Why Your Customer Success App Needs to Be Part of Your CRM

As a B2B SaaS company, you know that your customer’s success is critical to your company’s success.

Keeping your customers happy and engaged is key to driving retention and growth. That’s why you’ve invested in a customer success function to help your customer success manager (CSM) stay on top of customer needs, track engagement, and proactively address issues. 

But this team needs information to do their jobs. At one glance they need to see: 

• Who are the right contacts? Who is talking to them? What is our company’s activity and email history with them? 
• What is their Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) with us? What is the Lifetime value? 
• What does this customer own, how many, and at what price? What do they not own but should? 
• What is their subscription and order history? 
• When is their renewal (or renewals) coming up? 
• Are they paying their invoices? 
• How is their onboarding going? Are they live? 
• Are they using support? If so, are they on fire? 
• What customer segment are they in? 
• Are the receiving marketing communications? 

Is your Customer Success team flying blind?

All this information should be part of your CRM System. If it’s not, and you are dealing with this from spreadsheets or a third-party app, you may not be getting the full benefit of your investment. Here’s why: 

Duplicate data entry: If your customer success app and CRM are not integrated, your CSM may need to manually enter data into both systems. Sales reps spend an average of 5.5 hours per week on data entry – also contributing to why only 39% of a sales rep’s time is spent selling or interacting with customers. This can also lead to discrepancies between the two systems, which can make it harder for your CSM to get a complete view of customer interactions. 

Inefficient workflows: If your CSM needs to switch back and forth between your customer success app and CRM to access information, it can slow down their workflow and reduce efficiency. This can make it harder for your CSM to provide timely and effective support to your customers, which can impact customer satisfaction and retention.  

Missed opportunities: If your customer success app is not integrated with your CRM, your CSM may miss opportunities to upsell or cross-sell to customers. According to a study by Forrester, companies that align sales and marketing grow 19% faster and are 15% more profitable. By integrating your customer success app with your CRM, you can ensure that your CSM has access to all the information they need to identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities. 

Cost: You may be paying for tools on tools for a CSM to be effective; apps for CRM, CS, Outbound Sequencing, Marketing Automation, Support, etc. Check out TekStack’s ROI tool to see how much you could be saving by having all of this in one place. 

So, what’s the solution?

By integrating your customer success app with your CRM, you can give your CSM the tools they need to be more efficient and effective. With a complete view of customer interactions and a streamlined workflow, your CSM can focus on providing the best possible support to your customers, which can lead to higher satisfaction and retention rates. 

They can do things like: 

1. Fire off playbooks like renewal plays or onboarding plays 
2. Work with marketing to automate interaction and customer education campaigns 
3. Automatically run Customer Net Promoter Score surveys to look for the hidden advocates, or look for smoke if there is an issue 
4. Check in on customers that are struggling in support, by lending a little internal advocacy 
5. Implement Quarterly Business Reviews with key customer segment 

Stop wondering whether you are profitable with the customer and know for sure with a 360 degree view of the customer. Give your team everything they need to manage customer success with an integrated CRM tool. TekStack can help – get in touch to find out how.