churnzero-vs-gainsight-customer-cloud

Gainsight and ChurnZero are customer success platforms that provide businesses with visibility into account health, measure customer engagement, identify churn risks, and facilitate customer communications. 

Though these products have much in common, they have different positions within the market. ChurnZero markets itself as a true customer success solution. In contrast, Gainsight positions itself as a suite of integrated capabilities centered around customer success, product experience, customer experience, customer data, and revenue optimization. 

Features

Both platforms have a similar set of core customer success capabilities, though each product offers a few unique features as well. Features they have in common include an overall dashboard of account activity, customer health and churn risk scoring, customer journey mapping and activity alerts, in-app messaging, reporting and analytics, and email and in-app Net Promoter surveys (NPS). 

ChurnZero also offers walkthroughs and user-guides for in-app users, and the ability to create customer personas and use them for segmentation. Gainsight also includes a few unique features like executive sponsor alerts, customer email templates, and revenue optimization capabilities like network mapping and renewal forecasting. 

As part of its platform, Gainsight offers a customer data platform that aggregates customer information from third-party software (e.g. CRM, helpdesk or ticking systems, usage applications) and allows businesses to analyze the database for trends. This is one of the key differences between the two platforms. 

Limitations

Gainsight and ChurnZero are both well-suited for companies looking for a product that offers a comprehensive set of customer success tools. However, there are a few limitations to be aware of for each platform. 

While Gainsight shines in terms of its ability to unify and organize customer data coming from multiple sources, this can prove to be overwhelming for some businesses. For example, small businesses may not need another solution to help further organize and analyze data that’s already in their CRM. 

ChurnZero has stand-out customer segmentation and account scoring capabilities, but lacks the same level of dashboard and reporting customization that more advanced platforms have. ChurnZero is also not ideal for CS teams that have inconsistent processes or accounts that require a high degree of personalized communication, as these will be harder to automate using ChurnZero. 

Pricing

Both vendors do not openly disclose pricing on their website but will provide a quote upon request. The different modules Gainsight offers can be bundled together or purchased separately. 

Factors that help determine the cost for customer success platforms include the number of users, and the number of accounts managed or the amount of revenue managed. The range of features included can also impact how much you’ll pay per month or year for the tool. 

Which Is Right For You?

Gainsight is great for larger teams that need to organize mass amounts of information across customers/accounts. This might be overkill for a smaller sales/CS team that’s looking for a tool that’s easy to deploy and configure. Overall, companies with large, established customer success teams that are looking to grow can benefit from choosing Gainsight. 

Compared to Gainsight, ChurnZero is more often used by small and midsize businesses that are looking for a robust yet easy to use customer success platform. Overall, businesses that are just starting their customer success program or have a small-medium size team would be well served by ChurnZero.