11 best customer success software for businesses in 2026
Word Count: 5222 words | Est. Reading Time: 35 mins
If there’s one thing businesses have learned, it’s that keeping customers happy is just as important as winning them in the first place. Customers will always share their experiences with others, whether through word of mouth or on social media.
If they’re happy with your product or service, they’ll recommend it to others. But if they’ve had a negative experience, it becomes easy to persuade potential customers to stay away from your business.
That’s why you need customer success software to help you proactively manage customer relationships, ensure satisfaction, and reduce churn.
In fact, research shows that 83.6% of companies that monitor and optimize their customer success metrics expect revenue expansion. Another 88% strongly believe that it can reduce the number of customers who stop doing business with the company.
Image via Vitally
AI-powered support systems, tailored onboarding experiences, and data-driven customer engagement strategies have become essential tools in elevating customer success.
That’s why having the right customer success software is critical. It helps you track whether your strategies are truly working and ensures you’re meeting your customers’ expectations.
In this post, we’ll expose the best customer success software every business needs. These platforms can help you track customer health scores, improve first contact resolution, make onboarding smoother, and much more.
When compiling this list of the best customer success software, we considered several factors. We focused on platforms that actually help customer success teams drive better outcomes, reduce churn, and build solid customer relationships.
Core features that matter: Every customer success software needs to cover the essentials: tracking customer health scores, managing success plans, and providing customer data in real time. We prioritized customer success software with features that allow CS teams to identify churn risks, monitor usage patterns, and manage the full customer journey without relying on too many manual tasks.
Usability and user-friendly design: Even the most advanced customer success software is worthless if customer success managers and teams can’t actually use it day to day. We looked for user-friendly platforms that make customer information easy to access and offer custom dashboards, allowing teams to take a proactive approach instead of reacting too late.
Data quality and analytics: Customer success is only as strong as the data behind it. That’s why we focused on customer success software that delivers accurate product data, usage insights, and other success metrics, allowing teams to identify opportunities, track product adoption, and set up automated campaigns to reduce potential churn.
Business impact and revenue growth: Customer success involves both customer satisfaction and driving revenue growth. We selected customer success software that can improve the customer experience, support contract renewals, expand opportunities, and enable personalized outreach, allowing companies to offer more customer value throughout the lifecycle.
Support for teams and scalability: Finally, we looked at how well each platform supports growing startups and enterprise customer success teams. The best customer success software allows businesses to manage customers at scale, streamline task management, and enable co-founders, sales, and CS teams to align on a shared customer success strategy.
11 best customer success software for your business
Now, let’s take an in-depth look at some of the best customer success software available.
timetoreply is an email analytics software designed for customer-facing teams, including customer success, customer service, and account managers. It solves a single, critical business problem: slow email response times.
The software seamlessly integrates with existing email platforms like Gmail, Outlook, and Microsoft 365 to monitor how quickly your team responds to incoming customer emails.
With access to real-time data, shared mailbox reporting, and customizable alerts, timetoreply helps you identify bottlenecks, rebalance team members’ workloads, and coach support agents to improve communication.
This gives you complete visibility into team performance, so you can identify gaps, make improvements, and ensure a consistent standard of service across all email communications.
Key features
Live dashboard for team managers provides instant visibility into key metrics like average response time, first contact resolution, and email volume per individual
You can set specific goals and get a notification when a conversation is nearing or has breached its set time limit, preventing missed emails
The email reporting software provides customizable daily, weekly, and monthly reports on individual and team performance
Agent leaderboards enable comparative reporting between team members, making it easy to identify top performers and provide training for others
The timetoreply extension allows team members to track their own performance, manage time better, and boost email productivity
The customer service software syncs with popular customer relationship management (CRM) platforms like HubSpot, Zapier, and Salesforce
You don’t need to change your workflow since it integrates with your existing email platform
The leaderboard and alerts create a culture where teams strive to respond in a timely manner
Cons
It’s highly specialized and doesn’t track response time across other channels like phone, chat, or social media
Although it’s beneficial for coaching, some employees may perceive it as a monitoring tool if not implemented with a clear focus on development and fairness
Pricing
timetoreply offers three paid plans with a 15-day free trial:
Essentials: $36/mailbox/month
Pro: $44/mailbox/month
Premier: Contact support
Image via timetoreply
Tool level
Beginner/Intermediate
Usability
User-friendly with straightforward analytics
Pro tip: Create a “next reply time” SLA in timetoreply to ensure agents maintain a swift email follow-up speed for ongoing conversations, preventing customer frustration and maximizing the positive impact of a fast initial response.
Gainsight is a popular customer success software for mid-to-large enterprises. It operationalizes the entire customer journey, from onboarding to retention. This helps customer success teams reduce churn and increase revenue.
The customer success software centralizes vast amounts of customer data, such as product usage, sentiments, and relationship strength. It provides a single source of truth for customer health, allowing teams to take swift action on risk signals.
Customer 360 and Health provide AI-driven customer health insights from multiple data points to flag potential churn risks and identify opportunities
Journey orchestration allows teams to deliver consistent, personalized experiences to customers at scale
Success plans and playbooks enable you to create goal-based plans for customers, track milestones, and ensure internal teams get real-time updates
With revenue optimization, you can convert customer signals into Customer Success Qualified Leads (CSQLs) to maximize expansion opportunities
The customer success software automates success analysis across calls, meetings, and emails, showing where you’re over- or under-investing resources
Customer feedback provides insight into Voice of the Customer data for strategic planning, timely follow-ups, and product prioritization
Pros
It offers broad features, making it ideal for large-scale customer success strategies
The customer success software has excellent data aggregation, which provides a comprehensive view of the customer data
Its AI features and automation reduce manual tasks and improve team efficiency
Cons
The customer success software may feel overwhelming for smaller teams
Its pricing may be too high for startups or early-stage businesses
Pricing
This customer success software offers two paid plans:
Essentials: Request pricing
Enterprise: Request pricing
Tool level
Advanced
Usability
Although the customer success software has robust features, teams require training before they can start using its full functionality.
Pro tip: Start with the main customer success features like health scores and automated campaigns before rolling out more complex analytics to avoid overwhelming your team.
ChurnZero is a leading customer success software platform designed to help businesses understand their customers intimately and reduce churn. Its proprietary AI engine, CS AI™, accesses and analyzes customer data to discover how they’re feeling and what they may need next.
This customer success software ensures you get clarity into customer behavior so you can create strategies that will keep them happy. Also, if you’re looking for customer success automation, ChurnZero’s AI agents offer consistent and fast customer interactions.
Key features
Snapshot AI provides instant, context-rich account overviews and summaries for meetings, saving customer success managers hours of manual review
You’ll get notifications via the ChurnZero app, email, or Slack about key account changes, such as a drop in product usage or a contact leaving
Its customer journey builder allows you to create automated pathways that are customizable for different customer segments
The customer success software provides customizable, real-time health scores based on the customer service metrics you choose to predict churn risk
Engagement AI tracks customer discussions, keeping you abreast of emerging priorities, recurring challenges, and untapped growth opportunities
You can segment customers into different groups based on negative/positive NPS scores, customers who use or don’t use specific features, and more
Pros
It’s dedicated to fighting churn with advanced health scoring and action-oriented features, making it the ideal customer success software for retention
With automated playbooks, real-time alerts, and in-app communication tools, you can easily scale customer success
Its AI excels at turning customer data into actionable insights, allowing you to make quick decisions
Cons
The cost is not publicly listed and is customized, which can make initial budget planning more difficult
Like most robust customer success software, users note that initial implementation can take several weeks to integrate and fully configure
Pricing
Pricing for this customer success software is available upon request
Tool level
Intermediate/Advanced
Usability
Once set up, ChurnZero is user-friendly with intuitive dashboards.
Pro tip: Create and launch surveys directly in your app with ChurnZero’s built-in survey for ease of measuring KPIs like customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.
Totango is a flexible customer success software built for both customer success and sales teams. It’s built with a growth mindset, allowing you to access unlimited scalability and insights from customer data, helping cross-functional teams meet their goals.
Like most customer success software, Totango augments your team’s effort with artificial intelligence. This way, you can identify opportunities and risks early. The company also organizes live events and online courses, so you can connect and collaborate with peers on best practices to grow your business.
Key features
You can integrate customer data, allowing all team members access to customer health scores and business insights for overall success
The customer success software supports multiple products for handling complex account structures, including parent and child accounts
Actionable playbooks and triggers help you identify key indicators of churn, potential for upselling, and expansion opportunities
With custom reports and dashboards, you can visualize trends over time and track changes for your team’s data
The customer success software allows you to engage customers using email campaigns that support your renewal and expansion goals
You can integrate voice of the customer programs into your workflow to capture customer feedback and extract meaningful insights for improvement
Pros
It handles high-volume data and complex account structures well
The customer success software allows you to tailor customer health scores based on different segments for accuracy
With targeted email marketing, you can scale your strategies and engage customers better
Cons
Users found that integrating data from multiple sources may require several steps, which delays data analysis
The customer success software may have syncing issues with third-party tools, causing delays or data mismatches
Pricing
Totango offers two paid plans for its dedicated customer success software:
Enterprise: Contact sales
Premier: Contact sales
Image via Totango
Tool level
Intermediate/Advanced
Usability
This customer success software has a steep learning curve, as you can’t configure most features without contacting support.
Pro tip: Instead of starting from scratch, use Totango’s SuccessBLOC to design workflows for onboarding, email communication, and the entire post-sales journey.
Built for SaaS businesses, Planhat is a modern data-driven customer success software for managing customers, minimizing churn, and growing your revenue. It also doubles as customer service software for support and sales teams.
This customer success software also has native AI capabilities for acquiring, retaining, and growing customers. It automatically enriches customer data with firmographics, intent, product usage, and buying signals, reducing the need for manual research.
Key features
Data consolidation connects your CRM, support tickets, customer interactions, and product analytics into a single, consistent data model
Its AI model hub allows you to choose between AI models, such as Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, or your own custom LLM, to create automated workflows
With AI triage and summaries, CS teams can auto-classify, summarize, and prioritize customer communications, providing a better customer experience
Its writing assistant enables you to reply customers quickly as well as send personalized email communications at scale
Customer handovers allow customer success managers to smoothly transition customers between teams without losing context or speed
The customer success software unifies time tracking, project management, and customer collaboration to fast-track customer onboarding
Pros
Planhat allows you to set notifications based on your own criteria and push notifications to Slack
Its flexible data model supports B2B relationships and complex hierarchies, allowing you to understand the real situation at a glance
Akita is a customer success software designed for B2B SaaS businesses, particularly start-ups and mid-market companies. It pulls data from CRMs, customer service software, and customer usage platforms into a unified dashboard, allowing managers to act fast before customer churn happens.
When it comes to segmentation, Akita understands that no two businesses are alike. It allows you to build updated targeted lists from your customer data. You can also see how each segment is performing over time, allowing you to identify upsell opportunities.
Key features
Customizable health scoring allows you to create scores for both accounts and contacts so that you can identify power users in struggling accounts
With a 360° customer view, you can see whether your KPIs are met to be sure customers are performing well
The customer success software connects with up to 100 SaaS tools, providing insight into your sales, support, voice of customer, and financial data
Built-in task management allows you to organize your customer success workload, add sub-tasks, files, comments, and create alerts for team members
Automated playbooks enable you to create repeatable customer success processes with automatic triggers when changes in health scores occur
Akita offers personalized dashboards for CS managers to track key metrics (MRR, LTV, churn risk) and view account health and performance at a glance
Pros
The customer success software extracts data from numerous sources, which is essential for informed decision-making
It positions itself as a solution for startups compared to the competition, offering a robust feature set with a shorter implementation time
Most features are customizable, allowing you to align with your company’s specific business model and customer journey
Cons
Some users have reported minor difficulties with certain integrations when trying to execute tasks
The analytics are limited compared to other customer success software
Pricing
Akita offers three paid plans:
Small Teams: $49/month
Growing Teams: $99/month
Enterprise Teams: $499/month
Image via Akita
Tool level
Beginner to Intermediate
Usability
User-friendly with minimal onboarding time.
Pro tip: Use Akita’s automation triggers to notify CSMs of health score dips, so they can step in before churn happens.
Similar to Planhat and Akita, this is another customer success software designed for SaaS businesses aiming to scale efficiently. Custify helps you understand your customer lifecycle, ensuring your team continues to renew their subscriptions.
It saves you time spent on gathering data, such as health scores and customer usage, so you can focus on strengthening relationships, not spreadsheets. You’ll get data insights like a pro-level tool, but the interface is straightforward enough for any CS manager to master quickly.
Key features
Automated health scores send real-time alerts when customer churn scores are high and provide insights that match the needs of each customer segment
Task manager automatically creates customer success tasks throughout the customer lifecycle, helping you know when a customer is stuck or about to churn
AI-generated playbooks allow you to automatically create action plans that are triggered by customer behavior or key events like upcoming renewal
The customer success software enables you to track Promoter Score and CSAT for individual users and accounts, in addition to health scores, for deeper insights
Its customer portal serves as a self-service resource repository, making the onboarding process smoother for customers
Custify alerts you of users that are ready for expansion, such as an upgrade or new features, and automatically pushes upselling opportunities to them
Pros
Teams can maximize the customer lifetime value (CLTV) through quick identification of upsell and cross-sell opportunities
It automates routine customer success tasks, so you can manage more accounts without missing any details and build high-value relationships
The customer success software provides outstanding support and onboarding resources
Cons
It lacks advanced collaboration tools across teams
The customer success software requires technical support for configuring integrations
Pricing
This customer success software offers custom pricing based on your company’s size and data volume.
Tool level
Intermediate
Usability
The customer success software is user-friendly, with a quick learning curve for CS managers.
Pro tip: Use Custify’s health score insights to segment accounts and tailor success plans for higher customer value.
Vitally is a modern, data-driven customer success software for fast-scaling SaaS teams. Its value proposition is to combine data, teams, and customers in one platform to maximize productivity.
When data is scattered across systems, customer success teams struggle to collaborate effectively. This customer success software is built with both efficiency and flexibility in mind.
The platform uses artificial intelligence to help you understand customer behavior and reduce churn. Vitally supports all businesses and is suitable for fast-growing startups, small to medium-sized businesses, and mid-market to enterprise-level organizations.
Key features
Vitally Hubs provide a centralized workspace for CSMs to manage their book of business, including projects, tasks, and customer activities
Notes allow you to track critical customer updates and activities, and you can create a template to standardize your data collection
The customer success software has a collaboration feature for connecting all conversation tools, so your team can have access to customer interactions on one tab
Vitally provides a discussion tab for cross-functional teams to work together and understand customer needs better
With Vitally AI, you can ask questions about your customers and their interactions, analyze sentiments, and plan the next steps
Its customizable dashboard allows you to create reports and track KPIs and the overall impact of your customer success strategies
Pros
It provides visual training resources, which makes it easy to get started almost immediately
Its collaboration tab enables you to create an onboarding hub for customers
Getting quick account summaries helps you and other teams prioritize customers who need attention
Cons
The project tab could be better with a Gantt chart and a subtask addition
This customer success software has integrations that may take time to set up
Pricing
The customer success software has three plans:
Tech-touch: Request pricing
Hybrid-touch: Request pricing
High-touch: Request pricing
Image via Vitally
Tool level
Intermediate/Advanced
Usability
With an intuitive user interface and learning resources, you can easily find your way around the customer success software.
Pro tip: Use Vitally’s note-taking AI during meetings with customers to work towards their expected outcomes and then use Docs to create materials that will help them get the most out of your business.
ClientSuccess is widely recognized for its straightforward approach and strong focus on building lasting customer relationships. The customer success software is designed to help SaaS companies manage, retain, and grow their existing customer base.
The platform is ideal for companies that want to strengthen customer satisfaction and reduce churn without getting lost in technical features.
Key features
Its health score aggregates customer usage, adoption, revenue, feedback, engagement, sentiment, and more
SuccessCycle enables you to maximize success across the customer lifecycle by simplifying onboarding and providing an engaging customer experience
The Goals feature allows you to set customer success goals, track progress in real-time, and leverage insights to make data-driven decisions
You can set up automated renewal workflows that trigger certain actions, ensuring no customer misses a renewal deadline
Its AI provides predictive analytics to identify at-risk customers, so you can map out strategies to win their trust
The customer success software has a customer portal where you can easily share tasks, documents, videos, and report on customer progress to stakeholders
Pros
Its AI can generate personalized email communications from prompts
It dramatically reduces the time spent on analyzing metrics like NPS, offering quick insights for improvement
The customer success software can analyze sentiments and outline your next steps from customer meetings and call notes
Cons
ClientSuccess relies on a third-party tool for NPS surveys, which lacks customization
Some users find the engagement tab a bit restrictive, as there’s no option for adding more fields to call notes and meeting summaries
Pricing
The customer success software offers three plans:
Startup package: Request pricing
Growth package: Request pricing
Enterprise package: Request pricing
Image via ClientSuccess
Tool level
Beginner/Intermediate
Usability
The customer success software is highly user-friendly with automated workflows.
Pro tip: Use ClientSuccess’s dynamic customer journey and AI features to forecast at-risk accounts and prioritize proactive engagement.
Freshdesk is a leading customer service platform that helps teams deliver fast, personalized support and build long-term customer relationships. It uses AI agents to augment the efforts of human customer service reps, ensuring that issues are resolved quickly and intelligently.
This customer success software centralizes tickets, conversations, and customer information, enabling success teams to view the entire customer journey from a single dashboard.
It also integrates seamlessly with apps like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Microsoft Teams without extra costs.
You can integrate your social channels, voice, and live chats with email support to respond faster across channels and reduce waiting time
Freshdesk provides a branded multilingual knowledge base, where customers can quickly find helpful articles and FAQs, reducing ticket volume
With intelligent routing, you can automatically assign tickets based on skills or workload, prioritizing fast resolutions and reducing administrative responsibilities
You can set up customer service SLA reminders for multiple departments and automatically escalate breaches
Its advanced analytics offers real-time data visibility with ready-to-share reports and CSAT surveys to get customers’ feedback
Pros
New users and small teams can start managing tickets with minimal training
It excels at bringing customer inquiries from multiple channels, helping teams track and manage customer interactions efficiently
Its AI capabilities save time, reduce stress on human agents, and increase customer satisfaction
Cons
AI features and advanced reporting are not available in the lowest-tier plan
Skill-based ticket assignment is only available in the enterprise plan
Pricing
Freshdesk plans and pricing include:
Growth: $18/month
Pro: $59/month
Pro + AI Copilot: $94/month
Enterprise: $95/month
Image via Freshdesk
Tool level
Beginner/Intermediate
Usability
Freshdesk is user-friendly with a clean, modern interface.
Pro tip: Connect Freshdesk with your CRM to give customer success managers full visibility into customer history and lifecycle stages.
Zendesk is one of the most recognized names in customer service, known for streamlining support and enhancing customer experiences. The platform also enables your team to tackle customer challenges using its AI tools.
This means customers are assured of quick ticket resolution, and support agents won’t be overwhelmed with work. Zendesk’s flexible analytics let you track the metrics that matter to your business, whether its ticket volume, average email response time, or customer satisfaction scores.
Key features
The ticketing system provides a single view for customer interaction from various channels, whether Slack, WhatsApp, email, or voice, without losing context
Agents can respond faster using pre-defined responses for common issues and quick access to a centralized knowledge base
With Zendesk, you can set up customizable workflows that send tickets to the most qualified agents and alerts for unresolved tickets
Its workforce management helps managers and agents balance workload and see whether they’re overachieving or need help
With Quick Reports, you can ask a question based on the insights you want, and Zendesk will answer instantly, allowing you to add more value to reports
The Knowledge tool allows you to build a branded help center by syncing content from multiple sources, so AI and human agents can quickly assist customers
Pros
Agents can pick up from the customer’s last interaction on another channel with a different agent without slowing down
The platform is suitable for businesses of all sizes, from start-ups to large enterprises
Its customization options allow you to tailor workflows, agent tools, and customer-facing interfaces
Cons
The numerous features might overwhelm new users
Advanced AI tools are sold as add-ons instead of being a part of the main plan
Pricing
Zendesk offers a 14-day free trial. Its plans and pricing are as follows:
Support Team: $25/agent/month
Suite Team: $69/agent/month
Suite Professional: $149/agent/month
Suite Enterprise: $219/agent/month
Image via Zendesk
Tool level
Beginner/Intermediate
Usability
You can start using Zendesk out of the box; no need for lengthy setups or intensive training.
Pro tip: Use Zendesk’s automation and alerts to identify customers who drop off before their issues are resolved so your team can find more efficient ways to serve customers.
Customer success software helps businesses track customer health, reduce churn, and strengthen long-term relationships. It gives customer success teams a 360-degree view of each customer by gathering data from customer relationship management (CRM) tools, product usage, support tickets, and communications.
With the right customer success software, your team can automate outreach, identify at-risk customers, and manage success plans. You can also discover new opportunities for revenue growth, such as customers who are ready for an upgrade.
2. What is the difference between CRM and customer success software?
A customer relationship management (CRM) platform manages sales pipelines and customer information. This involves tracking leads, deals, and communication history. Customer success software, on the other hand, goes beyond sales.
It helps you monitor customer health scores, engagement, and product adoption to ensure customers are satisfied and continue using your product or service. In short, CRMs help you bring in the customers, while customer success software ensures they enjoy the value of your product and even recommend you to others.
3. What is the best customer success software?
The best customer success software depends on your company’s size, goals, and data size. Top examples include:
timetoreply
Gainsight
ChurnZero
Totango
Planhat
Akita
Custify
Vitally
ClientSuccess
Freshdesk
Zendesk
4. What is the strongest factor for success?
Whether in business or customer relationships, the strongest factor for success is consistency. You need consistent effort, communication, and patience to build trust, momentum, and long-lasting results.
It involves the use of data and automation to deliver reliable, proactive support at every stage of the customer journey. When teams consistently act on customer insights, track health metrics, and personalize outreach, they create stronger relationships, reduce churn, and drive lasting success for both the customer and the business.
5. What are the 4 pillars of customer success?
The four pillars of customer success are as follows:
Onboarding: You’ll guide customers to gain value early and adopt products quickly
Retention: This involves reducing churn by maintaining engagement and customer satisfaction
Expansion: Your customer success software can help you identify upsell, cross-sell, and renewal opportunities
Advocacy: You can turn loyal customers into brand promoters through strong relationships and measurable success
6. What are the 4 C’s of customer loyalty?
Here are the 4 C’s of customer loyalty:
Credibility: This means building trust through reliable service and honest communication
Consistency: You must deliver a predictable, high-quality customer experience every time
Customization: Customers are unique and require personalized interactions to meet their individual needs
Care: It’s important to show genuine interest in customer success and well-being
7. What are the 4 Ps of customer engagement?
The 4 Ps of customer engagement describe the key elements that stimulate meaningful interactions. They are as follows:
Personalization: You should tailor experiences using customer data and behavior insights
Proactivity: Customers love it when you anticipate their needs before they ask
Persistence: Maintain ongoing, value-driven communication across the customer lifecycle
Partnership: Collaborate with customers to help them achieve their desired outcomes and long-term success
8. How does customer success software reduce churn?
Customer success software reduces churn by helping teams spot warning signs early and address them before customers leave. It tracks customer health scores, product usage, and behavior patterns to highlight accounts that need attention.
With built-in automation and personalized outreach, customer success managers can proactively engage customers and resolve issues quickly.
Whether you’re a growing startup looking for user-friendly customer success tools or an enterprise investing in advanced platforms, the goal is the same — to deliver value, reduce churn, and create customers who stay for the long run.
The best customer success software should fit your business model, empower your team, and turn insights into action. If you’re concerned about increasing customer satisfaction through quick ticket resolution, timetoreply might be your best bet.
Request a timetoreply demo now to help your customer-facing teams increase response time and boost productivity.
Improve Your Customer Experience with Quick Replies
Get live inbox alerts and reply quickly to customer emails with timetoreply
Head of Customer Success @ timetoreply Barry Blassoples is the Head of Customer Success at timetoreply, where he helps customer-facing teams boost revenue and protect brand reputation by providing actionable insights to improve their business email response times. He has over 15 years of leadership experience across customer success, sales, and marketing roles in high-growth tech companies.
Latest Blogs
The latest advice on reply time & lead response optimization, and email performance improvements
Time to see the insight, improvements and results for yourself?
Trusted by high-performing inbound sales teams and customer-facing teams globally. Close more deals and delight more customers with the faster, smarter, deeper email analytics and performance optimization software that works straight from your team’s inbox.
