Report:

A: This research evaluates the seven most significant customer success platform providers across their current offering capabilities and strategic vision. The evaluation focuses on how platforms enable CS teams to prove customer value, support cross-functional collaboration across the postsale lifecycle, and leverage AI to drive intelligent scale and operational rigor. The report covers platforms' abilities to support revenue forecasting, retention optimization, expansion enablement, customer onboarding, scaling capabilities, user experience, and data management.

A: This research should be used by CS leaders, post-sales executives, and technology decision-makers who are evaluating customer success platforms to support their evolving charter. It's particularly valuable for organizations transitioning from traditional relationship-focused CS to value-driven, customer-led growth models. Buyers can use this evaluation to understand which vendors align with their specific needs - whether that's enterprise-scale operations, midsize SaaS companies, or organizations prioritizing ease of use and rapid deployment. The report helps identify which platforms best support measuring customer ROI, driving retention and expansion, and operationalizing customer value realization.

A: Vendors must offer extended postsale engagement support beyond core CS capabilities to enable engagement across onboarding, adoption, and value realization, including capabilities that align with adjacent teams such as services, support, account management, or marketing. They must support a broad range of use cases enabling a holistic approach to CS, including at least 50% of core CS capabilities: increase efficiency and scale the CS team, optimize retention and expansion efforts, enable success planning and customer outcomes delivery, accelerate onboarding and product adoption, and capture the voice of the customer. Additionally, vendors must have mindshare among Forrester's enterprise clients, being frequently mentioned in inquiries, advisories, consulting engagements, and other interactions.

A:

• Lack of extended postsale engagement support beyond core CS capabilities
• Coverage of less than 50% of core CS use cases (efficiency/scaling, retention/expansion, success planning, onboarding/adoption, voice of customer)
• Insufficient mindshare among Forrester's enterprise clients
• Not frequently mentioned by clients in purchase considerations
• Not recognized as a competitor by other vendors in the market
• Limited scope focusing on only specific aspects of customer success rather than holistic platform capabilities

A:

• Help CS teams prove value, not just activity - Solutions should enable teams to define, deliver, and measure customers' progress toward outcomes through collaborative success planning and outcomes tracking
• Support cross-functional collaboration across the postsale lifecycle - Platforms should unify data, workflows, and engagement across CS, sales, and support teams
• Leverage AI to drive intelligent scale and operational rigor - AI should be embedded to support task automation, insight generation, strategic decisions, and enable CSMs to focus on high-impact work
• Enable revenue forecasting and postsale revenue intelligence
• Provide reporting and data visibility to communicate progress across teams
• Support expansion opportunity identification and renewal management
• Offer robust customer portal and collaboration capabilities
• Include workflow automation and orchestration tools

A:

• CS teams facing budget constraints (60% reporting flat or declining budgets) while expectations for revenue impact increase
• 25% cost reduction in new CS job listings in 2024
• Shift from relationship management to value realization and measurable outcomes
• AI becoming foundational to CSP capabilities, including agents, predictive analytics, and orchestration tools
• Post-Sales evolving into primary growth engine as traditional GTM motions face challenges
• Increased focus on cross-functional collaboration across CS, sales, and support teams
• Movement from siloed tools to unified customer platforms
• Emphasis on proving ROI and customer value rather than tracking activities
• Rising customer acquisition costs and record-high churn rates

A: Strength of Offering measures the current capabilities and features of the vendor's platform, including operational capabilities, user experience, and functional depth across revenue forecasting, retention, expansion, onboarding, scaling, and data management. Strength of Strategy evaluates the vendor's forward-looking direction, including their vision for the market, innovation approach, product roadmap, partner ecosystem, customer adoption strategy, pricing model, and support services.