Rough for Customer Success Teams

What problem does Rough solve?

The problem that Rough focuses on is alignment. Our goal is that you can turn customer insights into product improvements without losing those insights in endless email chains or quarterly business reviews that nobody reads.

While working in customer success, you've probably found yourself asking questions like:

• Why does the same customer issue keep coming up in support tickets when I told product about it months ago?

• How can I show that the feature customers are requesting would actually drive retention?

• Why doesn't engineering seem to understand the urgency of this customer pain point?

• How do I get my voice heard in product planning without becoming the person who complains about everything?

• Is anyone actually tracking whether the features we ship solve the problems I'm hearing about?

Rough is designed to help you get answers to those questions. We're made specifically for companies where customer success teams have valuable insights that need to flow directly into product decisions.

How does Rough solve alignment?

To be honest, we don't. Rough solves the technology side of the alignment problem. The rest of that problem is people, process, and culture. We help with that too, but we're not going to claim that our software is going to fix all these issues overnight.

At its core, Rough is simple. We connect insights to work. We want everyone to understand the journey that a feature took before anyone started work on it. Sometimes features are built off the back of hundreds of customer calls; sometimes it's demands from investors; sometimes it's just the latest shower thought from the CEO. We're not here to judge how you make decisions, we're just here to show everyone what was involved in them.

As customer success professionals, the workflow that Rough offers will feel like finally having a direct line to product development. That's because Rough is built with a default-open philosophy. Everything is public by default. Think of it like having your customer insights treated with the same importance as engineering specs or executive strategy docs. When you surface a customer problem, everyone can see it, discuss it, and understand why it matters.

What features does Rough have specifically?

The central hub of Rough is the insights feed. This is where we open up insights for everyone to discuss. When you have a customer call that reveals something important about the product experience, it gets shared to Rough. Instead of that insight getting buried in a CRM note that only you and maybe your manager will ever see, it becomes part of the public conversation about what to build next.

The decision part of that process lives inside what we call a Pitch. This is a term we borrowed from Shape Up. A pitch is a structured document with a problem statement and a wireframe of what is being proposed. As a CS professional, you can see exactly how your customer insights influenced the problem statement, and you can contribute to the solution discussion.

We use vector embeddings to connect pitches and insights together, finding hidden links around the data. This means when you share an insight about customer churn, it might automatically connect to insights from sales about deal friction or from support about specific feature requests. These connections help everyone see the full picture of customer needs.

Another way we structure pitches is Lists. Everyone starts with one list by default, their Wishlist. The wishlist is how you can show the work you feel is most important to you. When product managers are trying to understand which features would drive the most customer value, they can see what's on your wishlist and at what position.

You can also Pin lists to the workspace. This lets everyone contribute to the list. Useful for things like "Customer Retention Priorities" or "Enterprise Customer Requests" where multiple people need to collaborate on what matters most.

What integrations does Rough have?

We currently integrate with Github and Slack. The Slack integration is particularly useful for CS teams—you can capture insights directly from customer conversations without having to switch tools or remember to log it later.

If you're using tools like Intercom, Zendesk, or HubSpot, we're open to adding more integrations. The key is making sure customer insights can flow into Rough without creating extra work for you. Get in touch if you have specific integration needs.

Can I connect Rough to my CRM or support tools?

Yes! We have an API that can connect to most customer success platforms.

How do I track customer health and renewals in Rough?

Rough is not a CRM or customer success platform. There are many awesome tools for tracking customer health, renewal dates, and CS metrics and we don't think the world needs another one. We focus on the insights that come from those customer interactions and how they turn into product improvements.

There's a simple reason for that. Customer success platforms are full of data that's largely relevant to the CS team. Renewal dates, health scores, and usage metrics create information overload for product and engineering teams. We've seen this time and time again with all-in-one tools that try to be everything to everyone. The noisier a system is, the less people want to interact with it.

If we are going to help align teams around customer needs, we need everyone engaged with what we do, and that means keeping the CS operational data out of Rough.

How does Rough help me influence product roadmaps?

This is where Rough really shines for CS teams. Instead of your customer insights disappearing into a black hole, they become part of the visible, ongoing conversation about what to build. When you share an insight about customer churn or expansion opportunities, it's not just another data point—it's connected to potential solutions and prioritized alongside other business needs.

The transparency of Rough means product teams can see patterns in your customer insights that they might not notice otherwise. Maybe five different customers have mentioned the same workflow pain point, or maybe enterprise customers are consistently asking for features that would also help with onboarding. These connections become obvious when insights are visible to everyone.

How do I get my team to use this instead of just telling me things in Slack?

The biggest challenge with any new tool is adoption, especially when people are used to informal communication. The key is showing immediate value. When someone shares a customer insight in Rough and then sees it get connected to a product decision or influence a roadmap discussion, they understand why it matters.

Start small. Instead of trying to capture every customer interaction, focus on the insights that are most likely to influence product decisions. When people see those insights turn into shipped features, adoption usually follows.

What sort of support do I get?

We love working with customer success teams, and we're always happy to explore how customer insights can better influence product decisions. We can support custom onboarding that helps your team understand how to translate customer conversations into product-relevant insights.

Send us an email at hello@rough.app and we'll get you sorted.

We're also happy to connect your business with our network of strategy and product experts who have successfully bridged the gap between customer insights and product development.