Your Tech Stack Is Holding You Back

You wouldn’t expect Sales to work without a CRM.

You wouldn’t expect Finance to function without an ERP.

So why do so many companies expect Customer Success to wing it?

I’ve worked with teams where the CSMs had no formal client tracking system, no unified way to report on customer health and no systematic approach to documenting customer engagement.

One client I supported literally needed several days to compile an executive update because the data was scattered across spreadsheets, Slack messages, and individual notebooks.

Every CSM had their own system. No consistency. No real visibility. No shared customer story.

That’s not just inefficient. That’s a tech stack failure.

The Problem: When Tech Bloat and Tech Gaps Collide

Too often, companies over-buy tools without a real strategy or under-resource CS teams entirely, forcing them to cobble together manual workarounds. Both scenarios kill productivity.

When your tech stack isn’t fit for purpose, it becomes:

• A time sink

• A source of bad decisions

• A blocker to scale

Why It Matters

Your Customer Success technology should serve your customer engagement model, not complicate it.

If your team is wasting hours searching for customer data, managing duplicate systems, or manually updating spreadsheets, you’re not just losing time, you’re losing opportunities to deliver real customer outcomes.

And let’s be clear: AI can’t fix bad processes. But with the right foundation, it can supercharge visibility and automate what should have never been manual to begin with.

What To Do: Fixing the Tech Stack Problem

1. Start with the Business Process, Not the Tools

Before you audit your technology, you need to understand how your CS team actually works.

• Where do they spend most of their time?

• What’s working? What’s not?

• Which tasks add value vs. which ones just add work?

• What is your ideal customer engagement model?

Your tech should power this model - not force your team to work around it.

2. Conduct a Full Tech Stack Audit

Document every software tool used by your Customer Success, CS Ops, and frontline teams, both officially and unofficially.Track:

• What each tool is used for

• What percentage of the team is using it

• Contract start and end dates

• Overlapping or redundant functionality

You might find tools you didn’t know you had or shadow tools that could actually benefit the entire team.

3. Design a Stack That Enables Scale

Once you know what you have, what you’re missing, and what’s just shelfware, start building the right fit-for-purpose stack.Look for opportunities to:

• Retire tools you don’t need

• Introduce solutions that automate, simplify, or improve customer visibility

• Leverage AI for faster insights into customer health and outcomes

Stop throwing tools at the problem. Build the stack that fits your strategy.

Quick Win: Start This Week

Start your tech stack reality check right now and you might be surprised what’s hiding in plain sight. Create a living document of all software tools your CX and Ops teams use.

Document:

• Primary purpose

• Who’s using it

• Percentage of team adoption

• Contract dates

Key Takeaways

• Tech bloat reduces productivity and drains team capacity.

• Fit-for-purpose tools that align with business processes enable real scale.

• A well-designed stack can reclaim hours, improve customer outcomes, and unlock AI-powered insights.

Let’s Keep the Conversation Going

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