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New Digital Strategies Are Helping Companies Improve Customer Experience, Product Adoption, and Customer Retention

San Francisco, California (October 18th, 2023) – Gainsight, the world’s leading Customer Success platform, today announced the results of a study on Customer Success trends. The big takeaway from the Customer Success Index (CS Index) North America 2023 report, created in partnership with Benchmarkit, a B2B SaaS research firm, is that almost half (48%) of the SaaS companies surveyed for the report have a formal Digital Customer Success program focused on adding more efficiency to their growth strategies.

Over the past decade, Customer Success has evolved from a standalone business unit focused on helping companies avoid churn and downsell to its role today as a key business strategy for driving more efficient revenue growth. Meanwhile, as SaaS companies strive to achieve these goals while reducing operating and headcount costs, Digital Customer Success, which blends human and digital touchpoints to support customers, has become more popular. According to the CS Index, Digital Customer Success is gaining ground in companies at both the lower ($1M-$10M) and higher ($100M+) end of the revenue spectrum.

The research was conducted earlier this year to benchmark Customer Success organizational structures, the presence of Digital Customer Success tools and strategies, and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). More than 400 North American SaaS companies participated in the research across a wide range of company sizes, annual contract values, industry segments, and geographic locations. Respondents included every level of management, including C-level executives, SVPs, VPs, and Directors, both inside and outside a company’s Customer Success organization.

“While most companies in the current market are trying to ‘do more with less’ and hope for the best, we see a much bigger opportunity to ‘act differently’ with a Digital-First approach to Customer Success,” said Tyler McNally, SVP of Customer Experience & Customer Success Operations at Gainsight. “With automation, hyper-personalization, and self-service, Digital Customer Success allows companies to get even closer to their customers while simultaneously achieving scale and efficiency. That’s why we predict that in five years, Digital Customer Success experiences will be table stakes.”

As the global economic markets continue to evolve, reducing the cost to acquire, retain, and grow customers continues to be a top priority for every B2B Technology company. “Understanding which customers are best positioned for potential expansion and which are most prone to churn is a by-product of having the right Customer Success responsibilities, objectives, and measurements in place”, said Ray Rike, CEO of Benchmarkit. “This research provides a detailed look at how companies are using metrics and Digital Customer Success strategies to drive more efficient customer retention and customer expansion.”

Following are the main highlights from the CS Index North America 2023 report:

Customer Success Has Matured

A whopping 98% of companies are maintaining or increasing their investment in Customer Success. Companies are also recognizing the value of Customer Success operations to drive efficiency and further ROI: The number of companies with a dedicated Customer Success Operations organization has more than doubled, from 20% in 2022 to 41% this year.

Increasing Scale and Efficiency is the Top Goal for Digital Customer Success

More than half (59%) of respondents said their number one objective for Digital Customer Success is increasing Customer Success scale and efficiency, followed by improving customer experience and product adoption (19%), and customer retention (18%). 

Digital Customer Success is Being Used to Drive a Wide Range of Programs

Over two-thirds (67%) of respondents said the top use of Digital Customer Success is to drive product adoption. But the data shows companies are using Digital Customer Success for many other reasons, too: 61% said it was primarily for onboarding, and 51% said advocacy/NPS.

Digital Customer Success Simplifies and Amplifies Traditional Channels

Digital events/content (webinars, conferences, etc.) were the top channels for Digital Customer Success, according to 78% of respondents, followed by marketing automation (65%), in-app guides and messages (56%), and Customer Success platforms (also 56%).

KPIs Are Still in their Infancy with Digital Customer Success

While only 27% of companies with a Digital Customer Success program have well-established KPIs, 60% said their KPIs are currently “under construction.” An interesting finding: Companies that do have Digital Customer Success KPIs are using the same metrics as they do for human-led Customer Success (renewal rates, net revenue retention, logo churn). 

Download the full report here.

About Gainsight

Gainsight, the world’s leading Customer Success platform, helps businesses drive efficient growth by unifying the post-sales customer journey. Its innovative set of customer success, customer education, product experience, and community management products are used by companies of all sizes and industries, including nearly 200 publicly traded organizations. With Gainsight, it’s never been easier to start and scale customer acquisition, retention, and expansion. Learn how leading companies such as GE Digital, SAP Concur, and Box use Gainsight at www.gainsight.com. 

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Contact:

Aarthi Rayapura

Senior Director, Editorial and Content

arayapura@gainsight.com

New Out-of-the-Box, Bi-directional Sync Improves Data Hygiene and Empowers Go-to-Market Collaboration

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, OCTOBER 4, 2023 – Gainsight, today announced a new out-of-the-box, bi-directional integration with Hubspot’s leading CRM platform, making it easier for businesses to obtain deep customer insights and deliver increased value along the entire customer journey. Together, Hubspot and Gainsight now offer one unified view of customer health, sentiment, and success, along with account engagement and other touchpoints. The integration deepens the partnership between the two leading software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies and enables joint customers to deliver faster time-to-value with unmatched data accuracy, improved workflows, and greater go-to-market potential.

“Gainsight is the leading Customer Success Platform in the market today and we’re excited to join forces and offer our customers unified data,” said Scott Brinker, VP Platform Ecosystem at HubSpot. “In the current market, as more and more companies are focusing on retaining and growing their existing customers to increase Net Revenue Retention (NRR), having a single view of the customer journey is paramount. With the integration, our joint customers will be able to maximize the potential of both solutions to fuel their growth.”

Customers who leverage Hubspot CRM and Gainsight together can benefit from the deepest bi-directional sync in the market. With a simple, turnkey way for one-click visibility into customer data, they can now:

1. Improve Data Hygiene: The bi-directional sync eliminates data gaps and makes it easier for teams to share customer data and work together to maximize customer retention and expansion. 

2. Empower Go-to-Market Collaboration: Gainsight users can push their data directly into Hubspot and track NPS, customer sentiment, health scores, risks, plans, and insights within the context of outbound customer touchpoints and account data like contacts, deals, and engagements.
   

• • Customer Success Managers can sync all customer touchpoints, such as emails, calls, meetings, and notes made by account teams with entries on Gainsight Timeline.

• • Account Managers can plan and execute contact outreach sequences using the context of account health, customer sentiment, and renewal likelihood.

• • Go-to-market teams can proactively plan and execute renewal strategies and improve gross revenue retention. 

3. Enhance Productivity: Companies can now keep Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success team activities focused on their respective systems of record while at the same time keeping diverse teams in the loop with bi-directional visibility into notes, emails, and other customer touch-points across both systems.
4. Drive Efficient Growth: With deeper insights into customer health and automated plays to help deliver value and outcomes faster and more predictably, businesses can become more adept at turning their customers into a growth engine while, in turn, lowering their customer acquisition costs (CAC). 

“Hubspot is one of the world’s leading CRM platforms, and now, users can get the full picture of customer sentiment and renewal likelihood,” said Karl Rumelhart, President of Products, Technology, and Operations at Gainsight. “This bi-directional integration gives them a richer, more contextual view of their user experiences, and how their accounts are trending. Together, Hubspot and Gainsight create one of the most powerful tools for customer retention and expansion in the market.”.  

Gainsight and Hubspot customers and future customers can learn more about the integration here.

About Gainsight

Gainsight,  the world’s leading Customer Success platform, helps businesses drive efficient growth by unifying the post-sales customer journey. Its innovative set of customer success, customer education, product experience, and community management products are used by companies of all sizes and industries, including nearly 200 publicly traded organizations. With Gainsight, it’s never been easier to start and scale customer acquisition, retention, and expansion. Learn how leading companies such as GE Digital, SAP Concur, and Box use Gainsight at www.gainsight.com.

Contact:

Aarthi Rayapura
Senior Director, Editorial and Content
arayapura@gainsight.com

Gainsight Essentials, New Generative AI Capabilities, and Northpass Acquisition Drive Growth

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, SEPTEMBER 7, 2023 – Gainsight, the world’s leading Customer Success platform, continued to showcase strong momentum in the first half of its fiscal year, ending July 31st. Growth was driven by increasing demand for Gainsight Essentials, the company’s purpose-built offering to help businesses start and scale with its core Customer Success product for under $2k per month and with onboarding in as little as two weeks. Since launching in March 2022, nearly 300 companies have signed up for Gainsight Essentials.

Gainsight added several high-profile customers over the last two quarters, including more than 30 who switched from starter Customer Success products. This continues a trend that’s seen more than one customer per week moving to Gainsight over the past 24 months. Notable new customer logos in the first half of the fiscal year include Cleverbridge, CloudApp, Fusion Medical Staffing, Litmos, Parachute Health, OneSpan, Onfido, Safe Security, SAE International, Sisense, Spear Education, Toro, and TrustRadius.

In May this year, Gainsight announced several new generative AI product features at its 10th annual Pulse Conference held at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. The event was attended by more than 3,000 Customer Success leaders. And in July, the company completed its acquisition of Northpass, the leading customer education platform. This further solidifies the company’s position as the industry’s only true Customer Success Platform capable of serving the entire post-sales customer journey, from product adoption and high-touch customer success management to self-service customer communities and customer training.

“In today’s economy, acquiring new customers is more difficult and expensive than ever, making customer retention and expansion the primary growth driver for not only every SaaS company but any company with a recurring revenue model, no matter their stage or size. Plain and simple, everyone from CEOs and CFOs to investors and shareholders are looking at Net Dollar Retention (NDR) as the modern-day metric to gauge overall success and valuation,” said Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight.

Gainsight’s platform has also gained favor with CFOs and CIOs focused on vendor consolidation, as proven by a more than 25% increase in the number of customers leveraging more than one of its products in the first half of the year. 

“Today more than ever, Customer Success leaders need to be able to clearly prove and articulate the value of their team and resources and not be looked at as a cost-center,” said Kellie Capote, Chief Customer Officer at Gainsight. “Every CFO and executive team—including our own—are scrutinizing spend across their organizations, starting with software. Gainsight has been fortunate to support the market with tools such as our Essentials offering. And now, our M&A strategy and innovation around generative AI is helping companies significantly reduce their CS spend and resourcing by giving them one, AI-powered platform to make their entire post-sales journey more efficient and effective.”

Additional highlights from Gainsight’s first half of FY24 include:

New Generative AI Customer Success Capabilities 

Gainsight announced several new generative AI features at its annual Pulse conference in June. The new capabilities are part of the company’s Horizon AI feature set, launched in 2021, and include Customer Cheat Sheet, an AI-generated narrative customer summary; Survey Takeaways, an AI-generated list of the key themes running through survey responses; Smart Search, an AI-powered tool that uses natural language queries to find the right information and suggest the right action; and Setup Assist, an AI-powered interactive chat that helps automate the customer journey.

Pulse Conference Turns Ten and Expands to More Cities

Gainsight’s Pulse conference turned ten this year, once again gathering the world’s largest community of customer-centric leaders and practitioners for three days of networking and education on a range of topics on customer success, product management, community, and customer education. Growing demand and enthusiasm for Pulse content also led Gainsight to announce three additional events coming this Fall—Pulse Encore in New York City and Austin, and Pulse Europe in Amsterdam. 

Thought Leadership with New Research and Frameworks

Gainsight released its comprehensive The Evolution of Customer Success report, which included data from North America and Europe on Customer Success capacity planning, compensation, and new strategies such as Digital Customer Success and Community Management.

The company has also seen remarkable success with its thought leadership in Digital Customer Success, including the release of a Maturity Model, an ongoing webinar series, and keynote presentations. CEO Nick Mehta and CCO Kellie Capote are also working on a book on Digital Customer Success which is slated to launch at Pulse, 2024.

The Software Report’s Top 100 Software Companies of 2023 Award

Gainsight was ranked #1 in the Customer Management category and ranked #10 overall in The Software Report’s “Top 100 Software Companies of 2023” Awards. The annual award recognizes industry leaders based on “a multitude of factors, including product functionality, customer satisfaction, corporate reputation, innovative capabilities, organizational depth, ESG involvement, and long-term viability, among numerous other criteria.”

Gainsight’s Product Experience Solution Earns Multiple Awards 

Gainsight Product Experience solution was named the winner of multiple awards from TrustRadius, a leader in enterprise software reviews. In its Winter 2023 Best Of competition, TrustRadius honored Gainsight PX with awards for Best Relationship, Best Value for Price, and Best Feature Set in the Product Analytics category. The award winners were determined by product reviews submitted to TrustRadius via its website between July and December, 2022.

About Gainsight

Gainsight’s innovative platform helps companies of all sizes and industries drive durable growth. It offers a powerful set of customer success, product experience, and community engagement solutions that together enable businesses to scale efficiently, create alignment, and put the customer at the heart of innovation. With Gainsight, it’s never been easier to drive acquisition, increase product adoption, prevent churn, and grow with renewals and expansion. Learn how leading companies such as GE Digital, SAP Concur, and Box use Gainsight at www.gainsight.com. 

Contact:

Aarthi Rayapura
Senior Director, Editorial and Content
arayapura@gainsight.com