If you were looking for an old friend, what social platform would you pick- Facebook or Medium? 

Your company is passionate about customer success and the experience you offer, and rightly so. But, choosing the wrong platform can cause huge damage in the long run.

This is the gap between what your business intelligence tool offers and your customer success goals. Customers are smart and your business also needs to be smart.

You need to pick the right CS software over a CRM tool or a BI tool- and we’ll tell you why.

What is Business Intelligence (BI) Software? 

BI or business intelligence software is a data analysis tool that collates data and analyses it into reports. It offers CS and other teams insights to manage data in a unified aspect.

What is Customer Success (CS) Software?

Customer Success software or CS tools extract data from various points across the customer journey and multiple platforms to offer a 360-degree customer persona. CS software also highlights the data that is critical for retention, growth, customer satisfaction, and customer value.

Why BI Software Is Not Enough for Customer Success (or What CS Software Does that BI Software Can’t)

BI tools perform the job of data collation well. However, they are not equipped to deal with customer success in a unified manner. Internal alignment of reports, tasks, workflows, projects, with the customer journey is not possible in BI tools. Here are some reasons you must choose a customer success software over a BI software if you are looking to increase customer satisfaction.

Customer Intelligence

BI software is great with collecting and organising data. However, when it comes to analysing the information for better customer experience and customer relationships, they fall short. A BI tool will not be helpful in improving decision making or taking the right step at any given point of time. A customer success tool will help you make the right decisions with nudges that push for customer success.

Automation

CS automation is an integral part of CS platforms. A BI software will collect information and share with stakeholders- but that’s about it. There are no features in a BI tool that will drive automation, improve search and result in a better customer experience. A CS platform has features that look into customer preferences, use data to trigger action, drive better engagement, and reduce overall costs. This automation via triggers, alerts, and playbooks that are available in a CS platform can be highly beneficial to simplify many aspects of customer service, fill gaps, and ensure better customer engagement.

Personalized Engagement

For any customer, a key component of engagement is personalisation. This is what CS platforms offer. You can engage with customers directly since you have data, people, and processes in one spot. A BI platform does not offer that. A CS platform can engage customers with a personal touch. Surveys, campaigns, and other touchpoints can be managed through a CS platform. This will help you build a good relationship with customers. For example- surveys can help you understand what the customers feel and what appeals to them. You can find scope for product improvement as well.

Workflow Optimization

It is tough to create efficient processes when the software is not built for a specific purpose. This hampers workflows and processes. Data is important, no doubt. Having a standardised workflow ensures there is a scalable process for customer experience. CS platforms can intelligently create steps to increase collaboration, empower better decision making, capture customer interactions, reduce risk of errors and create a better experience. By creating a solid experience, you can ensure better flow of work seamlessly reducing friction.

Customer Lifecycle Management

With a CS platform you can look into customer onboarding, adoption, value realization, renewal, advocacy with great detail. For a long-lasting relationship with your customers, you need to identify, anticipate, and address their needs. This is possible only in a customer success platform that is built to map, align, visualise, and track assignments, updates, and customer interactions. A CS platform can also help you drive different engagement models as per customer requirements to increase growth. You can drive customer satisfaction with a blend of technology and human intelligence.

Project Management

A CS platform can help CS managers navigate across tasks to efficiently help customers. CS platforms have project management tools that help keep track of deadlines, multiple projects, performance, and more. Customer success managers can handle important aspects like QBRs, EBRs, facilitate upsells, manage product adoption and more. You can view customer accounts in a balanced way. You can also check the customer health score and manage multiple projects and stakeholders at a time.

Operational Management

A CS  platform will also help with day-to-day CS team operational management, performance management, and analysis. You can see what needs to be streamlined and why. This is critical to reaching customer deadlines, meeting their expectations, and creating a high quality experience throughout. A CS software will help you analyse where your customers are, what they are doing, and help build targeted campaigns that will appeal to customers at every stage in their journey. You can also improve operational communication with a CS tool. Through ticket management, it becomes simpler to complete all customer issues.

Bottom Line

There is no doubt that a business intelligence tool is great for a business, however it is not intuitively built to handle the customer success environment. Only a CS tool can deliver all that a company needs to offer an outstanding customer experience. A CS application that can blend human intelligence with data to uncover insights, predict customer behaviour, augment decision making, and reduce churn is one that ticks all the boxes for the perfect pick.

SmartKarrot is a smart pick when it comes to customer success platforms. Built to scale, the platform is intuitive, flexible, and easy to use with the latest features up its ante. With customised alerts, playbooks, touchpoints, segmentation, there’s nothing you will miss about your customers.

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