What is a Customer Success Platform?

A platform can help you in three main areas:

1. Reporting to leadership on customer health and forecasting renewals – it can be a powerful tool for understanding your churn rich.  
2. Providing a “cockpit” for the CSMs—it’s the single application where CSMs can log their activities, track their accounts, and consider the next steps. 
3. It serves as the source of truth for customers – it’s the central source of truth for understanding an account’s current state and history. 

Prominent CSP vendors include:

• Gainsight 
• Totango/Catalyst 
• Planhat 
• Vitally
• ChurnZero 
• ClientSuccess
• Hubspot (emerging player)
• Salesforce (emerging player)
• Microsoft (emerging player)
• Many other platforms emerging across the customer journey

Why is it essential for your CS function to optimize its selection and implementation of tooling?

Prevent wasted resources and investment in your CSP – selecting the wrong CS platform or implementing it poorly can lead to significant wasted money and resources. Without proper planning and execution, companies may invest in tools that don’t meet their needs or fail to deliver expected value. This wastes the initial investment and can lead to additional costs for replacements or fixes.

Once you have a CSP, you must ensure adoption and utilization. A well-chosen and properly implemented CS platform is more likely to be adopted and used effectively by your team. Adoption rates suffer when tools are challenging to use or don’t align with existing workflows. This can result in fragmented data, inconsistent processes, and a failure to realize the full potential of your CS technology investment.

A well-implemented CSP enables accurate data and insights – optimizing your CS tooling helps ensure you’re tracking the right data and metrics. Without proper implementation, you risk focusing on the wrong indicators or working with incomplete or inaccurate information. This can lead to misguided decisions and strategies that don’t improve customer outcomes or business performance.

It creates a foundation for future growth – a well-implemented CS platform creates a strong foundation for future scaling and improvement of your CS function. It allows for easier integration of new tools and processes as your needs evolve. Optimizing your CS tooling selection ensures that the technology you implement aligns with your broader CS and business objectives. This alignment is crucial for driving meaningful improvements in customer retention, expansion, and overall success.

When should you purchase a CSP?

A low-level and inexpensive CSP can be procured right away – all vendors have a low-cost lite version that companies can start with. It helps the CS team get organized no matter the size of the company, team, or responsibilities. Most CS teams use Excel and their CRM to manage accounts–the transition to a CSP should happen quickly.

A standard guideline is to consider a full CSP when you reach $10 million in ARR – at this point, the potential ROI from improved retention and expansion often justifies the investment. If the CSP costs between $25,000-$50,000 a year, even if it saves one customer, you’ve paid for the product. Some companies implement a CSP with as few as five CSMs—especially if they have a low-touch model with high-value enterprise customers.

If you manage a large number of customers per CSM (e.g., 50-100+), a CSP becomes increasingly valuable – it helps prioritize activities and prevents CSMs from becoming overwhelmed. That’s a lot of pressure and emails that a CSM must answer. Implementing a CSP earlier can benefit companies with low-touch or product-led growth models.

What are the most important selection factors for a customer success platform?

Selection Factor	Considerations
Features & Functionality	• Assess the features & functionalities offered by each platform Look for capabilities such: • Customer health scoring • Proactive engagement tools • Customer journey mapping • Analytics & reporting • Integration options • Automation capabilities • Forecasting churn & renewals  • Ensuring key moments in the customer journey are acted on
Scalability & Flexibility	• Evaluate whether the platform can scale with your company’s growth • Determine if the platform can accommodate future changes in business requirements & processes
Integration Capabilities	• Assess the platform’s ability to integrate with existing systems such as CRM (e.g., Salesforce), marketing automation (e.g., HubSpot), & support ticketing systems (e.g., Zendesk) • Integration capabilities are crucial for data synchronization & workflow automation
Customization & Configuration	• Determine the level of customization & configuration options available  • The platform should allow for tailoring workflows, dashboards, & reports to meet specific business needs
Support & Training	• Evaluate the quality of customer support & training offered by the platform provider • Consider factors such as availability of documentation, online resources, training programs, & customer support responsiveness
Vendor Reputation & Stability	• Evaluate the reputation & track record of the platform vendor • Consider factors such as company stability, financial health, & customer satisfaction levels

What are essential questions to ask of vendors during the evaluation process?

Ask for a demo – ensure that the vendor has:

Data quality and integration capabilities – ask vendors about their approach to ensuring data cleanliness and integration. Inquire about their experience integrating with your existing tech stack, including CRM, support desk, and other key systems. For example, you might ask: 

• Question to ask → “How confident are you in your ability to maintain clean data within your platform? What processes do you have in place to ensure data quality?” 

Customization and flexibility – understand how the platform can be tailored to your specific use cases and workflows. Ask about the level of customization available for fields, reports, and dashboards. 

• Question to ask → “How flexible is your platform in terms of customizing fields, workflows, and reports to match our specific CS processes?”

Implementation and onboarding support – get details on the vendor’s implementation process and the level of support they provide. Ask about timelines, resource requirements, and any potential challenges. 

• Question to ask →  “Can you walk us through your typical implementation process? What level of support do you provide during and after implementation?”

Hands-on experience opportunities – request opportunities to test and explore the platform before deciding. 

• Question to ask → “Can we get access to a demo environment where we can play around with the platform? Do you offer a trial period or sandbox environment for testing?” 

AI and automation capabilities—As CSPs increasingly incorporate AI and automation features, it’s essential to understand what’s available and how it can benefit your team. Ask about AI-powered features like automated email follow-ups, predictive analytics, or intelligent task prioritization.

Long-term partnership and product roadmap: Inquire about the vendor’s vision for the future of their platform and how they support long-term customer success. Ask about their product roadmap, frequency of updates, and how they incorporate customer feedback into their development process.

How can companies improve their implementation process?

Ahead of implementation:

• Understand your use case. You need to know how the CSP will support your strategy for your CS function and your broader function. 
• Who will be in charge of it? Assign responsibilities using a RACI matrix to eliminate confusion and ensure clear communication. Someone will have to administer it after implementation, as employees will change and need to be trained on the system. CS Ops, Sales Ops, or RevOps often own the CSM. 
• Make sure you have clean data going into it – if you have inaccurate data going into the CSP, then your insights from it will be incorrect. You should add the day-to-day contacts, who purchased the product, the contract, the address, what they bought,  the renewal date, etc. 

Implementations should take 4-8 weeks – organizing your people and data to implement your customer success platform takes time.

Try for one or two integrations during implementation – typically, your CRM (or wherever you keep sales data) and your Support desk tool should be integrated. Many functionalities you previously wanted to integrate are now available as add-ons within the CS platforms (e.g., an LMS, communities, journey orchestration, etc.)

Optimization

How do you get intelligent reporting out of your customer success platform?

Make sure you set your customer journey stages and understand key moments – these will help you map your activities, assign resources to accounts, and report on results at each stage. Typical customer journey stages include:

• Handoff
• Onboarding 
• Adoption 
• Renewal 
• Expansion 
• Advocates

Ensure your integrations work and that your fields and reports are appropriately named – you want to ensure that your integration data is clean and that your names and terms are unified.

Example CSP Reporting Dashboard 1: Usage and Satisfaction Overview

Example CSP Reporting Dashboard 2: CSM capacity and performance

Example CSP Reporting Dashboard 3: Customer accounts by churn risk

What kind of integrations should you create with your customer success?

Start with integrations to two key platforms:

• CRM—This is typically the first and most critical integration. Your CRM (e.g., Salesforce) contains vital customer data that forms the foundation of your CS operations.
• Support desk – integrating your support ticketing system (e.g., Zendesk) allows you to incorporate customer support interactions into your overall customer health assessment.

Advanced integrations to consider later include:

• Product analytics tools – platforms like Pendo or Mixpanel provide detailed usage data that can inform your customer health scores and engagement strategies. Savaki mentions, 
• Revenue intelligence platforms, such as tools like Clari, can provide deeper insights into your customers’ financial relationships with your company. 
• Learning Management Systems (LMS)—If you offer customer training or certification programs, integrating your LMS can help you track customer education as part of their overall health and engagement.
• Communication tools – integrating email, chat, or video conferencing platforms can provide a more complete picture of customer interactions.
• Business intelligence tools – for more advanced analytics and reporting capabilities.

What kind of AI capabilities should you leverage from your customer success platform?

Automated communication and follow-ups – AI-powered CSPs can generate and send personalized follow-up emails after customer interactions. They will write follow-ups to an email after a meeting.

Predictive analytics and forecasting – AI algorithms analyze historical data and current trends to predict future outcomes. This includes forecasting churn risk, identifying expansion opportunities, and predicting renewal likelihood. These insights allow CSMs to prioritize their efforts and take proactive measures. AI-powered CSPs can pull relevant information from various sources to create comprehensive customer profiles and executive briefings.

There will be rapid advancement, and AI’s importance will only increase – you should be asking what kind of AI capabilities you can access now and in the future. The kind of things that used to take a CSM an hour minimum to gather minimum they can now handle in minutes.

How should you think about adding point solutions to your Customer Success Platform?

Consider it use-case by use-case – you may find that another tool has, for example, better community functionality than your CS platform. If that’s the case, evaluate your two options and consider integration possibilities, how you’d operationalize using the two systems, and your budget.

It’s important to have integrated data and workflows. If you have disparate systems that can’t speak to each other, that’s the worst thing you can do. You’re just adding more systems and stress to the team, and then trying to aggregate the data is a nightmare.

How can you set up your CSP to help with renewal and upsell?

It should be set up to automate reminders. If the renewal is up in six months, the CSP should flag to the CSM to schedule an executive business review to discuss the renewal and any upsell opportunities. 

Have user training – implementing a new CSP represents a significant change for your CS team. Failing to provide adequate training and support can lead to poor adoption and underutilization of the platform’s capabilities. Ensure continuous training is provided daily or weekly until the users are comfortable. 

Have helpful popups and guides for CSMs at critical moments in the customer journey –  for example, if the CSP has just scheduled a meeting with a customer to discuss renewal and upsell, it will prompt the CSM on the questions they should ask or the churn risks they must address during the call.

What can a third party help implement and optimize your customer success platform?

They can handle all of the heavy lifting – they build all of the reports, work out the use cases, and collaborate with your ops team to ensure your organization has full confidence in the tool as it’s implemented. 
They can help train your team, from holding office hours to staying alongside them – after the tool is implemented to partner with the users and ensure it is optimally employed.

What are the most important things to get right?

Have an implementation team and a steering committee team – this could include the Chief Customer Officer, the Head of Ops, VPs/Directors and Managers

Align CSP capabilities and business needs – selecting a CSP without a clear understanding of your specific use cases and requirements can result in a mismatch between the tool’s capabilities and your actual needs. 

To ensure the project’s success, you need a champion – this leader should drive the project forward and align the various parties involved with the customer success platform. 

Foster leadership buy-in and engagement – if leadership doesn’t understand the value of the CSP or how to use its insights, it can lead to decreased support and investment over time. How do you expect your team to be if Leadership isn’t confident?

What are common pitfalls?

Lacking dedicated operational support – one of the most critical pitfalls is failing to assign dedicated resources to manage and maintain the CSP. Not having a dedicated person, like an ops person, to implement and enforce data cleanliness risks poor adoption, data quality issues, and failure to realize the full potential of your investment.

Neglecting data quality and cleanliness – poor data quality can undermine the effectiveness of even the most sophisticated systems. Data cleanliness and completeness should be a top priority before and after implementation.

Trying to do too much too soon – attempting to implement all features and integrations at once can overwhelm your team and lead to a failed implementation. It’s better to start with core functionalities and gradually expand. 

Neglecting to define and track key metrics – without clear metrics and KPIs, it’s difficult to measure the success of your CSP implementation and demonstrate its value to the organization. Ensure you have a clear plan for what you want to measure and how you’ll use those insights.