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CustomerSuccessBox is an actionable Customer Success (CS) Software with the most advanced features. It is an AI-powered CS tool to carry out post-sale customer activity Onboard, Retain, Upsell & drive MRR Growth for B2B SaaS.
Salesforce is a CRM (Customer relationship management) software. It stores customer contact information like names, addresses, phone numbers, and more. It also keeps track of pre-sales customer activity like website visits, phone calls, email, etc. You must be wondering why am I listing out the definition and difference between the two tools.
This article is being created to make you understand the differences between Salesforce and CustomerSuccessBox. Most of the users think that the two are competitors to each other.
Do you think so?
If yes, then you’re at the right place! It’s because they’re not. Read through this guide to appreciate the critical points where they vary.
Let’s take a look at the image below and try to understand the differences through some examples or use-cases.
As mentioned earlier, Salesforce keeps track of the pre-sales activities and acquisition is one among them. Website inquiries, product purchases, acquisitions, etc. are the activities that happen at the sales level. This data will be stored in a CRM (e.g. Salesforce) and will not be available in a customer success platform.
The customer journey starts with the onboarding process after s/he buys/subscribes to your product. The customer onboarding experience is almost wholly in the hands of the customer success team. Product adoption, escalation, reonboarding, retention, renewals, growth, and expansion are the other milestones that a customer achieves during their journey with your business. The data about this is provided by your Customer Success platform, and not the CRM.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and Lifetime Value (LTV) are the customer retention metrics. The metrics that help you identify the cost associated with acquiring a customer and the return on investment (ROI) which you’ve received. Now, this is not a simple calculation. It requires relevant data to calculate the impact of an investment made.
Your CRM (Salesforce) will not have such data in place because it’s not built to store such information. Whereas your customer success software (CSB) would have real-time data as it’s built to handle such information.
Lower CAC and Higher LTV is the aim of every SaaS business and this is carried out through Customer Advocacy and Better retention, which is in turn, possible only because of data from customer success tools.
The CS software helps in streamlining the entire process in your customer’s SaaS journey beginning with onboarding. This results in aligning your teams and getting more results from the team members in less time.
Hence, more success per team member is ensured, leading to increased Customer Success productivity, and efficiency. This sort of efficiency is not delivered with the CRM alone.
This is a pre-sales activity that means the customer hasn’t yet subscribed to or purchased your product. Therefore, Customer Success doesn’t have any role to play here. For this stage of the transaction, your CRM must be enough to handle the data.
Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) is the main source of revenue for your SaaS business. You can ensure a steady source of income only if you know that your customer is going to stay with you for as long as possible.
But how do you know that? CustomerSuccessBox (the CS tool) will provide you with information regarding your Customer Health. You’ll get to know exactly what your customer wants, and thus, you can take actions to retain your customers and drive MRR growth for your business.
Nothing of this is possible without a CS tool as your CRM isn’t just powerful to do this alone.
Customer Health 360 or Portfolio 360 encompasses every single thing about your customers since they started their journey with your product. It includes product health, Relationship health, financial health, Service health, external factors, etc. CustomerSuccessBox provides you with data for the above-mentioned parameters, whereas, Salesforce can’t support this kind of holistic data on its own.
If you want to know more about health, check this out and craft an overall Customer Health Score that brings in Predictability for your business.
Product adoption health is a part of overall product health measured in Customer Health 360. It monitors whether the product is being used regularly, all the features are being used by the customer, how many licenses have been consumed, etc. Salesforce is unable to measure this and cannot hence provide data about the same. On the other hand, CustomerSuccessBox can do that because the CS tool is built to analyze these types of data.
Your business model can be either be a tech-touch, low-touch, or high-touch model. Irrespective of the model used, you need to monitor the touchpoints where the customer needs an interaction. This could be done only through a CS tool. A CRM cannot understand this sort of data and thus cannot present you with the touchpoints information.
The image shown below is a snapshot of the key differences between Salesforce and CustomerSuccessBox.
An early warning system is crucial to driving B2B SaaS customer retention. This is a red flag if your CS tool alerts you to risk concerning customer health, With hundreds of data points, having an AI-based early warning system is crucial to deliver customer success.
Your CRM won’t be able to do the same because it is just transaction management software and is not responsible for delivering customer success.
High-touch processes require constant interaction with the customers. You need to know when you want to interact with them. An example would be giving a personal presentation to the customer or a walkthrough of a new product feature remotely. A CS software can provide the information for the same while a CRM primarily functions as a relationship information database and they grapple to pick insights from product usage data or any other information.
CS platforms concentrate on customer engagement and are driven by the customer data your customer success team gathers every day. Instead of just giving this data, CS tools conduct analysis that enables proactive customer engagement. It is generally done by segmenting customers into different buckets based on the parameters that are vital for the business.
Customers who contribute significantly to your business’s revenue or have any other significant value are agreed upon and tracked separately by the CS team. Smart Accounts or strategic accounts are created for this reason. The team can do this effectively only when they obtain real-time information through the CS software.
Your CRM cannot take care of your customer’s journey with your business. Yes, it can track other information which is being input by you into the system. Beyond that, it’s not the CRM’s (like Salesforce) job to track their health.
CS software is built for this purpose- to streamline and measure your customer’s health from onboarding to renewal to referral- and to orchestrate your customer journey so that you can deliver customer success.
A face-to-face conversation with your customer is, probably, the most effective way to improve customer relationships and satisfaction. This meeting is termed the Executive Business Review or the QBR (Quarterly Business review).
But this meeting will be fruitful only if you have the concrete data to be presented to your customers. Data about product usage, adoption, engagement, license utilization, etc., and actionable insights for the same are provided by your CS tool.
Your CRM may not be suitable for this job, hence you need the help of the CS software to take care of the same.
A CS platform (like CustomerSuccessBox) is built to send you the warning signs and risk alerts, create tasks to overcome them and provide you with actionable insights to take corrective steps to mitigate those risks.
Similarly, it analyzes Customer Health and alerts you to the upsell and cross-sell opportunities as well.
Your CRM lacks this capability.
A CSM performs the function of account management for his/her customers and maintains the accounts so that they can achieve their desired outcomes. The teams handling them track the relevant data based on the CS platform’s insights. The CRM does not handle individual accounts or track health.
CustomerSuccessBox is an actionable AI-powered customer success platform that is built to deliver customer success. Hence, it is an expert in the customer success space. On the other hand, Salesforce is the CRM managing all the data from the customer’s perspective.
The customer success team comprises individuals who with the assistance of CustomerSuccessBox or any other software ensure success to their customers. Without CustomerSuccessBox, Salesforce would be unable to ensure the same customer success.
CRMs have revolutionized the game when it comes to how SaaS firms know and track their customers. By making client data more accessible than ever, CRMs have transformed what companies can do with their relationships, data, etc. You’re only as good as the tools you use. If you’re serious about Customer Success, your CRM is not enough
If you’re a B2B SaaS business and care about Customer Success, then chances are you have a dedicated team for customer success already. The team has to be managed by a designated Customer Success Manager (CSM).
Using a CRM for your Customer Success team is not a good idea as this will escalate the need for manual work. CRMs often fall short in contributing that Customer Success teams require.
Hence, you need a CS tool and a manager to handle the CS team so that you can deliver exceptional customer success.
No. Salesforce does not provide any such alerts and does not track customer health.
It's a CRM software that is built to integrate various functions such as marketing, sales, IT, service, etc. Only a Customer Success software, like CustomerSuccessBox, can create and trigger such alerts.
CustomerSuccessBox is a customer success tool that is actionable and has the most advanced features.
It's an AI-powered product that helps B2B SaaS companies onboard, retain, upsell, and grow their MRR.
Salesforce keeps track of customer contact information such as names, addresses, and phone numbers. It records pre-sale customer activity such as website visits, phone conversations, and emails. It's not involved in post sales customer activity.
No. Salesforce is a CRM platform, whereas CustomerSuccessBox is a Customer Success (CS) platform.
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