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9 Must-Have Integrations to Level Up Customer Success Software
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It’s generally considered good life advice to forgo trying to be all things to all people – and the same goes for products.
At ChurnZero, we’re humble enough to admit that Customer Success software can’t do it all, and quite frankly, it shouldn’t. Not when there are other products leaders dedicated to being the best at what they do in their respective functional areas.
We stick to our circle of competence and focus on our area of expertise: Customer Success software. Not CRMs. Not product management. Not chat.
It’s Customer Success for us.
And by virtue of that, it’s essential that Customer Success software – like a Customer Success team – plays well with the others it works alongside if the customer is to truly come first.
Using third-party integrations to bring company-wide customer data into a central hub that’s designed to automate and optimize a Customer Success Manager’s output is when Customer Success really becomes a force to be reckoned with.
Use these essential integrations for Customer Success software to fully wield the power of your customer data and create more enlightened customer experiences.
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Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software
What is a CRM?
CRMs primarily function as a relationship information database. They focus on opportunity management – like the manual activities that typically exist within accounts. Its workstreams rely upon inputs such as sale’s manual data entry and gut instincts. Since buyers typically follow a uniform purchasing journey, CRMs are ideal for managing a sales pipeline. (If you think a CRM is suitable for post-sale customer management, you’re wrong and here’s why.)
Who owns it?
Sales or Sales Operations
What are the benefits of integrating with Customer Success software?
- Get direct access to CRM data, such as accounts, contacts, opportunities, cases, subscription data (renewal date, license count, total contract value, etc.) as well as custom fields and parent-child relationships.
- Use these data fields to create segments, trigger alerts, run automated playbooks, send NPS campaigns, manage customer journeys, and calculate ChurnScores.
Examples: Salesforce, HubSpot, Netsuite, and Copper
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Customer Support/Service Software and Ticketing Systems
What is customer support software?
Customer support software manages and monitors customer requests, queries, and service-related matters. The tool is used to facilitate and track interactions between support agents and customers via live chat, social media, phone, and email (often ticketing) as well as to create knowledge bases and other self-service customer help resources.
Who owns it?
Customer Support/Service or IT Operations
What are the benefits of integrating with Customer Success software?
- Stay aware of all customer issues by mapping customer support tickets to accounts and contacts.
- Be your customers’ champion and help resolve tickets faster without crossing wires with Customer Support teams by quickly accessing tickets in your Customer Success software.
- Get direct access to customer support data such as a ticket’s submitter details, conversation thread, priority, and status.
- Use customer support data to build segments and trigger alerts and automation, such as:
- “More than X open tickets in the last 30 days” segment to configure alerts and playbooks that automatically create tasks for CSM follow up. You can also include ticket volume as part of a customer’s health score.
- “Customer gone quiet” segment to inform you if a customer who was formerly engaging with Support has suddenly gone away.
- “Support needs your attention on this ticket” alert, which triggers when Support fills out a “CSM Alert” field in their Customer Support software.
- “Bad satisfaction rating” alert so CSMs can immediately reach out to frustrated customers who cite having a poor experience.
Examples: Zendesk, Help Scout, Jira Software, Salesforce Desk, and Freshdesk
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Product Analytics Software
What is product analytics software?
Product analytics software tracks user engagement with your product including page and feature events. This tool is used to create better customer experiences by analyzing user behavioral data to identify popular and underused functionality, patterns, and roadblocks.
Who owns it?
Product, Development, or Design
What are the benefits of integrating with Customer Success software?
- Know exactly how customers use (or don’t use) your product and analyze usage trends over time by capturing feature and page events as well as time-in-app metrics and online status monitoring at the contact and account level.
- Use product usage data to create segments, automate tasks and communications, influence health scores, and trigger alerts and in-app messaging.
- For example, create an alert if a customer event decreases by X% over Y time period as a sharp decline in logins or core function usage indicates they are no longer engaged with your product.
Examples: Mixpanel, Pendo, Intercom, and Segment
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Subscription Billing Software
What is subscription billing software?
Subscription billing software manages recurring billing and payments for products and services along with accounting and analytics.
Who owns it?
Finance
What are the benefits of integrating with Customer Success software?
- Get direct access to billing data, such as subscriptions, contracts, invoices, charges, add-ons, and coupons.
- Track free-trial users for upsell opportunities to convert to paid users.
- Use billing data to create segments and alerts in your Customer Success software. For example, to collect unpaid invoices faster, create a segment for “Overdue invoices exceeding X days” to power a playbook that automates customer communication using the following cadence:
- Day 0 to 20: Accounting communicates with the customer
- Day 20 to 40: CSM communicates with the customer (email executive sponsor and POCs at day 25, 30, and 35)
- Day 40: Final internal notice to customer
- Day 50: Final external collections notice to customer
Examples: QuickBooks, Chargebee, and Stripe
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Project Management Software
What is project management software?
Project management software plans and tracks project-based work, resource management, and stakeholder collaboration.
Who owns it?
Professional Services, Product, Development, Operations, or Marketing
What are the benefits of integrating with Customer Success software?
- Map projects and tasks managed by other internal teams to an account or contact.
- Get a panoramic view of all customer work to keep informed and monitor active projects’ progress against major milestones or setbacks
- Use project data to create segments or trigger alerts and tasks for Customer Success based on a project’s next steps
Example: Wrike and Teamwork Projects
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Email Clients
What is an email client?
An email client (like Gmail or Apple Mail) allows you to receive, send, and organize email. This is different from an email service provider which enables mass email marketing or blasts.
Who owns it?
Everyone
What are the benefits of integrating with Customer Success software?
- Review and respond to customer emails directly within your Customer Success software and map email threads to contacts.
- As a Customer Success leader, gain full visibility into customer communication across your entire team by managing email from within a central hub.
- Use customer email engagement and patterns (such as a customer not responding to your emails in over a month) to create segments for focused outreach and escalations as well as influence health scores
Examples: Gmail and Microsoft Office 365
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Net Promoter Score ® (NPS) Software
What is NPS software?
NPS software is used to create, deploy, and manage NPS surveys. NPS surveys produce a score that is used as a customer satisfaction benchmark to measure your customers’ likelihood to recommend you to a friend or colleague. Check out our Churnopedia entry on NPS for a more detailed explanation.
Who owns it?
Product or Customer Success
What are the benefits of integrating with Customer Success software?
- Solicit feedback to measure customer sentiment toward your product or business.
- Understand customer satisfaction at the individual contact level and at the account level to inform your customer engagement strategy.
- Automate follow-up responses to surveys based on the rating given, so you can proactively engage an upset customer or solicit a review from a happy customer.
- Deliver surveys through email or in-app messages to maximize engagement opportunities.
- Integrate NPS into a customer’s overall health score to factor in subjective customer feedback.
Note: ChurnZero has a native NPS feature, but can also integrate third-party NPS tools into its platform.
Examples: ChurnZero’s NPS feature, AskNicely, and Wootric
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Chat Software
What is chat software?
Chat software is a live messaging platform that facilitates instant messages between a vendor and customer. It can be used by Customer Support to field incoming queries and troubleshoot issues or by Sales and Marketing to engage and qualify prospects visiting your company’s webpage.
Who owns it?
Customer Support/Service, Sales, or Marketing
What are the benefits of integrating with Customer Success software?
- Stay informed and keep an accessible log of customer chats by mapping conversation threads to accounts and contacts
- Use chat data to create segments and trigger alerts, such as creating an alert for “Customers with X number of active chats with support team” as that may indicate ongoing service issues.
Example: Intercom Conversations and Help Scout
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Webinar Software
What is webinar software?
Webinar software is a virtual seminar platform that creates live or recorded video presentations. Its typically used to host online events, trainings, product demonstrations, and sales pitches.
Who owns it?
Marketing or Sales
What are the benefits of integrating with Customer Success software?
- Easily reference what webinar content your customers consume – whether its team trainings, thought leadership, or product demonstrations – by mapping webinar registrants and attendees to contacts
- Reach out to customers with additional topical content, conduct timely training follow up, or nudge them along using webinar data to create segments and trigger alerts
- Build an automated playbook around a segment of product webinar attendees who are qualified candidates for related upsell opportunities.
Example: GoToWebinar
It’s All About the (Unified) View
Knowledge is power. The more customer data you have at your fingertips, the more productive and effective you become, and in turn, the better you serve your customer.
So, it’s time you quit pestering your Product team for usage data, hounding your Finance team for invoice details, and crafting workarounds to carry out basic tasks in a CRM that was never built for you.
Stop compromising your work and give your Customer Success software the integrations and insights it needs to make your team the best possible version of itself.
Here’s a full list of ChurnZero integrations if you’d like to learn more.
Customer Success Around the Web
- Who Owns SaaS Customer Expansion and Renewal? – Determining if Sales or Customer Success should own customer expansion and renewals is the age-old SaaS question.
- The Ultimate Guide to Growing and Keeping Your Customer Base– Use this guide to learn how you can build and retain your current customer base.
- The Importance of Sharing Customer Data– See how to avoid being data hoarder.
Fighting Churn is a newsletter of inspiration, ideas and news on customer success, churn, renewal and other stuff and is curated by ChurnZero.