Customer Success Platforms

Between the two editions of this Wave, one vendor spent two years buying its way into a new product category. Gainsight acquired Staircase AI, Skilljar, ModerateKit, and UpdateAI, and its Q4 2025 Leader citation reads like the thesis those four purchases were made to prove: retention and expansion, at scale, with AI agents that evolve into autonomous, strategic contributors.

A status note first, because the flag said planned and the record says otherwise. The Forrester Wave: Customer Success Platforms, Q4 2025, went live in October 2025, authored by principal analyst Shari Srebnick, scoring seven vendors against sixteen criteria. The Q4 2023 edition was this market's first Wave ever. The category is two scorecards old, and it has already rewritten itself once.

The second scorecard: The Forrester Wave: Customer Success Platforms, Q4 2025

The evaluation's criteria run across current offering and strategy. The public placements: two Leaders, two Strong Performers, and three vendors whose tiers sit behind the paywall.

Gainsight ranked highest in the current offering category, with the highest possible scores in retention optimization and expansion enablement, the highest score in the scaling customer success criterion, and high marks for expansion opportunity identification and its operational capabilities, including CRM-embedded widgets that surface opportunity data so CS and sales can work the same success plans. Forrester's verdict: "Gainsight suits complex enterprises that are seeking an end-to-end solution that aligns CS with other go-to-market functions to improve retention and drive growth." The vision citation names the direction: a unified system to enable post-sale teams to scale, with AI agents that evolve into autonomous, strategic contributors. Reference customers praised the automation and the CX at scale.

Totango joined as a Leader with the highest strategy score of the field at 4.50 out of 5.00. The 2023 edition had placed it as a Strong Performer, maximum score in success planning, with the note that its schema-less data model and SuccessBLOC programs suit CS organizations with a solid strategy mapped out that want maximum flexibility. Two years later the strategy score leads the field. That is a promotion built on the criterion the vendor had already won.

Planhat and ChurnZero placed as Strong Performers. ChurnZero's arc is worth noting for what it says about the scorecard's movement: in Q4 2023 it took the top current offering score, recommended for midsized and traditional enterprises upgrading their CS programs, with in-app capabilities a reference customer called a game-changer. It held Strong Performer in 2025. The top current offering score moved to a vendor that bought its way to a broader product. The criteria moved with it.

What the scorecard shrank while the ambitions grew

The methodology change between editions is the quietest headline in the report.

The Q4 2023 Wave scored eight vendors against twenty two criteria across current offering, strategy, and market presence. The Q4 2025 Wave scores seven vendors against sixteen criteria across current offering and strategy. Market presence is gone from the scorecard entirely.

Srebnick's announcement blog explains what the remaining criteria were built around: three themes. Value is the metric that matters, because revenue is "the language of the boardroom, but customer value is the foundation that makes it possible." Collaboration is core to execution, with shared tasks, embedded CRM widgets, and integrated forecasting so teams "align around customer outcomes." And AI is the enabler of intelligent scale, with agents, predictive analytics, and copilots that automate tasks, surface insights, and guide decisions.

Sixteen criteria carrying three themes. The scorecard shrank because the category's product definition got sharper: prove value, connect the go-to-market team, and let AI run the volume. Everything else, the market presence included, stopped being scored.

The criterion that vanished

That omission is the most interesting line in the methodology, and it deserves more attention than any score.

Forrester stopped scoring market presence in the same two years this market consolidated hardest. The 2023 field ran eight vendors. The 2025 field runs seven. Between the editions, the category's best-known vendor built itself by acquisition, and the analyst's response was to remove viability and footprint from the criteria list.

The effect is a scorecard that tells you how well each platform retains and expands revenue, and says nothing about how likely the vendor is to survive the next round of the same consolidation it is being scored inside. In a category where the previous generation's pure plays have been absorbed one by one, market presence is precisely the criterion a buyer cannot afford to score on their own, and precisely the one the report no longer scores for them.

The honest limitation compounds from there. A seven-vendor Wave is a portrait of a shrinking bench, and sixteen criteria is a tight frame around a wide product ambition. The report can tell you whether the platform proves value today. It cannot tell you whether the company behind it will be here to prove value next year. The acquisitions are the roadmap now, and roadmaps are the thing acquisitions change first.

Three questions for a seven-vendor shortlist

What are the vendor's own numbers? The report no longer scores market presence, so you must. Customer count, funding history, ownership, retention of the vendor's own revenue. In a consolidating category, these are evaluation criteria, not small talk, and the report has formally outsourced them to you.

Can the platform prove value in your boardroom's language? Srebnick's first theme is the test: customer value as the foundation of revenue. Ask for a reference call where a customer walks through their retention or expansion numbers before and after, with the platform's outcome tracking attached. Value storytelling is not value evidence.

Who else in your go-to-market stack has to adopt this for the score to come true? The collaboration theme means embedded CRM widgets and shared workflows across CS, sales, support, and product. If your sales team will not work inside the platform, the Leader-level collaboration score means nothing on your instance. The platform's best criterion can be neutralized by your org chart.

Which decisions are you comfortable handing to an AI agent? Gainsight's vision citation says agents evolve into autonomous, strategic contributors. Strategic contributors make decisions about renewals and expansions. Decide now which decisions stay human, because the platform's roadmap is pointed at taking more of them.

The category has compressed its definition twice in two years: from health scores to value evidence, from vendor size to product precision. The Q4 2025 Wave is the sharper scorecard, and it scores a market that may not stand still long enough to be scored again. Buy the platform for what it proves today. Vet the vendor for what the next acquisition will change.

Gainsight's vision of agents that evolve into autonomous, strategic contributors is the same agentic shift Forrester names as the top disruptor in Customer Journey Analytics & Orchestration, where AI is moving from managing journeys to acting on them in real time.

Forrester does not endorse any vendor named here, and tier placement should not be read as a recommendation to buy.

This market sits next to B2B Customer Community Platforms, covered separately on this site. Gartner's 2026 guide anchors the whole category on one finding: community is the only channel where a vendor's own customers do the selling, and trust is the number-one factor in B2B buying decisions.