Alida CXM (formerly Vision Critical) is designed to enable users to listen to direct & indirect sources of customer feedback, perform automated actions on collected feedback and have complete visibility into key customer experience metrics so users can create exemplary customer experiences day after day. Alida CXM offers a holistic customer experience platform that brings in both operational and experiential data, integrates this data with the tools to collect, understand and action customer…
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Gainsight CS
Score 8.8 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Gainsight Customer Success (CS) is presented as a growth engine for modern post-sale teams. Built for CROs, CS leaders, and operations pros, it provides visibility into customer health, expansion potential, and revenue risk. With automation, AI, and health scoring, Gainsight helps scale outcomes without scaling headcount. With its playbooks and success plans to CSQL tracking and journey orchestration, Gainsight CS helps teams to take the right action at the right time, every time. Access to…
From my experience, I believe that Vision Critical offers the best software to manage an insights community. They are great to work with, and my opinion has only improved over time. However, that doesn't mean it is the best survey software overall. If someone simply needs to program and distribute surveys, this may or may not be the right solution. There are some other really great survey tools on the market that are competitively priced and offer very intuitive interfaces (like Qualtrics). If you are going to recruit people to answer surveys or provide feedback on an ongoing basis (re-contacting and engaging with the same people repeatedly), though, Vision Critical would be my #1 recommendation.
I really enjoy using Gainsight CS because we can track our customers through their life cycles through our CSM/Implementation teams, Customer Community, and even our Academy! All of the information is in one spot for us to use and see. I would recommend this product (as well as CC & CE) for any SaaS company that needs visibility across all products and teams.
One source of truth for all things CS - managing day-to-day tasks.
Getting ahead of the risk by having a very detailed and evolving health score system. Gainsight's CSM was incredibly helpful in building our risk mitigation plan using the health score, sharing their best practices.
Having a mutually agreed upon Success Plan that you can share with the customer. It was also incredibly helpful with assigning other parties to take actions, along with due dates and reminders
The functionality when creating a new questionnaire is rather clunky, particularly when there are a few conditional factors in the logical flow; being able to see those factors and how they apply with some sort of other logical layout would really help when creating a longer survey.
There are quite a few steps that aren't intuitive when launching a survey, for instance all the various dates (launch date, reserve date, survey date, etc etc etc). If there were a description field if you hovered above labeled areas of sections that explained what this field was for that would really help
It doesn't help either that the entire site is grey; it's a cold environment to be in for a long time, and the simple design makes it seem more clunky than it probably really is.
Outlook integration could be better as within Outlook we do not get much insight of the account. While contacting a contact from Outlook, it will be great if the Outlook -Gainsight CS tool can show certain important information, like any pending CTAs, the latest billing amount, and pending certifications, etc. This will improve the communications and make it more aligned with the company and account perspectives.
Limitations of report creation are user level - As a user I can not create report as per my wish on my set of accounts. Only the admin user has access to that, and also it's very intuitive compared to Salesforce.
Dashboard customization - as a user I have very much limited options to put in my dashboard. It's all about CTA all the time.
Vision Critical often requires you to dump the data to a statistical program. I hate that step. You waste time, and improve the chance of data being lost, or changed.
Gainsight offers a level of support that I've not experience before. They will work with you to come up with a solution to a problem - or help match you with another client that has a similar setup as you to get their feedback. Also the functionality that we have built within the software works for us. It's 'easy' to use (once you get the hang of it) and our users rather enjoy working in the software.
I think there is a ton of room to improve, in things as simple as aesthetics and other areas of logical flow when it comes to creating and then launching a survey, as well as providing descriptors for what each field is referencing. For instance, there are like 5 date fields to be filled out, but no button near them that says "this date will determine _________" and I am not about to go back into the training module, which was confusing enough to FIND, let alone work through to find just ONE answer.
Gainsight CSGainsight's usability is extremely intuitive. The dashboards are modular and the ability to click into each to learn more is helpful to gain visibility and strategizing where to prioritize time as a CSM. Logging activities is also extremely intuitive as is the CTA function. There is some confusion on "Where can I find..." if there are multiple dashboards so an internal AI tool to ask would be helpful as well.
Rarely any issues with availability or outages. When they do occur, there is excellent communication and consistent updates. Bugs are usually addressed in a timely manner, and communication around those issues is also extremely good
There are some times when it can take almost a minute to load some of our reports or the rules engine. Within a rule it can also take time to load the actions as they each load one at a time when scrolling. The ability to scroll without waiting would be ideal
Absolutely fantastic support team. Willing to help you online through vast collection of how-to guides and resources, online via chatbox, or over the phone. Even though we were in different time zones, they were always available. Very helpful and knowledgeable
The CSMs are very hands-on and helpful, both Elaine and Lane have provided a lot of guidance and value over the years. Support is responsive and will jump on things as needed. The thought leadership and community is probably the most valuable part of our support from Gainsight.
The online videos are very good for basic tasks in the platform, but it isn't very descriptive or helpful trying to make your own specific variables fit the simple example that is typically used. Typically, I'll watch a video, try on my own and still have to get help from support or Customer Success team
I was not part of the implantation (I took over later). However, based on what was passed to me, the tool was not well implemented at our org. I think this had to do with complexity, wrong person assigned in our org, and org buy-in. I think it would have been very successful if we had a better assignment process internally.
Gainsight CS and Vitally offer distinct strategic advantages depending on organizational maturity. We used Vitally for a year and it is pretty decent for mid-market teams requiring immediate agility. We just had a hard time getting our CSM's to adopt the tool. In contrast, Gainsight CS serves as a comprehensive System built for enterprise complexity. Its architectural depth allows for intricate data modeling and parent-child hierarchies, while its Bionic Rules engine provides professional-grade automation that handles nuanced triggers far beyond the capabilities of standard, trait-based systems.
It can lean a little heavily toward Customer Success, but the ability to customize many areas based on specific user or account characteristics allows you to make it work across many different roles. This also makes collaboration within the tool across teams possible. It a flexible tool if you have a skilled admin to help guide your process building.
Our use of Vision Critical's software has allowed us to dramatically increase the amount of research that we do, at a much lower cost. Since there is no incremental cost for each survey we field, we can ask many questions we wouldn't have been able to otherwise.
Our use of an insights community has also sped up the research process, allowing us to write, program, field and report on a survey within only a few days.
Because of the two advantages listed above, we have been able to listen closer to our customers' opinions.
No metrics yet, but we have improved our at-risk customers by identifying risks earlier via our automated health score and with our Gainsight approved mitigation workflow, CSMs and leaders have better discipline with mitigation efforts and sharing at-risk customers across the org so other teams can step in and assist
