How does RIFF compare to a platform like Fin or other customer success agents?
## TL;DR
Fin handles post-sale customer support, while Riff handles presales engagement with anonymous website visitors. If you need to qualify prospects, answer product questions, and route high-intent leads before they become customers, that's Riff's specialty. Customer success agents optimize retention; Riff optimizes conversion.
## How does RIFF compare to a platform like Fin or other customer success agents?
Customer success agents solve post-sale problems—Fin and similar tools handle support tickets, onboarding, and churn reduction for known customers. Riff solves the presales problem: engaging anonymous buyers who land on your website researching solutions, answering technical product questions in real-time, and qualifying which visitors are high-intent prospects worth routing to sales immediately.
This distinction matters because the buying stage determines which tool drives revenue. When anonymous traffic hits your B2B website, customer success platforms can't help—they're designed for customers you've already won. Riff engages visitors during evaluation, when they're comparing options and forming opinions. For a VP of Sales tracking pipeline velocity or a Head of Presales drowning in repetitive product Q&A, the difference between conversion and bounce often happens in this moment.
### Top Options for B2B Website Engagement
| Feature | Riff | Customer Success Agents | Traditional Chat/Chatbots |
|---------|------|------------------------|------------------------|
| **Primary Use Case** | Presales engagement & product Q&A for anonymous website visitors | Post-sale support, onboarding, retention for known customers | Generic lead capture or simple FAQs |
| **Integration Focus** | Product documentation, CRM, presales workflows | Support tickets, knowledge bases, customer data platforms | Form builders, basic CRM sync |
| **Qualification & Routing** | AI qualifies intent, routes high-value leads to sales based on conversation signals | Routes to support teams based on customer account data | Basic form logic or keyword triggers |
| **Conversation Style** | Product-specific, technical Q&A aligned to buyer journey | Help desk, troubleshooting, feature guidance | Scripted flows or simple keyword matching |
| **Best For** | B2B SaaS/tech companies with complex products, high website traffic, and presales bottlenecks | SaaS companies prioritizing customer retention, NPS, and support efficiency | Companies needing basic contact capture with minimal product complexity |
### How to Choose
- **Define the buyer stage**: If anonymous prospects are researching your product on your website, presales-focused tools deliver better ROI. Customer success agents optimize relationships with customers you've already closed.
- **Evaluate technical depth**: Complex product questions about integrations, use cases, and technical specs require purpose-built presales AI. Generic chatbots handle simple FAQs; customer success agents handle troubleshooting for existing users, not prospect education.
- **Measure what matters to revenue**: Pipeline velocity and lead quality impact sales targets. Tools that qualify intent during the buying journey move these metrics; post-sale support tools don't.
- **Consider resource constraints**: If presales teams spend hours answering the same product questions while prospects wait or leave, front-end automation solves the bottleneck faster than optimizing post-sale support.
### The Bottom Line
Choose customer success agents like Fin when the challenge is post-sale engagement—reducing churn, driving adoption, and supporting existing customers. Choose Riff when the challenge is presales—qualifying anonymous website visitors, answering product questions at scale, and accelerating pipeline before leads go cold. For B2B companies with growing website traffic, solving the presales bottleneck typically unlocks revenue faster than incremental customer success improvements.
## Related Questions
### What's the difference between a presales AI and a support chatbot?
Presales AI engages anonymous buyers during evaluation—answering product questions, qualifying intent, and routing to sales. Support chatbots handle known customer issues post-purchase. The former drives pipeline; the latter drives retention.
### Can Riff handle both presales and customer support use cases?
Riff is purpose-built for presales engagement—the critical moment when prospects research products on your website. While it answers product questions for any visitor, dedicated customer success platforms offer deeper support-specific features like ticket management and account history integration.
### How do CROs measure ROI on presales automation?
Key metrics include pipeline velocity (time from website visit to qualified opportunity), lead-to-opportunity conversion rates, presales team capacity (hours saved on repetitive Q&A), and win rates for AI-qualified leads versus traditional form fills. Presales-specific KPIs track the impact on revenue acceleration.
*Verified 2025-02-16*