Customer Success Software: Your Best Options in 2023

By
Rana Bano
May 4, 2022
10
min read
Updated
December 4, 2023
Photo credit
Customer success software helps you save time and work smarter while driving user adoption rates, reducing churn and growing revenue.
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Introduction

Last year, a Star Wars fan purchased a Lego Mos Eisley Cantina set. He found that he was missing a bag of parts needed to put the set together to his disappointment, so he reached out to Lego. 

“This must be the work of Lord Vader. Fear not, for I have hired Han to get that bag right out to you,” the Lego representative responded. 

This story quickly made its way around the internet as an example of customer experience done right — quick, personalized, and action-driven. 

It’s an example that we can model every customer success journey after, regardless of the kind of product or service you’re delivering. With enough resources and bandwidth, companies can shape the same quality of support for every customer. 

Seventy-five percent of customer success managers were handling 16 to 200 accounts each last year. The expanded integration of software into the customer success model helps companies manage this high volume of work while remaining proactive and personable.

Picking the right customer success technology software team can help you do this by:

  • Finding opportunities and friction points faster across large datasets
  • Measuring customer behavior and experience objectively 
  • Automating repetitive tasks like managing multiple inboxes or creating product tutorials
  • Reducing time lost to context-switching and searching for missing information 

Why should you use customer success software? 

Customer success has evolved far beyond passively managing support tickets and engaging with customers only when problems arise. Customer success teams today are product champions that help businesses drive user adoption rates, reduce churn and grow revenue.

Customer success software help teams save time, work smarter, and meet customer expectations faster. From project planning to document creation, different tools are used at every step of the customer success journey.

Fifty-percent of companies use at least 10 channels to communicate with customers. If your team is manually capturing data and responding to every customer support ticket, you’re less likely to have the bandwidth to deliver the level of personalization and attention needed to retain customers. Companies use a variety of tools to balance operational work and strategy-building. The most popular choices include spreadsheets, CRM systems, help desk tools, surveys, customer experience tools, customer success platforms, and even custom-built solutions. 

Some common software features to have in your customer success technology stack are:

  • Customer relationship management 
  • Customer health tracker and monitoring
  • Engagement analytics
  • Creating help center articles
  • Customer surveys
  • Multi-channel communication
  • Workflow automation, triggers, and alerts
  • Product usage and experience optimization 
  • Integrations with other platforms 

We’ve curated a list of tools to help you get the benefits above. From data intelligence platforms to software for higher productivity on the job, you’ll be able to find something worth bringing back to your team — or to even try out right now for free. 

10 software for customer success teams

  1. Front
  2. Churn Zero
  3. Scribe
  4. Rocketlane 
  5. Help Scout
  6. ProfitWell
  7. WalkMe
  8. Typeform
  9. Hubspot Service Hub
  10. Gainsight

1. Front

G2 rating: 4.7 / 5
Capterra rating: 4.5 / 5
Pricing: Starts at $19 per month 

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Front is a customer communication platform was designed to follow the familiar interfaces of regular email providers. Users have called out the organizational capabilities of shared inboxes on the platform, which include tags, labels and filters. Front is a great choice for communication teams working virtually because it brings together all team members — including those who are remote — to operate under a single system just like if was an office room. 

Key features: 

  • Shared inbox
  • Engagement workflows
  • Email organization and templates 
  • Team and customer analytics

Popular user benefits:

  • Assign emails and tag team members for faster real-time collaboration.
  • Chat with colleagues about emails directly on the platform to avoid jumping between platforms for internal discussions.
  • Access system integrations quickly in the platform sidebar.

2. ChurnZero

G2 rating: 4.7 / 5
Capterra rating: 4.7 / 5
Pricing: Pricing upon request

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Ninety-four percent of customer success teams prioritize churn reduction as their biggest goal. ChurnZero gives teams a comprehensive view of customer lifecycles along with the tools needed to personalize communication for lower churn rates. The platform provides an array of functionalities to manage ongoing tasks, automate communication triggers, and track customer progress. 

Key features: 

  • Customer health scores and monitoring
  • Segmentation and automated engagement workflows
  • Real-time alerts
  • In-app communication

Popular user benefits: 

  • Centralized location for team to-dos.
  • Intuitive customer segmentation to quickly follow up on target accounts.
  • Automated playbooks for proactive engagement at certain points of the customer lifecycle.

3. Scribe 

G2 rating: 4.9 / 5
Pricing: Get started for free for unlimited guides

Forty percent of customers want help online in less than 5 minutes, but waiting for a customer success representative isn’t always the fastest way to get problems solved. This is why companies invest in clear and reader-friendly help center guides and articles. Scribe helps customer success teams capture screenshots and recordings of process workflows directly from a recorder on their browser extension. Step-by-step guides are automatically generated and saved for teams to edit, share, and embed in knowledge bases and help centers. 

Key features:

  • Screen capture 
  • On-screen recording controls 
  • Rich text editor
  • Drag and drop editor 
  • File embed and sharing 

Popular user benefits

  • Generate tutorials for customers and stakeholders in minutes.
  • Update tutorials with user-friendly editors at any time for up-to-date documentation.
  • Embed a scrollable view of visual step-by-step guides into company platforms. 
  • Capture screen recordings immediately on any website with a user-friendly browser extension.

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4. Rocketlane

G2 rating: 4.8 / 5
Capterra rating: 4.7 / 5
Pricing: Includes free trial, starts at $19 per month 

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There’s a period in the customer lifecycle that sets the stage for a great experience and relationship — the customer onboarding process. Rocketlane can be likened to a project management tool for customer onboarding. The platform gives customer success teams the ability to create branded portals that walk customers through onboarding plans. From kick-off to launch dates, customers can leverage their personalized portal to get access to important resources, updates and reminders.

Key features:

  • Customer portal
  • Project management 
  • Magic Link login 
  • Document sharing and editing 

Popular user benefits: 

  • 360-degree view of ongoing projects with complex implementation processes.
  • Real-time communication through chat and in shared documents.
  • Magic Link log in process helps customers use the platform without having the hassle of needing new login credentials.

5. Help Scout

G2 rating: 4.4 / 5
Capterra rating 4.7 / 5: 
Pricing: Includes free trial, starts at $20 a month 

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Help Scout’s customer support platform helps companies better manage communication channels like email, live chat and in-app messages. The platform’s popular shared inbox functionality aims to improve and personalize email support with user-friendly interfaces for email organization, collaboration, and automated actions to reach inbox zero. 

Key features:

  • Email collaboration, management, and automation
  • Customer relationship management
  • Automated workflows for repetitive tasks
  • Knowledge base
  • Multi-channel communication across email, live chat, and phone 

Popular user benefits: 

  • User-friendly platform to send and receive emails.
  • Real-time view of customer emails that are being read and answered to prevent duplicate efforts.
  • Easy onboarding and integration into existing workflows.

6. ProfitWell 

G2 rating: 4.9 / 5
Capterra rating: 4.7 / 5 
Pricing: Get started for free

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Customer retention is a key differentiator for revenue growth across many business models. But retention is difficult – only 32 percent of SaaS companies have an annual churn rate of less than 5 percent. ProfitWell is a retention reporting software that helps subscription businesses lower subscription cancellations through data visibility on customer retention, payment, and cancellation behavior. Customer success teams can use the platform to report on payment processor data, create cancellation flows, and build personalized churn reduction strategies. 

Key features:

  • Customer segmentation
  • Engagement and active usage tracking
  • Benchmarking against similar companies
  • Billing system analysis

Popular user benefits:

  • Follow up with customers on payment issues like failed transactions and card expiration.
  • Integrations with billing systems for insights on new subscriptions, churn, and revenue expansion 
  • Key metrics on a company’s financial progress to help teams identify their most profitable users.

7. WalkMe

G2 rating: 4.5 / 5
Capterra rating: 4.4 / 5
Pricing: Get started for free

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What factors contribute to customer health? For 58 percent of customer success teams, its usage and engagement across the customer lifecycle. WalkMe’s digital adoption platform helps teams optimize user onboarding and increase feature adoption through personalized customer experiences such as chatbots, in-app guidance, and customizable demos. Customer success teams use WalkMe to offer self-service support and centralize data on customer journeys within a product. 

Key features:

  • User experience analytics
  • Automated chatbot and in-app support 
  • Code-free editor

Popular user benefits:

  • Easy-to-use platform for building and deploying product guidance for customers.
  • No-code product tours, field tips, messages and surveys for customers.
  • Practical testing functionality before deploying content.

8. Typeform

G2 rating: 4.5 / 5
Capterra rating: 4.7 / 5
Pricing: Get started for free 

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Surveys and customer experience tools are used by 49 percent of companies to strengthen their relationship-building efforts with customers. Getting a survey tool that’s intuitive and easy to navigate entices customers to complete their responses and to continue providing feedback in the future. That’s why Typeform’s people-friendly forms, surveys, and quizzes are modeled to follow human conversations — keeping customers engaged one question at a time. The tool emphasizes sleek design custom templates and themes for brands to optimize visual impact. 

Key features:

  • Built-in photo and video library
  • Customer success template library
  • Question-branching and logic
  • Analytics and result dashboard 

Popular user benefits:

  • Minimalistic and streamlined interfaces that cond require any code or learning curve.
  • Native integrations with CRM and marketing software.
  • Advanced conditional logic that visualizes user response paths.

9. Hubspot Service Hub

G2 rating: 4.4 / 5 
Capterra rating: 4.4 / 5
Pricing: Includes free trial, starts at $45 a month 

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Hubspot’s customer service software is a powerful CRM that bridges service data and channels into a central location. Companies can automatically track customer interactions and use intelligent tools to help teams derive insights, recommend internal resources, and build service performance reports. 

Key features: 

  • Customer relationship management
  • Conversational intelligence 
  • Automated workflows
  • Multi-channel messaging, live chat, and VoIP calls

Most popular with users: 

  • Centralized CRM across functions for a streamlined view of customer progress.
  • Combines various customer success tools into a single platform. 
  • Flexible and easy-to-use workflows for managing multi-channel communication.
  • Customizable support ticket processes that integrate with other software.

10. Gainsight

G2 rating: 4.4 / 5
Capterra rating: 4.4 / 5
Pricing: Pricing not available

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Gainsight makes it easier for internal and cross-team collaboration with customer reporting and monitoring in line with desired goals for each team in your business. The platform emphasizes customer retention in tandem with product experience and revenue generation. Customer success teams can use this visibility to align strategies for high-impact accounts and utilize time-saving tools like personalized dashboards, automated triggers and integrations with workplace software like Zoom and Gong. 

Key features: 

  • Customer health scores and monitoring
  • Customizable surveys
  • Predictions for upsells and churn risk 
  • Integrations and APIs 

Popular user benefits: 

  • High-quality data to help proactively identify risks and opportunities. 
  • Easily track success strategies with stakeholders using dashboards.
  • Streamline operational processes to plan, create and launch customer experience projects. 

Build a technology stack that gives customers what they need

Ninety-one percent of customer success teams grew in size in 2021. If your team is looking to expand and increase bandwidth, think about implementing a software system that helps you do less repetitive work and more relationship-building. 

Whether it’s better self-service support, more user-friendly help center resources, or personalized touchpoints at different stages of the customer lifecycle, your customer success software should help you and your customers succeed in the most practical and scalable way.

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