Announcing the Top Rated Customer Success Management Software for 2018

Today, we awarded the 2018 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Customer Success Management Software. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are unique in that they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user satisfaction scores.

Here are the winners in each segment, listed in order of research frequency on TrustRadius. We have also provided insights on how to pick the right customer success software based on your needs and current industry trends.

Overall Top Rated

• Gainsight
• Pendo.io
• Intercom
• Totango
• ClientSuccess

Top Rated by Mid-Sized Companies

• Gainsight
• Pendo.io
• Intercom
• ClientSuccess

Top Rated by Small Businesses

• Pendo.io
• Woopra

What is customer success management software?

Customer success management (CSM) software is designed to give you the tools you need to assess customer health, drive retention, and build brand advocacy. Through a deeper understanding of how your customers are using your subscription products or services, CSM solutions can help you identify low engagement customers who may be at risk of canceling, so that you can intervene proactively to keep their business.

Likewise, these systems can help you identify customers who are very active, where there may be an opportunity to upsell them on more capabilities or ask them to share their experience — as a reference, on a customer panel, in a review or case study, etc.

Many CSM systems can be integrated with your CRM or marketing automation software to build reports and automated workflows that trigger communications based on product usage patterns or other customer behavior.

Types of CSM software

Some CSM systems offer usage-based tools that allow you to interact with customers in-product or send emails based on in-product actions. For example, you may want to notify the customer of their results so far, remind them of tasks that are overdue, encourage them to try out new parts of the product or service that they have yet to access, or send helpful tutorials to show them how to take the next step. The goal of these tools is to make sure everyone has the knowledge they need to be successful, whether that’s new customers who need to be onboarded, or existing customers you’re nudging to become more mature users.

Other CSM systems are based more on internal analytics than direct communications with customers. These send alerts or status reports to customer success managers on your team, who then will reach out to customers with assistance or offers in accordance with your specific best practices. Usage metrics, as well as direct customer feedback (surveys, ratings, reviews, etc.), may play a role in determining where attention is needed.

Trends in customer success

Customer success management is quickly growing and evolving as a practice. The rise of subscription business models and the focus on user and customer experience management have fueled this trend, and more companies are expected to shift their customer success initiatives from conceptual to core components of their business operations with dedicated staff and systems. It will be interesting to see how CSM solutions continue to innovate and what features and tools will come about in the next few years, as early adopters iterate their customer success strategies and more companies invest in people and technology in this area.

Choosing the right customer success management solution

Depending on the nature of your customers, your products and services, your customer success resources, and your particular challenges around stickiness, it may make sense to automate some customer success communications or keep things more hands-on and personal. Using reviews in your research gives you authentic feedback from other companies with use cases like own, which can help you make the decision about which customer success management software tools will be most beneficial for your customers and your business.

Top Rated Criteria

Products included in the 2018 Top Rated Customer Success Management Software list must have been in the top tier of their category TrustMap on April 27, 2018, to earn a Top Rated badge. To qualify for the Customer Success Management Software TrustMap, products must have 10 reviews and ratings on TrustRadius. Every reviewer is verified and every review is vetted before publication. Products are plotted on the map based on end-user data, including users’ likelihood to recommend scores as well as buyer research patterns. To learn more about TrustMaps and Top Rated methodology, check out this page.