If your customers aren’t achieving their goals with your product or service, it’s only a matter of time until they take their business elsewhere. If they aren’t achieving their desired success, why would they remain customers?

That’s the question at the heart of customer success. To ensure customers are achieving their goals, companies need to invest in solutions that give them visibility into customer usage and progress, automate processes for onboarding and support, and help identify areas of improvement or opportunity.

Customer success software is designed to do exactly that–providing a platform for teams to monitor customer health, track user engagement with products or services, provide personalized guidance and support, and more. 

By helping businesses better understand how customers interact with their business offerings while providing automated processes for managing users over time, the right platform can be invaluable in driving customer retention, satisfaction, and business outcomes.

In this blog post, we’ll look at some of the best customer success software platforms available today. These solutions can help businesses better understand their customers, improve user engagement and adoption, increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, and keep them coming back for more. 

Skip ahead: 

• What is customer success?
• What is customer success software?
• Criteria for evaluating customer success management tools
  • Technical expertise
  • Usability
  • Integrations
  • Price
• Security
• Top 9 best customer success software solutions
  • Thinkific Plus 
  • Tidio
  • Front
  • Insided
  • Totango
  • Skilljar
  • Catalyst
  • GUIDEcx
  • Podium
• Comparison table
• Deciding which customer success management software is best for you

What is customer success?

Defining customer success can differ depending on your industry and operation. Gerard Recio, Former Director of Customer Success at Hootsuite, used the following formula. 

Customer experience + customer outcomes = customer success

Customer experience is how customers interact with your business; customer outcomes are the results your customers get from using your product or service. 

By combining customer experience and customer outcomes into a single success metric, businesses can identify what they need to do to build better relationships with their customers—and keep them coming back.

What is customer success software?

Customer success software is designed to help companies monitor customer engagement, measure customer outcomes, and automate processes like onboarding. 

These tools are designed to provide data-driven visibility into how customers interact with your business offerings, so teams can better understand user behavior and identify areas of improvement or opportunity. 

The right platform can also enable organizations to deliver personalized support and guidance while automating certain customer success tasks.

Criteria for evaluating customer success management tools

Not every customer success solution is created equal. To find the right fit for your business, here are a few key criteria to consider: 

1. Technical expertise

Is your team made up of tech-savvy individuals, or are you looking for a solution designed with non-technical users in mind? 

No-code customer success software is designed for users with no coding experience, while more robust platforms may require technical expertise to get the most out of them. Ask:

• Does this tool require coding experience to use? 
• Is there a learning curve, and how long does it typically take? 
• What support services are available for onboarding or technical issues?

If there is a steep learning curve or if your team has limited technical expertise, then you may want to look for a solution that is easier to use. 

2. Usability

Even with no-code options, there can be a wide range of user experiences. You want the software to not only be easy to learn but easy to use daily. Ask yourself the following questions: 

• How intuitive is the platform? 
• Are there features that make it easier to use? 
• What customization options are available, if any?

The most user-friendly solutions will have an easy-to-navigate interface and provide plenty of support regarding tutorials or customer service. A solution that requires minimal setup and offers flexible customization can be invaluable for teams with limited time or resources. 

3. Integrations

It also shouldn’t require constant switching between tools to access customer data. Look for a solution with built-in integrations that connect your customer success software with other systems and services, such as support tickets or billing records.

Some common integrations include:

• Email services 
• CRM systems 
• Analytics tools

Integrations can be invaluable for streamlining processes and providing a more holistic view of the customer journey. 

4. Price

Sometimes, the most sophisticated solutions can be out of reach for smaller businesses or startups. When evaluating customer success software, consider your budget and research any potential additional costs (such as onboarding fees or support services). 

If you are making a proposal to stakeholders and trying to create a business case, though, remember to include value-adds like: 

• Increased customer retention
• Improved customer satisfaction 
• Easier onboarding processes 

These benefits can help to justify the cost of a more comprehensive software solution for customer success. 

5. Security

The average cost of a data breach in the United States is $9.44 million. Losing customer data can have serious financial and reputational consequences, so it’s crucial to ensure the customer success platform you choose is secure.

Look for solutions that offer: 

• Encryption at rest and in transit 
• Multi-factor authentication 
• Role-based permissions 

The right security measures will help protect your business from potential data breaches, as well as other malicious activities.

Top 9 best customer success software solutions

Below are our reviews of eight customer success software solutions, though they are in no particular order. It is impossible to rank them without knowing your specific needs, so we encourage you to review each platform and decide which is best for you. 

1. Thinkific Plus 

“Leverage the power of customer education to fuel your company’s growth.” There’s no sugar-coating it: times are tough. New customers are harder (and more expensive) to find. The good news? Education is a cost-effective way to drive customer engagement — which in turn boosts retention.

Thinkific Plus is an agile and robust software-as-a-service (SaaS) customer education platform that’s easy for your customers (and your team) to use. So you can have an outsized impact on your company’s success, all with the team and talent you already have.

Key features: 

• Dedicated Customer Success: Launch and scale your training programs with the support of a dedicated team behind you.

• Multiple Environments:  Manage unique environments with multiple sites to support different products or use cases.

• Advanced Customization: Create, on-brand user experiences with white-labeling, SSO, and CSS customizability.

• Unlimited Admins: Grow unrestricted with unlimited site admins, course admins, and group analysts.

You can also customize your academy with click-and-connect apps. Thinkific Plus offers 100+ third-party apps and integrations. So you can connect with the tools you already trust while creating the learning experience you want — without needing designers or developers.

Evaluation: 

How does Thinkific Plus rank among our five criteria? Check it out. 

• Technical expertise: With Thinkific Plus you get more than just features that scale with you. You also get a team of people with extensive industry and techincal expertise that are dedicated to helping you grow your business and achieve your goals with the platform.
• Usability: This is a powerful, scalable learning platform that’s also remarkably easy to use—for your team and your customers. 
• Integrations: Thinkific Plus offers over 100+ third-party apps and integrations. So you can connect with the tools you already trust while creating the learning experience you want — without needing designers or developers.
• Price: Thinkific Plus offers flexibility with custom pricing according to your business or organization’s specific needs. 
• Security: Secure cloud hosting and SSL certificates keep your customer data and content safe.

Overall, Thinkific Plus checks off most of our boxes for a customer success software. 

Reviews

Here is a quick look at the reviews from some trusted marketplaces:

2. Tidio

“Supercharge your customer service team” with Tidio, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution that helps streamline and automate your support system. Tidio helps customer service teams deliver faster and more efficient customer experiences. 

Key features

There are three main operations that Tidio can help with live chat, chatbots, and ticket organization. Let’s take a closer look. 

• Live chat: While it might seem like a little thing, adding live typing can be a game-changer. Allow your team to preview what users are writing before they even send it, so that answers can responses can be sent quickly. 
• Chatbots: With a visual builder, your team needs little technical expertise to get a chatbot up and running. It can then be deployed within a live chat, lightening the load considerably. 
• Ticket organization: With the ability to transform chats directly into tickets, you can avoid duplicate submissions and keep them organized with just a few clicks. 

Other features include department routing, chatbot analytics, and custom branding. 

Evaluation

How does Tidio rank among our five criteria? Check it out. 

• Technical expertise: It can be installed and running within five minutes, allowing quick integration into your team’s workflow. 

• • Usability: With a sleek, intuitive design, your team will easily interact with Tidio daily. 
  • Integrations: Tidio integrates seamlessly with everything from Shopify (for order management) to Instagram (for social customer support). 
  • Price: The forever-free option is a valuable asset for small startups and freelancers, though businesses will quickly outgrow it. The basic paid package is $15.83/month but does not include chatbot support. 

• Security: Tidio encrypts chats with a 256-bit SSL protocol and stores customer data securely with AWS. It also includes two-factor authentication (2FA) for team member accounts. 

Overall, Tidio ranks high in all five categories, though its price quickly scales for larger operations. 

Reviews

Here is a quick look at the reviews from some trusted marketplaces:

3. Front

Focused on elevating customer relationships, Front is a customer service and support platform that helps teams collaborate and work more efficiently. Front provides tools for managing multiple channels in one place, such as email, chat, and social media. 

Key features

The three main features from Front are automatic routing, draft collaboration, and accurate team evaluation. 

• Automatic routing: By setting rules-based automation, tickets will be routed to the correct team member, limiting the need for an admin to sort everything out. 
• Draft collaboration: Connect with teammates at a click by looping them into a response draft before anything is sent to the client. 
• Team evaluation: With an analytics dashboard that quickly shows performance metrics, you’ll know if one of your team members is slipping behind or needs assistance. 

Another feature from Front is visible customer history that can be accessed directly during chats, allowing your team to customize responses more accurately. 

Evaluation

How does Front rank among our five criteria? Check it out. 

• Technical expertise: While basic use of Front doesn’t take much expertise, creating the rules can be complicated for those without any experience. Basic knowledge of coding could help at the top level. 

• • Usability: Once they get the hang of it, your team will find Front to be extremely rewarding as they quickly collaborate on drafts without having to send lengthy emails back and forth. 
  • Integrations: With 90+ integrations, Front can connect with whatever else your team is using. From Asana to GitHub, it will seamlessly slide into your existing workflow.
  • Price: Front offers a starter plan for $19.00/user/month, but limits that to ten seats and does not include custom rules. Most businesses will start at the $49.00/user/month option. 

• Security: SOC 2 compliant, Front offers a number of security certificates to prove its dedication to keeping your data safe. 

Overall, Front might need a little more technical expertise than some others on this list, but is a valuable resource for driving customer success. 

Reviews

Here is a quick look at the reviews from some trusted marketplaces:

4. Insided

Gainsight has been a leading name in customer success and product experience for years, and their latest platform – inSided – has raised the level even further. The community-driven software puts the power of communication into the hands of the customer, leaving them feeling connected and invested.

Key features

With a vision that “users are the real experts,” inSided is built around several key features.

• Self-service: The whole point of inSided is to provide a central hub for all of your customer communication, allowing them to explore and learn at their own pace.

• Gamification: Users can earn badges, climb leaderboards, and raise their scores as they engage with your knowledge base and help others. 

• Community involvement: Don’t just answer your users’ questions – let them guide your design and development! By incorporating their suggestions, you’ll build a community that is filled with product advocates. 

The platform also includes features for event management and segmentation, allowing you to accurately monitor customer health scores and improve retention. 

Evaluation

How does inSided rank among our five criteria? Check it out. 

• Technical expertise: With automatically managed updates and functionality, there’s no coding necessary, and inSided takes very little technical expertise to get started. 

• • Usability: With a simple but effective design, your team won’t be scrambling to remember where certain information is located. 
  • Integrations: While Gainsight’s other platforms include a ton of integrations, the relative youth of inSided as a B2B SaaS platform limits how many connections you can make. There are only ten direct integrations available. 
  • Price: inSided does not publicly list pricing, but offers three models – Professional, Business, and Enterprise. 

• Security: Gainsight’s products have received a SOC 2 certification from a third-party auditor and are committed to investing in the security of their customer’s data. 

Overall, inSided ranks well, though without accurate pricing data, it can be difficult to jump in. The company does allow you to schedule a free demo or contact them for a free quote. 

Reviews

Here is a quick look at the reviews from some trusted marketplaces:

5. Totango

The first “composable” customer success platform, Totango is made of modular building blocks to create your ideal customer journey. 

Key features

Priding itself as a platform that pushes technological boundaries, there are always new, interesting features being added to Totango. 

• Siloless design: Hand off a customer interaction to a teammate or add them to the conversation to participate. 
• Reduced time to value: With immediate onboarding and efficient journey design, you’ll drop time to value on both the company and client sides. 
• Improved customer health: Totango automatically generates health scores based on your criteria, meaning you’ll know who is happy and who is in danger at a glance. 

With CS design principles driving it, Totango constantly iterates and improves, meaning you will always be on the cutting edge. 

Evaluation

How does Totango rank among our five criteria? Check it out. 

• Technical expertise: While it sells itself as an easy-to-learn platform, there is a bit of technical knowledge required to get the most out of Totango. 

• • Usability: Once your team is familiar with the processes, though, it can be an excellent daily tool to cut down on wasted resources. 
  • Integrations: Nearly endless integrations mean that your entire stack of software can seamlessly connect with Totango. 
  • Price: There is a free version that actually includes many of the platform’s best features, though if you need more than a single user, you’ll be paying a lot more. The Starter package (two users) is $249/month, and Growth (10 users) is $1,099/month. 

• Security: With enterprise-level security behind even the free platform, you don’t need to worry about data privacy. 

Overall, Totango is an excellent piece of software, though there are some limitations in terms of technical expertise and price that can make it a challenge for some small or medium-sized businesses. 

Reviews

Here is a quick look at the reviews from some trusted marketplaces:

6. Skilljar

Where other companies focus on engagement, Skilljar focuses on education. By providing customers with the best resources available, it limits adoption hurdles and drives value through the roof. 

Key features

A learning management system (LMS), Skilljar allows companies to drag and drop resources, content, and knowledge to create a valuable academy – without it feeling like school. Here are some of the key features:

• Built-in certifications: Once your customers complete their training, they’ll be able to showcase their knowledge with badges and certificates. They can even be posted to LinkedIn, one of Skilljar’s partners. 
• Custom UX: Your brand doesn’t need to be left behind. Skilljar allows advanced customization (with some technical knowledge). 
• Multiple learning paths: Education isn’t one-size-fits-all, so you can create specialized paths for various customer segments.

Skilljar’s features feed into their native analytics tool, allowing you to see where you’re succeeding and where you need some work.  

Evaluation

How does Skilljar rank among our five criteria? Check it out. 

• Technical expertise: You don’t need any expertise to get started, though given the robust nature of the platform, some coding knowledge can help you get the most out of it. 

• • Usability: Blends quickly with the rest of a customer education team’s routine and is quick to learn for new hires. 
  • Integrations: If you can name it, there’s probably a Skilljar integration. It even works with some other tools on this list, like inSided and Totango. 
  • Price: Because of the scale of the platform, pricing drastically varies and is not available publicly. 

• Security: Skilljar completes a SOC 2 audit annually to make sure it remains at the forefront of data security.  

Overall, Skilljar is excellent at what it does, and can be a valuable resource for any company.

Reviews

Here is a quick look at the reviews from some trusted marketplaces:

7. Catalyst

Customer-led growth is the buzzword that drives Catalyst, an automation platform for sales and success teams. 

Key features

While lots of SaaS companies are running out of investment fuel, Catalyst is focused on making each customer interaction more profitable. Here are some of its key features:

• Playbooks: Like a quarterback calling routes, set up a playbook ahead of time and quickly make decisions on customer health – or automate them for even more efficiency. 
• Automated email: Celebrate journey milestones and make customer outreach easier with an automated, scaleable email system. 
• Custom dashboards: Each customer can have its own dashboard, focused on the important metrics to their journey. 

Reduce your success team’s workload with automated tools at every turn. 

Evaluation

How does Catalyst rank among our five criteria? Check it out. 

• Technical expertise: While the platform is rather intuitive, it will take some technical understanding to get the best out of it. 

• • Usability: With color-coded health bars and a straightforward menu, your team will find it easy to work with once brought up to speed. 
  • Integrations: Catalyst offers 12 integrations, including important ones like Slack, Zendesk, and Salesforce. 
  • Price: The company does not include public pricing models, explaining that it varies on several factors unique to each operation. 

• Security: Certified in both SOC 2 and ISO 27001, Catalyst is dedicated to data security. 

Overall, Catalyst ranks relatively high, though limited integrations and unknown pricing will leave it chasing some other options. 

Reviews

Here is a quick look at the reviews from some trusted marketplaces:

8. GUIDEcx

Make a great first impression with this simple customer success software that is focused on onboarding.

Key features

GUIDEcx takes a different approach to customer success, offering some unique features. 

• Managed templates: You don’t have to do all the work! GUIDEcx will work with you to create project templates, lending their expertise to your onboarding process. 
• Stakeholder access: By only paying for the project manager license, you can bring all stakeholders in on the discussion and make sure that the solutions are fitting everyone involved. 
• Omnichannel interactions: Customers don’t need to be at their terminal to access the information – they can update and complete tasks through email or the mobile app. 

With vendor integration and analysis, you’ll have end-to-end visibility no matter who is attached to the project. 

Evaluation

How does GUIDEcx rank among our five criteria? Check it out. 

• Technical expertise: The big differentiator for GUIDEcx is its email workflow, which can help even those customers without much technical knowledge to keep up.  

• • Usability: The administrator platform can initially be daunting, especially as templates populate tasks. Once your team is up to speed, though, it can provide serious efficiency boosts. 
  • Integrations: While it has only four native integrations, it also works with Zapier to provide endless non-native connections with an open API. 
  • Price: Because they don’t charge for additional customers and vendors, each of GUIDEcx’s pricing packages is for four users. They do not publish those prices, though, only the details of their Professional, Premium, and Enterprise models. 

• Security: All three levels come with SOC 2 compliance, though there are scarce other details about the company’s security commitment. 

Overall, GUIDEcx is a well-liked resource, though some limitations need to be addressed. For some companies, there may be better options overall. 

Reviews

Here is a quick look at the reviews from some trusted marketplaces:

9. Podium

Stand up and shout! It’s Podium, the website chat tool that connects companies and their customers with ease. 

Key features

Everything in Podium is meant to make a connection with your customers easier. Here are some of its top features:

• Reviews: The website chat feature includes an automatic call to action that helps drive reviews, improving your brand’s reputation.
• Text campaigns: Get your website visitors onto a text list that can be used to send out sale information, reminders for upcoming charges, or other critical news about the company. 
• In-conversation payment: You can request payment through the chat feature or texts, making it extremely easy for your customers to stay updated with their accounts. 

Podium tracks important customer data, allowing you to better target them with marketing and sales outreach. 

Evaluation

How does Podium rank among our five criteria? Check it out. 

• Technical expertise: There’s almost no expertise needed to set up Podium for your business. Anyone can use it, provided they know how to text.  

• • Usability: By combining all of your lead generators into one place, your sales and success teams can follow up without swapping through various apps. 
  • Integrations: If it’s going to be an all-in-one messaging platform, it needs integrations – and it doesn’t disappoint. With over 100, Podium easily fits into the rest of your workflow.
  • Price: This kind of platform doesn’t come cheap, though. The Essentials package starts at $342/month and can only facilitate up to three team members. For larger operations, the Standard plan runs $516/month. 

• Security: Following the ISO risk framework, Podium encrypts all data in transit and at rest. It also is experienced in HIPAA compliance, as it works with several healthcare providers. 

Overall, Podium shows well in almost everything, though small businesses could balk at the price. For most customers, though, that number is quickly paid off as the messaging app saves resources and generates more conversions. 

Reviews

Here is a quick look at the reviews from some trusted marketplaces:

Comparison table

Here’s a quick look at all eight tools, and how customers have reviewed them. 

Deciding which customer success management software is best for you

Choosing the right customer success software is essential for ensuring customers have a positive experience with your business. When selecting a platform, consider the above criteria and review each solution carefully to ensure you make the best choice for your organization. 

Here are five questions to ask about your operation to help you make the best decision: 

• What is your customer service team’s current workload? 
• Do you need a platform for managing multiple channels, such as email and chat? 
• Are there any specific integrations you require? 
• Is price a significant factor in your decision-making?  
• Does security and compliance matter to you or your customers? 

Evaluating these criteria will help ensure that you select the best customer success software for your business. 

Ready to find the right platform to launch or scale your customer training? 

Our Customer Training Evaluation Guide breaks down the key features, questions, and considerations you need to make the best choice for your business. 

Download it now and set your program up for success!