churn and expansion
Why AI-Powered Customer Success Tools Fall Short
(And What to Do Instead)
Customer Success Platforms (CSPs) promise customer clarity through AI and automation, but often get stuck on bad data and delayed implementation. If you’re trying to improve retention or expansion, don’t wait 9 months to discover what a customer will tell you in 30 minutes. Just ask.
The Promise of Customer Success Platforms
Customer Success Platforms (CSPs) are designed to help companies retain and grow their customer base by analyzing signals across support, usage, and engagement. Tools in this category—such as Gainsight and ChurnZero—are built on a compelling idea:
If we aggregate all our customer data—from CRM, support tickets, product usage, and more—we can predict risk, identify upsell potential, and automate the right touchpoints.
Sounds like a dream, right? Set up your integrations, feed the system, and out come magical insights.
The problem? That vision often runs headfirst into reality.
The Problem With Enterprise Data
If you’re depending on customer success platforms such as Gainsight or ChurnZero to transform your retention strategy, you’re depending on something else first:
Clean, complete, and up-to-date customer data.
And that’s where things break down.
- CRM fields are stale or inaccurate.
- Sales notes are incomplete (or missing altogether).
- Usage data is unstructured, misattributed, or siloed.
- Integrations take months, not weeks.
The result? Your AI is only as good as the inputs. If 70% of your customer profile data is wrong or outdated, the “health score” coming out of the machine is just math on garbage.
As the saying goes: Garbage in, garbage out.
How Long Until You See Value?
Let’s be honest: platforms like Gainsight or ChurnZero take months to implement. Data mapping alone can be a project. That doesn’t mean they’re bad tools. But it does mean that if your churn problem is urgent, this is a slow route to a delayed solution.
We’ve seen organizations spend 6-12 months integrating systems and aligning teams—only to realize they still don’t understand why customers leave or what would make them stay.
When You Need Faster Answers
You don’t need 9 months of implementation and integration to learn:
- Why are customers churning?
- Where do they get stuck?
- Which expectations are not being met?
- What promises were made that didn’t pan out?
You just need to ask them.
Thirdside does this every day. And we do it fast.
We speak directly to churned customers, current customers, and expansion blockers. We dig below inaccurate and incomplete CRM data to find the real story.
Real Feedback, Not Proxy Signals
Consider what AI health scores actually look at:
- Login frequency
- Support tickets
- Product usage patterns
- Survey responses
But those are proxy signals. They don’t explain the why.
We’ve seen accounts with great usage metrics cancel because the value story wasn’t clear.
We’ve seen high-ticket customers open no support cases — not because they’re happy, but because they’ve already disengaged.
We’ve seen “green” accounts churn because their champion left six months ago and no one filled the gap.
Health scores missed all of it. Interviews found all of it.
Thirdside: Faster Path to Actionable Insight
When we talk to your customers, we don’t guess. We don’t wait for enough data to fill a dashboard. We:
- Conduct qualitative interviews with churned customers, current customers, and expansion blockers
- Identify value gaps, adoption hurdles, and messaging mismatches
- Surface blindspots you didn’t know were there
- Deliver insights your team can act on next quarter—not next year
And we do it in weeks, not months.
If you’re trying to improve retention or expansion, don’t wait 9 months to discover what a customer will tell you in 30 minutes. Just ask.
When to Use a Platform vs. When to Just Ask
|
Use AI Tools Like Gainsight When… |
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You already have clean, integrated data |
|
You want long-term automation |
|
You have a mature CS function |
|
You want internal playbooks and alerts |
| Use Thirdside When… |
| Your CRM is a mess |
| You need quick strategic insight |
| You’re trying to fix retention or expansion now |
| You want real customer truth |
In truth, the best CS orgs will use both.
But if you don’t have the time or data maturity to make the platform sing, Thirdside gives you the clarity you need—fast.