How to overcome digital CS challenges using Gainsight and EverAfter

Here’s the thing. Customer expectations are changing as we speak. Its 2025, and customers want a personalized experience from the moment the contact is signed, all the way through renewal. That’s true for your high-touch accounts, as well as your lower tier, that might be paying less for their contact, but expectations for a successful usage experience is high up there, just the same. 

Those expectations inventively are creating a paradox. We call it: The B2B Scaling Paradox: 

• Your customers want white-glove treatment: personal check-ins, relevant data, frictionless onboarding, success plans that feel like they were designed just for them.
• Your internal teams, on the other hand, are trying to figure out how to handle a rapidly expanding customer base with the same (or fewer) resources. 

The greatest challenge for customer-facing teams becomes - How do I create a digital experience for my customers that will allow them to be self-served, without compromising on the uniqueness of their journey. 

So, how do you solve this personalization vs. scale puzzle? Enter the dynamic duo: a Customer Success Platform (CSP) like Gainsight, and a customer portal software solution like EverAfter. One manages the data and insights internally, the other provides a sleek, branded front-end experience for customers. You get all your internal logic, metrics, and triggers organized in Gainsight—and then deliver them in EverAfter’s portal so your customers can engage, track progress, and truly own their journey.

But here’s the million-dollar question: Why exactly do you need both? And when is the right time to layer one on top of the other? Let’s dive in.

Why a CSP + Customer Portal Is a Must

A CSP like Gainsight sits at the heart of your CS operation. It helps consolidate usage data, customer health metrics, and engagement insights in one place. It gives teams a clear view of which accounts need attention, when to reach out, and what steps to take next. 

Now, imagine if you could take those Gainsight insights and present them to your customers in a way that’s actually meaningful to them— each customer seeing the right information and the right time. That’s where a customer portal software like EverAfter steps in.

If you’re a CS leader, you know the drill—scaling personalized engagement is a beast, and doing it without burning out your team feels damn near impossible. That’s where Gainsight and EverAfter come in.

EverAfter’s AI-native customer portal software syncs seamlessly with Gainsight. It takes that rich data and transforms it into a branded, self-serve experience. No more cobbling together scattered docs or wrestling with multiple logins—EverAfter can live directly inside your product so that customers see whats the next best action, directly from your tool. 

The result?

• Customers don’t feel like they’re lost in a black hole of scattered resources.
• They know exactly what step comes next in their onboarding or success plan.
• You provide a “white-glove” vibe and scale your operations, because you’re not manually walking each customer through the same steps over and over.

Together: A Dynamic, Scalable Customer Experience

When you combine Gainsight’s robust internal tracking with EverAfter’s customer-facing interface, you get the best of both worlds:

• Personalization: Gainsight helps you identify what each customer truly needs based on data. EverAfter surfaces this personalized plan in a friendly, easy-to-navigate portal.
• Scalability: Because Gainsight is automating your internal tasks and EverAfter is automating your external communication, you can handle far more customers without piling onto your CS team’s workload.

In 2025, delivering on that B2B Scaling Paradox means bridging the gap between internal insights and external experience. A CSP + customer-facing interface combo is the perfect way to do just that.

When to Layer a Customer Portal on Top of a CSP

This is one of the most common questions teams grapple with: “Should we jump into a portal as soon as we implement Gainsight?” Probably not. Here’s why:

Before you can show your customers anything, you need to make sure you actually have solid data. If your Gainsight instance is brand-new and your Health Scores are half-baked, you don’t want to open up a brand-new portal and risk showing incomplete or incorrect info to your customers. That undermines trust before you even start.

Before you go ahead and add that personalization, interactive, scalable customer experience - spend some time refining your:

• Customer segments
• Usage tracking
• Health Score definitions

Prioritize the Customer Program Build-Out

Your next step is to design your actual onboarding journey or success plan. What steps do you want your customers to take? Where do you want them to see progress updates? How will you measure success?

Using EverAfter, you’ll be able to answer a few simple questions, and then let the AI build the customer program interface for you in just a few minutes. The more time you invest in the initial thought process of how these programs look like, be that success plan, onboarding, renewal plan or academy course - the better the AI would be able to present to you a robust interface that changes real-time for each account. 

How to Get Started

The EverAfter team will work with you side by side as you come to design your first customer success program interface. Often times it could be challenging to choose which program is the right one to start with. 

We typically share this program menu and conduct a long discussion over which audience and which program is the most relevant one at the moment

Map Out Your customer journey 

Begin by mapping out your high-level customer journey to identify the core milestones that lead to the outcomes your customers want most. Next, pinpoint the specific milestone customers typically struggle with or that’s critical to their progress. Once you’ve identified that key step, it’s time to turn it into a focused customer program—one designed to help customers overcome that hurdle and advance confidently on their journey.

Once that’s clear, identify where Gainsight is capturing data for each step and what customers need to see to move forward.

Double-check that Gainsight is pulling all the right data: usage stats, engagement metrics, renewal dates, key contacts, etc. Make sure your Health Score (or any success metrics you use) is reliable enough to guide your decision-making. If your data is patchy or inaccurate, your portal will be, too.

Deploy EverAfter and Customize Your Portal

Now its time to let the AI do its magic. Choose the program name from the EverAfter gallery, answer the relevant questions asked, upload relevant assets, connect to Gainsight and other systems that will pull relevant data, and let the AI agent build the program. 

Pilot with a Select Group

Start small. Roll out the portal to a handful of customers who are a good fit—maybe new onboarders who are open to giving feedback. Encourage them to explore the portal on their own and see how intuitive it is.

Monitor usage data: Are customers logging in? Do you see them clicking on resources? Are they completing onboarding steps faster? Gather both quantitative and qualitative feedback—talk to those pilot customers and find out what they loved and where they got stuck. Use these insights to make small improvements before rolling it out broadly.

Conclusion

The future of digital Customer Success is here, and the 2025 version of the B2B customer demands an experience that’s both personalized and scalable. It’s a tough paradox, but with a robust CSP (like Gainsight) as your internal engine and a customer portal (like EverAfter) as your external stage, you can create seamless, data-driven journeys that feel tailor-made for every customer—no matter how big you grow.

1. Recognize the need: Customers want self-serve, personalized on-demand experiences—give it to them without burning out your CS team.
2. Pair the right platforms: Gainsight for internal data and workflows, EverAfter for a polished, customer-facing portal.
3. Time it right: Layer on the portal once your data is organized and your onboarding/success plans are mapped out.
4. Iterate: Pilot, refine, and scale. That’s how you turn a shiny new portal into a game-changer for retention, expansion, and customer satisfaction.

Implement these steps carefully, and you’ll be well on your way to solving the B2B Scaling Paradox—delivering white-glove personalization at a massive scale and building strong, long-lasting customer relationships in the process.