Item: Gainsight CS
Rating: 8
Author: Joe Breed

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Gainsight is a customer success department's best friend. It really has the power to transform an organization and lives up to its promise as a way to get a 360 view of a customer list. Gainsight is used daily by the customer success manager at Skyword as a way to understand customer risk, identify product adoption trends, conduct research and ensure that all assigned tasks are being completed. Gainsight helps us ensure there are no surprises when it comes to customer churn.

Pros and Cons

Gainsight works incredibly well with SFDC so it makes data integrity something you can count on.
Gainsight is extremely customizable so you can really use it in a way that works best for your organization.
Gainsight has a very active user community and knowledgeable support desk that makes it easy to find answers to the questions that come up.

Gainsight is what you make of it. It's such a robust software that you need to dedicate significant time to making it valuable for your organization.
Gainsight's isn't the most user-friendly software. I find it takes time before a CSM fully understands how it can help their day to day. Admins have an even harder job of learning the ins and outs of rule creation, dashboard building, and troubleshooting.
Gainsight is built on top of SFDC, so you really need to ensure that your SFDC is set up in a way that will work with Gainsight.

Number of Customer Success Managers

11 to 25 people

Return on Investment

A true understanding of how our customers are using our product.
An easier way to spot risk and deploy plans to save accounts.
A single system that complies all the data we need to make the right decisions.

Gainsight User Community

Gainsight has a very valuable user group where you can find answers to your questions big and small. I don't really find myself contributing, but actively consume what others are adding. Gainsight has a robust online learning center, but I find the trainings a little slow and very expensive for what you get. I've yet to go to a Pulse event but am looking forward to the main event in May.

Alternatives Considered

Totango

When it comes to a CMP, it really comes down to Totango and Gainsight. Ultimately we selected Gainsight because we already were heavy SFDC users and the fact that they invest heavily in their product.

Likelihood to Recommend

Gainisight is perfect for a company that is already on SFDC and uses SFDC in a "standard" way. Gainsight works well for companies that don't have visibility into how their customers are using their product, get surprise cancellations and use different spreadsheets to collect customer data. Gainsight is also best for companies that have enough CSMs that they can take full advantage of the cockpit and robust rule engine. Gainsight isn't a good fit for companies that don't use SFDC or have just a few CSMs.

Gainsight has the potential to transform an organization!

Overall Satisfaction with Gainsight