Introduction
If your company prioritizes acquiring new customers over retaining existing ones, chances are you’re losing money. Acquiring a new customer costs over five times more than keeping one. Plus, the odds are stacked against you — selling to a new prospect has a success rate of just 5 to 20%, while selling to an existing customer has a much higher success rate of 60 to 70%.
But here’s the real shocker: increasing retention by just 5% can boost your profits by up to 95%. Take a moment to let that sink in (don’t worry, we’ll still be here waiting for you).
At this point, you should be asking yourself: How can my organization improve customer retention and satisfaction rates? The answer lies in leveraging the right customer success tools, which play a pivotal role in driving retention rates in B2B SaaS. Customer success teams are crucial because they not only keep customer satisfaction high, but they also help customers realize the full value of your product, leading to long-term loyalty and growth.
In this article, we’ll explore key features to look for in customer success tools and highlight the top 5 tools of 2025 so you can start preparing for a successful year today.
The Benefits of a Customer Success Stack
According to Zendesk’s Customer Experience Trends Report, 57% of customers say their loyalty to a brand is based on the quality of its customer service. For customer success managers (CSMs) to efficiently onboard and serve customers in a way that keeps them happy and satisfied, having the right tech stack is crucial. After all, we don’t want our CSMs to end up like Tom Hanks in Castaway — stranded on an island with nothing but a volleyball to work with.
A customer success stack — a collection of tools and software designed to help your team manage customer relationships — offers several key benefits. It provides increased visibility into customer needs, enabling CSMs to deliver personalized support, whether they’re answering questions or troubleshooting issues. It streamlines workflows by automating routine tasks, freeing up time for your team to focus on more strategic activities. And, perhaps most importantly, it increases customer retention because satisfied customers are more likely to stick around.
Now, let’s contrast this with what happens when you don’t have a solid customer success stack in place. Without the right tools, your CSMs are left scrambling, trying to piece together information from various sources, leading to a disjointed and frustrating experience for both the customer and the team. Tasks that could be automated end up eating away at valuable time, and the lack of visibility means issues go unnoticed until they become major problems. The result? Unhappy customers, decreased loyalty, and ultimately, a higher churn rate.
Key Features to Look for in Customer Success Tools
When you’re ready to assemble your customer success tools, key features to look for include data analytics and insights, automation capabilities, integration with existing systems, and scalability.
Here’s why each of these features matters:
- Data analytics and insights: Accurate data is the backbone of any successful business because it informs decision making, and your customer success strategy is no different. By tracking insights such as customer usage, behavior, and health scores, you can identify potential issues before they escalate. This means your team isn’t just reacting to problems — they’re anticipating them.
- Automation capabilities: There are only so many hours in a day, and keeping your customers happy means your CSMs shouldn’t spend their time bogged down by repetitive tasks. What tasks are your CSMs spending time on that could be automated? Automation handles mundane but necessary tasks like categorizing tickets, understanding sentiment, and tracking customer onboarding progress. This way, your team can focus on direct customer interactions which will yield greater satisfaction.
- Integration with existing systems: Customer success tools are only as good as their ability to integrate with the rest of your tech ecosystem. Otherwise, issues like data silos, miscommunication, and inefficiencies are likely to arise. When everything’s connected, your CSMs have a complete view of the customer journey, enabling them to provide a more well-rounded, positive customer experience.
- Scalability: No one wants to invest in a tool today that won’t be usable in the future. When considering scalability, focus on customer success tools that will grow with your business. Ask yourself: Will this tool still be effective for my team if it doubles, triples, or even increases tenfold in size?
Top 5 Customer Success Tools for 2024
You already know that keeping customers happy isn’t just a “nice to have” — it’s essential for long-term success. That’s why we’re excited to guide you through this next section, where we’ll highlight the top 5 customer success tools for 2025. These tools are transforming how organizations are connecting with and supporting their customers.
1. Vitally
Vitally is a customer support platform that combines productivity tools with real-time customer data. It integrates into existing tech stack in “a matter of minutes — without tapping in engineering, support, or IT,” making it an ideal option for organizations seeking a plug-and-play solution.
Some of its integrations include:
- Gmail
- HubSpot
- Jira
- Outlook
- Pendo
- Salesforce
- Slack
- . . . and many more!
Vitally serves a diverse array of industries, including Accounting & Finance, Construction, Data & Intelligence, Human Resources, Telecommunications, and more. Among its notable customers are leading companies such as Writer, Apollo.io, ProductBoard, Culture Amp, and Procurify.
Pricing varies depending on your needs, but all three plans include Vitally’s core features, unlimited automations, single sign-on, unlimited observer seats, unlimited documents, and access to the full integration library.
To learn more about Vitally and how it can help your organization build and scale its Customer Success team, click here.
2. ChurnZero
ChurnZero is a customer success software designed to help organizations manage customers, reduce churn (hence, the name!), and build revenue at scale. It uses AI, scalable engagement, advanced analytics, and integrations to manage the entire customer experience from “AI to Z.”
Some of ChurnZero’s integrations include:
- Salesforce
- HubSpot
- Zendesk
- Slack
- Teams
- Outlook
- Gmail
- Quickbooks
- Stripe
- . . . and 60 more!
Dedicated to helping organizations understand how customers use their products, assess customer health and likelihood to renew, and personalize the customer experience, ChurnZero is trusted by companies like Freewill, Boulevard, CIN7, HackerRank, ConsumerAffairs, and iContact.
Pricing is customizable based on the organization’s needs, and influenced by factors such as the number of users, organization size, and features and integrations required.
To learn more about ChurnZero and how it can help your organization with onboarding, product adoption, and renewal and expansion, click here.
3. Accord
Accord is a Deal Execution Platform that’s designed to help organizations set standards, drive accountability, and enforce execution excellence, transforming how companies sell, onboard, and expand with customers. From evaluation to activation, revenue teams using Accord experience shorter sales cycles, higher win rates, and onboard customers 50% faster.
Accord “plays well with others” and offers a variety of integrations including:
- Salesforce
- HubSpot
- Slack
- Gmail
- Gong
- DocuSign
- . . . and many more!
Users also have the ability to customize their integrations by connecting directly to Accord’s open API.
Top revenue leaders from companies like Figma, UserGems, Sendoso, Vena, Stripe, and Teamwork rely on Accord to replicate the consistency, predictability, and success of their top reps — ensuring that their revenue teams uphold high standards where it matters the most: with their customers.
Accord offers four packages, starting with a freemium plan for one user that includes best practice playbooks, a digital sales room, unlimited customer invites, and email and sales support. At the other end of the spectrum, the enterprise package is fully customizable to meet an organization’s needs, featuring single sign-on, a resource management hub, stakeholder maps, access to the company’s open API, and more!
To learn more about how Accord’s Deal Execution Platform can help your organization drive execution excellence, click here.
4. Freshdesk
Freshdesk is a customer service software built to enhance an organization’s support capabilities through AI-driven ticket management. It enables companies to efficiently manage, prioritize, and resolve tickets on a large scale, all within a unified workspace that optimizes agent workloads so they can spend more time focusing on critical customer issues and delivering personalized support.
Some of Freshdesk’s integrations include:
- Slack
- MS Teams
- Salesforce
- Jira
- Shopify
- Playvox
Freshdesk also offers connector apps, dedicated to helping users customize their integrations and workflow automations.
Trusted by over 60,000 businesses, Freshdesk supports organizations ranging from startups to SMBs and enterprises. Notable customers include Pearson, Blue Nile, Bridgestone, Klarna, and M-Kopa.
The company offers four plans — Free, Growth, Pro, and Enterprise — each designed to meet varying needs. These plans include a range of features such as ticket dispatch, automation, custom roles, customer journey tracking, custom reports, dashboards, and more. To learn more about how Freshdesk’s generative AI software can help your Customer Success team thrive, click here.
5. Thena
Thena is a customer support platform designed to manage requests from web, email, and Slack channels — all in one centralized view. Users can organize customer Slack conversations by tier, geography, and team, while also gaining insights into conversation sentiment. These insights allow teams to proactively address customer needs and resolve issues directly within Slack, streamlining the support process.
Thena integrates with:
- Zendesk
- Salesforce Cases
- HubSpot Ticketing
- Intercom
- Freshdesk
- Salesforce CRM
- HubSpot CRM
Dedicated to helping organizations scale their Slack support, Thena is trusted by a wide range of companies, including Workramp, Mode, BoostUp, Radar, and Guru.
Thena offers three pricing tiers, ranging from $64/month per user to a fully customizable enterprise plan. Organizations can try Thena’s Core offering for free, which includes ticketing and assignment, triage, service level agreements, Kanban, and basic analytics.
To learn more about Thena and how it can help your organization deliver omni-channel customer engagement from Slack, click here.
Conclusion
The bottom line is clear: if you’re not a gambling-minded person, your main focus should be on customer retention. The tools we've highlighted above are designed to help your organization not only retain customers but also strengthen those relationships, streamline support processes, and drive long-term growth. By investing in the right customer success tools, you set your business up for both short- and long-term success.
