing it this way?  I definitely don't want them to get rid of Gainsight altogether…

Thoughts?

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  • Brian Hartley
    Brian Hartley Member Posts: 185 Expert
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    edited June 2021
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    Hi, Rachel - admittedly I don't have the experience of running two CS tools simultaneously but agree with your sentiment 100%.  I can't imagine having to manage both.  Is it possible to build a business case against both?  Or is your boss set in stone?

    My arguments against:
    • More resource time to manage and understand two separate stacks
    • Data integrity issues
    • Disjointed experience across the customer base in terms of journeys
    I know there are more reasons, just wanted to share a few that come to mind
  • Nathan Petersen
    Nathan Petersen Member Posts: 11 Contributor
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    edited June 2021
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    Rachel,

    This sounds like buyer's remorse on the part of your boss. is Gainsight not bringing value to your company? or do you have very different customer journeys between SMB and Enterprise? I mean I know my CS team will be splitting and specializing into SMB CS Reps and Enterprise CSMs.

    I could in theory see how we might look to having two different tools for the different customer journeys. but the reporting alone would be a huge headache. unless there are managers who live and breathe in only one space.
  • Kevin Mitchell Leonor
    Kevin Mitchell Leonor Member Posts: 248 Expert
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    edited June 2021
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    I would present to leadership that this will require multiple dashboards and there will be some strong pain points and feature gaps between Enterprise and SMB. My suggestion is to work with the CSM and SE to show the value of using GS or Custify for the other side of the business and have them present to leadership.
  • Mike Green
    Mike Green Member Posts: 3 Navigator
    edited June 2021
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    Is the renewal increase correlate to the increase in customers managed within GS?

    IMO it is an absolute show stopper to decide to implement two systems (understanding you can have this split-brain scenario due to an acquisition, etc) unless the management, visibility, targets and integrated systems are all different as well.

    Some initial scary thoughts with 2 systems:
    - integration volume, ie, SFDC now feeds/gets changes from two systems
    - logins for your SSO platform, which can cost more $
    - company-wide dashboards - now you can't use organic GS/Custify stuff but rather have to push it out and aggregate it, as Kevin says

    To Nathan's point - I'd do a bake-off/reevaluation of GS vs Custify and see if its meeting the goals of the purchase and the new contract cost.

  • Rachel Provan
    Rachel Provan Member Posts: 17 Thought Leader
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    edited June 2021
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    They never really implemented Gainsight fully so it's not really possible to tell. Thankfully it looks like they are giving me one more year of Gainsight to see what we can do with it.  We will use intercom for some of our free customer automations for now and I can prove the roi over time. Phew!

    Thanks to all who answered!

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