Item: Planhat
Rating: 8
Author: Erin Gracyalny

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Planhat is being used by the Customer Success Manager team to calculate for customer health, track customer communications (via Planhat and also synced with Salesforce), to run playbooks based on different scenarios, and to provide an overall space for a single source of truth. Planhat was the first tool that was implemented of this nature at Nitro for the CSM team, so it was something that provided a lot of value and so much more insight into a customer's health profile.

Pros and Cons

Customer health
Playbooks
Salesforce integration

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.

Return on Investment

Better visibility into customer health, which led to more proactive reach outs to accounts at high risk.
Better renewal visibility by being able to surface upcoming renewal accounts and proactively reach out to provide value ahead of time.

Alternatives Considered

Totango and Strikedeck

Planhat compares relatively well to Totango, despite not coming along with the massive price tag. It was able to perform all of the functions our CSM team was needing and hoping it could do for us. It was able to highlight the customer's health according to the metrics we input, we could add a CSM sentiment to slightly weigh or adjust the score based on our own knowledge of the account, we could add notes, and the integration with Salesforce was key to making this work so that we could still see any interactions the sales team had with the customer as well.

Key Insights

Do you think Planhat delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Planhat's feature set?

Yes

Did Planhat live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Planhat go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Planhat again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Nitro Productivity Suite, DocuSign, Adobe Sign

Usability

The usability factor is huge. Things are pretty straightforward and easy to locate. If you're looking for contacts for an account, they're listed on a specific tab. If you're looking for a list or to make a report or segment of specific customers, there is a data tab that allows you to do so. Everything is easy to find and easy to navigate.

Support Rating

While I did not personally have much interaction with the Planhat support team, several of my colleagues did. They were always pleased with the support provided and the team responded quickly to any requests.

Likelihood to Recommend

I think this is a great solution that I had not heard of prior to joining Nitro. Coming from an organization that used Totango before this, I liked that Planhat was similar and easy to use. I did enjoy that I could send emails and choose from templates directly in Planhat, so I was able to save a lot of time for myself by staying within one product.

A great tool

Overall Satisfaction with Planhat