A CRM is a very flexible and adaptable tool for managing customer information and communications, which erroneously gives the impression that it can handle all Customer Success processes effectively. 

However, there’s a significant opportunity cost for trying to manage Customer Success operations out of CRM software. It traps your team in routine client management tasks — making it difficult to take action quickly or drive tangible business outcomes. 

In this article, Jamie Davidson, CEO of Vitally, and Ian Russell, Head of Customer Success at Accord, share why B2B organizations need to get off the CRM hamster wheel as quickly as possible to scale Customer Success efficiently. 

How Do You Know It’s Time to Graduate From Your CRM to a CSP? 

By the time most businesses start asking a variation of this question, it's already too late.  

At that point, things are really falling apart. Maybe your CSMs are stretched thin due to poor bandwidth management or customer tickets, and conversations are getting buried under heaps of email threads. 

“If you’re waiting until routine tasks and day-to-day client management start falling through before moving from a CRM to a CSP, you’re doing it wrong,” says Ian. “A lot of B2B organizations don't realize the amount of value interaction they can get while working from a dedicated platform that gives them a true snapshot of product analytics, customer health, and their actions at every point in time.” 

Ultimately, the right time to graduate from a CRM to a CSP is as early as possible. “If I were joining an organization and they didn't have one, the first thing I'd invest in is a Customer Success Platform because I know how much strategic data and customer insights I can get from it,” says Ian. 

Here are two considerations that will help you make a decision quickly: 

1. You’re Building for Scale 

Managing your CS operations from a CRM might be possible when you're just starting out with a small team and few customers. 

However, as your customer base grows, it becomes much harder to coordinate and maintain this sort of one-on-one control over the customer relationship. That's why you need to think of scaling your CS organization's efficiency from day one — without always defaulting to increasing headcount. 

With a Customer Success Platform, you'll be able to automate playbooks and other types of communication to engage with customers at scale, while empowering your CSMs with real-time data to deliver on high-level tasks.

Learn more: What is scaled Customer Success? 

2. You Want Customer Success to Have a Strategic Impact on the Business

The truth is that most of the routine aspects of a CS team's job can be managed out of a CRM — such as ticket tracking and feedback collection. 

But that's not what gives you a seat at the table; at best, it makes your CS team efficient note-takers. 

“To have a strategic impact on the business, your CS team needs to be the data-driven voice of the customer for the entire organization. You need a lot of opinionated data to achieve that, which you wouldn't find in a CRM,” says Jamie. 

Ian shares a similar thought. 

“CRMs will give you a snapshot of a customer, which can be helpful. I can look at an account and see particular data points. But it doesn't give you an ongoing perspective of a relationship with a customer — like how health scores or ARR have changed over time. And that’s the type of data that leads to strategic decision-making and gives you a seat at the table.” 

The Top 5 CSP Use Cases for B2B Organizations That You Can't Do in a CRM

Jamie and Ian agree that a CRM is great for routine client management. However, to go beyond that and discover revenue opportunities quickly, you need a platform that lets you contextualize and take action on customer insights immediately.  

Let’s discuss five things you can do with a CSP like Vitally. 

1. Run Trials and Pilot Programs

Product-led growth organizations can use a CSP to run free trials and measure how the prospect engages with your product. This data will help you identify and resolve any gaps in the customer experience — increasing the chances of conversion.

For example, Vitally’s product analytics integrations let you set up personalized automation and follow-up sequences for product trials. You can segment trial accounts from existing customers and designate health scores specific to track activity and engagement throughout the pilot period.

You can also: 

• Create trial project templates to help the team align on the exact process and milestones for product trials. 

• Set up email workflows based on buying signals and customer actions within the product. For example, you can automatically send an email when a customer completes a trial milestone, such as activating a specific feature.

• Set up indicators to identify at-risk trials that might not lead to conversion. 

“The best part is you don't have to onboard the customer again when they convert because they are already in your CSP. You have a continuous stream of data and insights to measure their success throughout the relationship,” Ian adds. 

Learn more: How to create and manage product trials with automation. 

2. Discover Trends in Customer Data

CRMs are very, very static. They provide bits and pieces of data points but lack the context for understanding and actually taking action on this information. 

When you log into CRM software, you can see opportunities, accounts, reports — all that stuff. But you don't actually know what that data is telling you. For example, there’s no way to know if a high-value account has an immediate risk unless you manually sort and analyze that data. 

With a CSP like Vitally, you get a consolidated view showing exactly how your customer is doing. 

“I have automation set up to understand when an immediate risk has come up or been flagged. I can understand changes in revenue very quickly because it’s integrated with all the back-end systems, and I can quickly check on product analytics. It has become a much more consolidated view for me to know how my customers are doing and actually take action, which is the biggest thing,” explains Ian. 

Here are some Vitally features that provide a 360-view of customer data and activity: 

• Custom dashboards: You can create custom reports visualizing trends in customer behavior or account activity. For example, you can map out revenue growth or health score changes to understand fluctuations over time better. 

• Product event history: You can see how a specific customer has interacted with your product to know if there are any changes in their activity level or engagement. This can help you discover at-risk accounts likely to churn — or highly engaged customers you can upsell. 

• Goals: You can also set goals for specific accounts or overall Customer Management to drive core business outcomes and contribute to the bottom line directly. 

Related: How to Use a CSP to Learn More About Your Customers

3. Collaborate With the Customer 

CRMs aren’t built for customer collaboration. They are essentially data storage systems, sometimes layered with basic pipeline management features.

“You can see a lot of data or even aggregate tasks and projects. But, you’re not going to have a two-way conversation with your customers or collaborate with them on tasks in your CRM,” explains Jamie. 

What typically happens is that the CS team stores customer data in the CRM. Then, they interact with the customer in a separate tool — whether via email, Slack, or weekly meetings documented in Notion. This is counterproductive for several reasons — the biggest one being that you’re missing out on the opportunity to use customer data to inform interactions in real time. 

A CSP like Vitally centralizes your customer data and communication. It enables your CS team to develop a collaboration flywheel built on unique data points to guide customer interactions.

For example, you can use Vitally Docs to create a shared workspace to stay in sync with the customer throughout their journey. It takes them from a mere observer to a participant — working toward the common goal of value realization.

In Docs, you can collaborate on shared tasks, track milestones, and share knowledge to help the customer succeed with the product. You can also administer collaborative surveys to understand the customer’s goals better and collect information to inform your work and complete projects successfully. 

“CRMs are not optimized to be a Customer Success Platform.” — Read our customer story with Ben Francis to learn how he was able to drive far more expansion revenue after his team switched from a CRM to Vitally.

4. Optimize the Sales-CS Handoff 

The CRM is the primary tool for Sales to manage leads, track opportunities, and handle all communications leading up to the sale. But, after the deal is closed, the CS team takes ownership of managing the ongoing relationship.

If Sales has tracked all the historical information about the pre-sales process in the CRM, and that information is critical for the CSM to know post-sales (as is usually the case), how do you facilitate the handoff in a way that is not siloed or messy?

Definitely NOT by making your CS team work out of the CRM. Jamie shares a much better workflow. 

“You can use Vitally data integrations to automatically pull historical data from your CRM into your CSP. You can also create a sales handover document template in Vitally, and tag your Sales team to fill it out for new accounts as part of the internal onboarding process. We support shared workspaces for Sales and CS to collaborate on accounts throughout the customer journey.” 

These are just starting points. Beyond facilitating a seamless post-sale handover, Vitally can help Sales teams: 

• Visualize customer data — from revenue growth and health scores to product usage and renewals. 

• Proactively monitor account activity to identify risks and opportunities early. 

Related: User Interviews’ Post-Sales Handoff Template

5. Manage the Financial Relationship with the Customer 

Account retention and expansion are two of the most important responsibilities of a CS team. To do them effectively, you need 360-degree visibility into the customer’s interactions with your product to identify risks and opportunities quickly. A CRM isn’t built for this. 

“CRMs do not capture product usage data natively, and that's obviously very important for the post-sales process. CSMs need to understand the customer’s usage of the product to know where they’re struggling or identify and fix gaps in the product experience early. This is super helpful for retention and expansion,” explains Jamie. 

In Vitally, you’ll be able to measure and benchmark account activity using features like: 

• Health scoring: Health scores measure the well-being of an account based on product usage and NPS KPIs. 

• Indicators: You can set up opportunities and risk alerts in Vitally to flag at-risk accounts or happy customers to upsell. 

• Dashboards: You can create custom reports based on customer data or activity metrics to visualize important product interactions for a specific account. 

‍Learn more: How to use playbook automation to identify account expansion opportunities. 

It’s Time to Move on From Your CRM

You know those movies where the main character eventually moves out of their small town to seek their fortune elsewhere? It’s pretty much the same thing here. 

Look, I get it. Your CRM has done a good job up until now, and it’s tempting to hang on. It's like that reliable old car that got you through college. 

But if you want to go beyond managing relationships and start understanding customer health, predicting churn, and driving renewals and expansions in order to have a real impact on your business, you need to move on to a Customer Success Platform. 

The right CSP will transform your CS team from note-taking to the voice of the customer within your organization. 

Want to learn more about the benefits of a CSP? Check out our customer stories to see how B2B organizations like yours use Vitally to build and scale revenue-generating Customer Success functions, or book a demo with our team today!