Likelihood to Recommend Gainsight CS is well suited for SaaS and Managed Services companies looking to have a centralized log of all their customer interactions and analysis of those customers' health so that CS and AM teams can be the best champions for their customers and interactions are not happening in silos. The new AI functionality being rolled out will have a massive impact on CSM's ability to manage time and add value.
Read full review Planhat is very cost-effective compared to its competitors and offers a similar level of functionality. So if you are looking for a CS platform that will give your CSM's all the data they need to manage their portfolio, then Planhat will do the job very well. I was part of the team that was tasked with selecting a CS platform for Pexip, and the combination of cost and performance made Planhat a clear winner against the other two products we were evaluating.
I still use Salesforce on a daily basis because that's the platform we use to generate quotes. It would be nice if I only had one platform to perform all of my CS tasks in. I'm not sure if that's a criticism of Planhat or not, as I don't know if it has a quoting module that we haven't implemented, or whether that function simply isn't available.
Read full review Pros Gainsight's Data Designer is a powerful tool that allows you to create new tables/data sets from different sources (Create a new table by merging Snowflake, SFDC and Gainsight data that you can use for reporting or be the engine of calls to actions) The health score is great! with good data and the right workflows in place, you can easily create automated health scores by your desired segmentation Journey Orchestrator is the best 1:M outreach tool I have seen from any CSP. Very flexible and comprehensive. Can also support surveys! JO can be used for all segments, not just your digital segments! Gmail/Outlook integration - Our CSMs love that you can send an email and attach it to the gainsight account. You can also create a meeting note in Gainsight and email it to your customers! Calls to Action/Playbooks are very customizable, interoperable with SFDC and a great way for CSMs to keep on top of their work and also a great tool for reporting outcomes and CSMs work throughout the year Read full review Excellent customer support and onboarding experience. They are very quick to respond to queries via the live chat. Our CS manager was brilliant in helping us get set up and making sure we were getting the most from all the features. The platform and features are very user friendly and intuitive. It's an extremely powerful tool with a lot of functionality, but thankfully it doesn't take long to learn how to use it. The customer portal is a game changer. The ability to share playbooks, data, and meeting notes all in one place is so useful for our customers and helps build trust and transparency. Read full review Cons Would love to see a Gainsight OPs/Admin checklist that guides CS Ops team through specific pieces of information needed to execute specific playbooks (best practices) When creating reports, sometimes it's difficult to find the correct variable that you are looking for as it's nested under various categories Would love ability to "heatmap" specific individual customer engagement based on CSM inputted customer contacts at meetings Would love to see more analysis on engagements - how often, how frequent - built into the product Read full review Allow for cc'ing of AEs or others within the same organization from the messaging center. When I went to send a message from within Planhat, I had to manually type out the AE's email address every time if I wanted them cc'd. The fonts were funky if I went to add text into an existing email template. For example, if I added in an extra sentence or paragraph, in Outlook on the recipient's end, the font was different despite looking the same within Planhat. Gmail was all consistent, Outlook was showing a different font. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review Usability I give it this score based on the implementation at my current employer. I don't know if it could be higher based on if the implementation went better, or if there is something on the vendor side that could help. If this were asked at my previous employer, I would have given it a score of 9 or 10.
Read full review Our onboarding experience with Planhat was smooth and quick. The features and dashboards are very intuitive and don't take long to get the hang of. The support team is very responsive and helpful. Our CSM really took time to understand the goals and objectives of our business and helped us make sure Planhat was working to deliver on these goals.
Read full review Performance 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
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review Planhat support is excellent. We have a dedicated resource allocated to work with us, and he is extremely knowledgeable, articulate and responsive. The wider support team at Planhat is also very good, responding quickly to any issues logged. As an end-user, you can chat with Planhat support if you encounter any issues or have any questions, and they have always helped me.
Read full review Online Training 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
Read full review Implementation Rating 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.
Read full review Alternatives Considered We went through an evaluation of
ChurnZero , which did not have the ability to pull in usage from complex data sets or to visualize it natively.
ChurnZero did not offer the ability to run surveys or NPS which would have required additional tooling and investment
Read full review I was not the person involved in choosing Planhat, but it seems to me that Planhat is much better suited to an account management style role, whereas Hubspot is closer to a sales CRM instead. In my position, Planhat is better suited as it is more graphical, more flexible, and easier to find information on.
Read full review Return on Investment We increase account coverage by more than 20% through the tools within Gainsight CS to generate actions for our CSMs to prioritize accounts. Now that we are using Success Plans, we are seeing 65-75% of customer outcomes realized within a 12-month period. This was something we weren't able to track before. Read full review Planhat has, for the first time, given us a 360-degree view of all our customers and access to all the different types of communication we have with them across different departments and functions. The ability to automate workflows, tasks, and assign playbooks to the various phases of our customer lifecycle has aligned all our departments. Read full review ScreenShots