Gainsight CS vs. Medallia

It's great for being able to capture all information in Gainsight CS. The only challenge is some of the task management and visibility into workload that is very clunky. After watching the roadmap for 2025, I'm feeling more hopefully that some of my pain points will be handled. However, it's still challenging that the task-management basics will still be clunky. I'm excited for the AI scheduling of tasks, but this would be better if the improvements to task /workload visibility is updated.

Incentivized

Any customer service industry would benefit from implementing Medallia. This is your one-stop-shop for everything surveying and data analytics. I have personally seen this successfully implemented in both software companies and retail. Medallia offers multiple integration options to create connected applications in your business. This is designed as an enterprise solution, smaller businesses may find it difficult to justify the cost.

Incentivized

• Logging customer activity is incredibly intuitive and easy for team to do and reference.
• Using the rules engine to generate CTAs for our team to intervene where needed has been helpful in automating relevant activities in bulk. We have a churn prevention program run through CTAs where Gainsight CS will notice risk criteria we've built in, then alert CSMs and their managers of potential risk concerns, like low product adoption or negative survey response, with clear next steps and actions laid out for what to do.
• More broadly, it has inspired a new mindset on our team for how to work with customers. Through working with Gainsight CS, they have become less transactional and look at accounts more holistically. Success Plans allow for this, as they create plans with customized customer goals and the tasks it will take to achieve those goals.

• It provides a rating for customers to rank how satisfied or not satisfied they are with the service.
• As an Account Manager, this is a helpful tool to hear customers' experiences and feedback.
• It helps us manage our next steps because the tools also provide options to note the action taken and if the issue has been resolved or not.

Incentivized

• Would love to see a Gainsight OPs/Admin checklist that guides CS Ops team through specific pieces of information needed to execute specific playbooks (best practices)
• When creating reports, sometimes it's difficult to find the correct variable that you are looking for as it's nested under various categories
• Would love ability to "heatmap" specific individual customer engagement based on CSM inputted customer contacts at meetings
• Would love to see more analysis on engagements - how often, how frequent - built into the product

Incentivized

• Our service model does not provide any ownership over the platform. We have to engage our Medallia Project Team to build surveys, troubleshoot issues, make changes to surveys, reports, and dashboards, resulting in long turnaround times and inefficiency.
• Medallia charges for both "units" and users. "Units" are defined as named individuals in surveys, but don't have log-in privileges. In our case, they are customer service agents or business consultants that engaged with the client but are not part of our closed-loop case management process or access to the platform.

Great tool and we've spent a lot of time getting it up and running. Unless something else comes a long that does a similar function for less money we will consider jumping cause we are always looking to save budget where we can. Till then I think we are satisfied with Gainsight at the moment.

Incentivized

I give it this score based on the implementation at my current employer. I don't know if it could be higher based on if the implementation went better, or if there is something on the vendor side that could help. If this were asked at my previous employer, I would have given it a score of 9 or 10.

Incentivized

Medallia's user interface is simple and intuitive for the end-user. Everyone in our organization from the CEO to store level team members use Medallia to see how we are delivering experiences for our customers. From an administrative side, I would rate Medallia closer to a 7.5, but this part of Medallia is not used as often post-implementation. That being said, you will need a technical/IT resource on staff or will need to pay a premium to a 3rd party to manage it for you.

Incentivized

Rarely any issues with availability or outages. When they do occur, there is excellent communication and consistent updates. Bugs are usually addressed in a timely manner, and communication around those issues is also extremely good

Incentivized

There are some times when it can take almost a minute to load some of our reports or the rules engine. Within a rule it can also take time to load the actions as they each load one at a time when scrolling. The ability to scroll without waiting would be ideal

The CSMs are very hands-on and helpful, both Elaine and Lane have provided a lot of guidance and value over the years. Support is responsive and will jump on things as needed. The thought leadership and community is probably the most valuable part of our support from Gainsight.

Incentivized

Medallia is always there to answer questions and/or support our needs. In some cases it does require a PO if the request does not fall under normal support, but that does not change the fact that they are very responses and available to support your needs

Incentivized

The online videos are very good for basic tasks in the platform, but it isn't very descriptive or helpful trying to make your own specific variables fit the simple example that is typically used. Typically, I'll watch a video, try on my own and still have to get help from support or Customer Success team

I was not part of the implantation (I took over later). However, based on what was passed to me, the tool was not well implemented at our org. I think this had to do with complexity, wrong person assigned in our org, and org buy-in. I think it would have been very successful if we had a better assignment process internally.

Incentivized

Gainsight CS simply had a broader set of functionality that we wanted. That said, if Vitally or ChurnZero were to close a few of the functionality gaps that mattered to us, we would prefer to use either of those competitor products.

Incentivized

We are also using Salesforce.com for our customers/clients' records, usage, cases, and such. Like Medallia, we are using Salesforce.com to understand the different account usage based on the services we provide. With the data provided by Salesforce.com, we would understand where we are lacking, which parts we are strong in, and which part of the service needs improvement. All in all, both products are very helpful and, [conveniently,] both are integrated into one another.

Incentivized

It can lean a little heavily toward Customer Success, but the ability to customize many areas based on specific user or account characteristics allows you to make it work across many different roles. This also makes collaboration within the tool across teams possible. It a flexible tool if you have a skilled admin to help guide your process building.

Incentivized

• No metrics yet, but we have improved our at-risk customers by identifying risks earlier via our automated health score and with our Gainsight approved mitigation workflow, CSMs and leaders have better discipline with mitigation efforts and sharing at-risk customers across the org so other teams can step in and assist

Incentivized

• It does play a big role when we are running a referral campaign. Referral greatly affects sales and retention since customers are bringing in new clients/customers.
• It helps our organization keep track of the accounts that are most likely to churn by checking their feedback and knowing how we can improve our service.

Incentivized