Let’s talk about churn.
It’s one of the unavoidable facts of life for any SaaS company. Try as we might, customers inevitably churn. And often, if you’re adding more customers than you lose, churn isn’t a serious problem – until it is. Then the alarm bells all go off while internal teams meet to diagnose and frantically examine the “churn problem.”
Fortunately, you’re not on your own with just a CRM or Google Sheets to tab through. With the right software platform, you can identify churn risks, diagnose churn trends, and predict churn within your customer base before it ever bubbles up to the C-Suite.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through the best software that Customer Success teams can use to manage churn and improve retention.
Two Types of Churn to Monitor
No matter where you sit in the latest churn benchmarks, there are two types of churn you will need software to help monitor:
- Voluntary churn: This familiar foe occurs when a customer actively cancels their account or subscription. This is the type of churn we usually associate with angry or unsatisfied customers and represents the bulk of your churn mitigation efforts.
- Involuntary churn: A silent culprit of lost revenue. This covers issues such as payment failures, economic downturns, and business-level changes.
Check out our guide to performing a churn analysis for a deeper dive into the tactics behind this. Keep reading for software recommendations to implement it.
What is Churn Management Software? Key Features to Look For
As we learned above, churn management is about predicting, diagnosing, and reacting to customer churn, but specifically, that means doing things like:
- Monitoring feature adoption and product usage
- Keeping tabs on customer health and engagement
- Spotting warning signs and risks that threaten renewals
- Reaching out to key accounts with the right message and at the right moment
In other words, pay attention to what your customers are doing and do your best to ensure they are happy and getting value from the product.
Some CS teams try to get by with a CRM for this. And that’s fair: a CRM is usually where all of your sales data lives, and naturally, customer data will live there too. But we think that you’d agree that a CRM doesn’t exactly help with the following:
- Predict churn (and warn of signs): You need a platform that brings all of your data together (ideally one with AI-powered native features) to identify at-risk customers before they churn. The best tools match usage data, engagement metrics, and other signals to guide your next steps.
- Monitor customer health: You can’t go by gut when handling customers at scale. Look for a platform that offers customer health score tracking with fine-tuning for data points like product usage, feature adoption, NPS, and other details.
- Segment contacts by data that matters: You need more than a list of your accounts. Look for a CSP with advanced segmentation abilities to filter customers by various criteria (industry, size, usage patterns, risk level) and analyze cohort behavior.
- Generate specialized reports and dashboards: It’s not enough to simply have access to data. Even Google Sheets can do that. Look for a platform that turns your data into insights through comprehensive reporting and dashboard features. Bonus points if reports are shareable.
- Integrate customer and product data: CS teams have the fun benefit of needing data from every corner of the business – not something usually easy to manage. Look for a platform that offers seamless integrations with your existing tech stack, including your CRM, support platforms, billing software, and product analytics.
For all the above, you need a Customer Success Platform (CSP) with built-in churn management features to monitor customers, alert you of issues, and bring your data together. Read on for our breakdown of the best CSPs available.
The Best Churn Management Software
We chose the following software platforms based on their features, user reviews, and G2 ratings. The best churn management software platforms we found are:
Vitally is a leading CSP, with an emphasis on flexibility, ease of use, and data integration for innovative CS teams.
Many CSPs claim they can bring all your data under one roof, but Vitally can guarantee it. Vitally is a purpose-built platform for Customer Success teams that brings all of your customer, product, and sales data together, allowing you to make better (and smarter) decisions.
Unlike other CSPs that take a rigid approach, Vitally gives you the flexibility and control to customize your processes as you need. That means you can set up custom health scores, alerts, and dashboards to get a bird's-eye view of accounts with the freedom to analyze specific customers as needed.
This flexibility, along with a robust set of tools for collaboration, customization, purpose-built AI features, and automation, makes Vitally a leading CSP for innovative CS teams. Don’t let that freedom scare you off, though – Vitally has one of the fastest implementation timelines in the industry,
As one of the most popular CSPs on the market, Vitally earns rave reviews from CS teams for its user-friendly interface and seamless integration capabilities, offering a variety of automated actions and extensive API support. Thanks to customer Hubs, you can organize data into views and gather information when you need it most.
One customer says it best in a recent review:
Vitally automatically records all my meetings, takes notes, and drafts follow-up emails using the templates I have set up in advance. The AI Copilot provides me with valuable insights into customer successes and potential churn risks, and it also summarizes account details for my colleagues. I use Vitally to organize all my projects and manage my daily tasks! Customer support is super helpful — special shout out to Joel!
It’s no wonder Vitally earns high marks with 4.5 stars on G2!
Top Features
- Hubs for better organization
- Playbooks for automation
- Purpose-built AI features
- Conversation sync
- Health scores
- Custom surveys
- Dashboards and reporting
- Goal tracking
- NPS and CSAT tracking
ChurnZero is a legacy CSP with several features to empower CSMs, along with AI-powered automation.
Like Vitally, ChurnZero offers a variety of features for churn monitoring and management, including health scores and customer profiles, as well as real-time insights and renewal forecasting. That said, ChurnZero’s reporting functionality is rigid, and users report its UI is clunky compared to more intuitive tools like Vitally. This can make it harder to find key data when you need it most.
Here’s what one recent reviewer on G2 had to say:
“ChurnZero can feel overwhelming at first because of the wide range of features, and it takes time to configure everything to match your workflows. Some reporting functions could be more intuitive, and there’s a bit of a learning curve for new users.”
Top Features
- Account segmentation and management
- Health score tracking
- Automation and Plays
- Dashboards and reporting
- NPS tracking
Totango positions itself as a “composable” CSP with a schema-less data model designed to handle complex enterprise data structures. Totango (like Gainsight, which we’ll cover later) skews toward enterprise teams, making Vitally and others on this list better fits for budget-conscious companies.
Totango offers features to track customer health scores, numerous data integrations to bring your data under one roof, segmentation features, and configurable alerts.
Totango and Catalyst announced a merger to unify their Customer Success offerings. A move that, in theory, unifies the twin missions of CS and growth. Today, Totango offers an expanded product line, including the original Totango platform, Catalyst, and Unison AI. While technically all under one roof, these are separate product lines with their own subscription options, so you will need to factor this into your pricing.
Top Features
- Account segmentation and management
- Health score tracking
- Automation
- Dashboards and reporting
Planhat earns high marks in the industry for its flexibility and extensibility with data warehouses and other tools. Planhat users regularly cite both flexibility and robust data modeling and management as the platform’s top perks.
Planhat’s churn management features include customer health tracking, warning signals, churn risk identification, 360-degree customer views, and an impressive list of integration partners to collect your data.
But with great power also comes great complexity. Users report feeling overwhelmed by Planhat’s blank canvas, which can lead to a steep learning curve for your team. Here’s what one reviewer on G2 has to say:
“The extensive customization options can make onboarding feel overwhelming at first. There is definitely a learning curve, and our team is unable to access many views until administrators have set them up.”
For some users, Planhat may be a fantastic choice for a CSP. Still, some features may be more cumbersome than more intuitive counterparts like Vitally.
Top Features
- Account segmentation and management
- AI-powered features built on GPT, Gemini, and Claude
- Data warehouse syncing
- Health score tracking
- Automation
- Dashboards and reporting
Gainsight is one of the leading enterprise providers of Customer Success software.
Gainsight offers powerful features for onboarding, product adoption, retention, and expansion. This gives your team a complete view of every customer, from in-app usage to face-to-face interactions. That said, for small and mid-market teams, Gainsight is likely overkill. It’s one of the most expensive platforms on this list, and many other CSPs offer similar features for a lower price, albeit in a simpler package.
Gainsight’s churn management features support customer health score tracking, AI-powered predictions, product usage and adoption, in-app customer engagement, and much more.
Though Gainsight hides its pricing behind a conversation with sales, one Reddit user (from 2022) shared that the lowest quote for 10 CSMs and eight viewer seats was $26,000/year. It’s fair to assume that, as of the time of publishing this post, Gainsight’s pricing has changed since then.
Top Features
- Customer 360 view
- Product adoption and usage tracking
- Automation
- Goals
- Customer journeys
- Surveys
- In-app engagement tracking
Like many others on this list, Custify is a comprehensive and user-friendly CSP that offers a variety of features for CS teams.
Custify positions itself as a lightweight alternative to legacy platforms on this list, such as Gainsight and ChurnZero, with a focus on small- and mid-market SaaS companies. Like Vitally, Planhat, and Totango, Custify brings your data together and helps you manage churn and automate CS tasks and processes.
While Custify earns top marks for simplicity, that simplicity can come at a cost. Reviewers on G2 are frustrated by limited customization and a lack of advanced integration partners.
Top Features
- Surveys
- Tasks and alerts
- Health tracking
- Automation
- Dashboards and reports
The Best Churn Management Software: A Side-by-Side Comparison
Here’s a quick snapshot of each CSP’s automation capabilities to help you choose the right platform for your team.
Between these seven CSPs, which will you choose?
Ultimately, it depends on your goals, team size, technical proficiency, and budget. Innovative and fast-moving Customer Success teams often choose Vitally for its balance of ease of use, power, and flexibility. This unique combination allows you to build your Customer Success process your way, rather than being restricted by what your software supports.
Read on to see why Customer Success teams choose Vitally to automate their processes.
Why Customer Success Teams Choose Vitally to Manage Churn
While you have plenty of software platforms to choose from, if you come from an agile company looking for purpose-built solutions to build your own process from the ground up, we’d recommend Vitally.
Here’s why:
- All of your data in one place
- Purpose-built for CS teams
- Intuitive and powerful automation
- AI that fits seamlessly into your workflow
All of Your Data in One Place
Customer Success teams live and die by their data, and that is never truer than when it comes to churn.
Churn doesn’t happen out of nowhere – frustrated, unsuccessful, and isolated customers churn, and when you’re managing 50 or 100+ accounts, it’s incredibly easy for customers to slip through the cracks and drop off. That is, unless you have the data you need at your fingertips.
Vitally integrates with your product and favorite tools to bring all your data together:
- Product usage
- Engagement
- Revenue data
And so much more.
Thanks to finely tuned Health Scores, you can create your model, adjust it without code, and set up alerts when customer health changes. Vitally gives you all the data you need to turn customer information into actionable insights you can use to prevent and mitigate churn.
Purpose-Built for CS Teams
CRMs are built for sales teams, Vitally is built for Customer Success.
When managing customers at scale, you simply can’t do it all with tools built for other teams. CSMs don’t just need a CRM with deal and contract history, or a dashboard of product usage and daily active users – they need it all and then some.
Only Vitally brings your data under one roof and matches it with powerful features like:
- Custom Health Score tracking
- Custom surveys
- NPS and CSAT tracking
- Goal setting
And an AI-Copilot that meets you where you are, removes busywork off your plate, and guides your every move.
Intuitive and Powerful Automation
When you’re juggling dozens or hundreds of accounts, every second matters, and it’s all the more painful if you have a churn problem to investigate.
Vitally’s automation packs a punch while still being easy enough to use that you can get started right away.
Vitally Playbooks allow you to automate workflows and processes while leveraging seven different triggers, 14 actions, and branching logic — rivaling platforms like Planhat for automation power. With powerful branching, your team can handle CSM assignment, project creation, email delivery, task completion, and much more from a single Playbook.
AI That Fits With Your Workflow
Rather than tack OpenAI functionality onto a CSP, Vitally takes a unique approach to bring you embedded AI-powered features, providing a smart copilot for Customer Success.
Vitally AI is a purpose-built solution, built directly within the platform and your data. With Vitally AI, you can transform all your customer data into insights, delivering a best-in-class customer experience. Vitally takes all of your:
- Notes
- Meeting transcripts (and AI recordings)
- Tickets
- Docs
- Conversations
- NPS and survey data
And Vitally then turns this data into insights, such as:
- Rich AI summaries to pinpoint sentiment, churn risks, and more
- AI-generated Plays to give your team detailed to-dos and next steps for every account
- Instant answers to team questions about every customer
- Meeting recordings that capture real-time insights for your team
Only Vitally can bring all your data under one roof and turn that unstructured data into insights for your reps.
Looking for a Better Churn Management Solution? Look No Further Than Vitally
Churn management is the bedrock of any successful CS team, but it’s easier said than done.
The seven platforms above all offer a suite of powerful features to monitor accounts, alert you to warning signs, and prevent churn, but only Vitally packages them in a highly flexible and easy-to-use platform for innovative Customer Success teams.
With powerful automation features, seamless integrations, and a flexible API, Vitally is the top choice for innovative Customer Success teams looking to build a CS process tailored to their customers' unique needs.
To see how top-performing companies build a winning Customer Success org, schedule a demo of Vitally or explore our free platform tour today!
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