In this blog post, we thoroughly break down customer success and discuss when your startup should consider it and its various benefits.
Customers play considerable roles in SaaS growth. SaaS would mean nothing without customers, regardless of its use and effectiveness. So, as customers interact with different tools in the market, they search for customer success-oriented SaaS. For every customer, the highlight of using a product or service is achieving an end goal. This shows that users care less about features; they focus more on outcomes.
SaaS startups that want to excel beyond the competition must devise customer success strategies for SaaS. It shouldn’t be an afterthought: it must come at the right time. This is why we shall discuss the right time to consider customer success. In addition, we shall discuss the importance of customer success, a customer success team, and customer success strategies for SaaS.
Why is Customer Success so Important?
- Raising Successful Customers
When your SaaS startup helps customers reach their set goals, they (the customers) feel satisfied. Making successful customers does not begin at the point of purchasing or using your product/service. It starts way before this time till prospects become repeat customers. This means that customer success cuts across a customer’s entire journey with your SaaS startup.
- Customer Retention
Customers are always free to go to the next SaaS startup if dissatisfied. The important factor for retaining a customer is customer success! Know that you do not exist as a SaaS startup to amass wealth. Instead, you exist to shoulder your customers’ burdens and help them succeed. Your customer success team and product/service must be able to do this.
When customers see how your success team and tools can help, they put a foot in. The second foot comes in when your team and products/services begin to help them get results. As your customers become successful at their businesses, they will make repeat purchases, trust you, and recommend you to others.
- Recurring Revenue & Increased Sales
Customer success can bring recurring revenue. Once you help your customers reach their goals, they’ll subscribe to any of your SaaS plans. This is healthy for your startup’s finances as your customers would keep buying from you.
When is a Good Time to Start Thinking About Customer Success?
SaaS should not handle customer success with levity. Instead, you must consider customer success vital to the customers and your SaaS startup. Many businesses often focus so much on product development, marketing, publicity, sales, and support, that they let customer success slip. Mind you, all of these efforts would later go down the drain if your startup fails to embed customer success in its processes.
So, when do you consider customer success? According to Forbes, there is no magic number of customers to consider before adopting customer success. It should begin with your first customer. You don’t need to acquire all the customers in the world before you start. As you make your first customer successful, you’d know how to satisfy the next customer.
Is it Beneficial to Have a Team Dedicated to Customer Success?
The role of customer success managers in SaaS is significant as it helps customers reach their aims and objectives. So, having a customer success team in your SaaS is beneficial. Let’s now discuss the benefits of having this team.
- Onboarding
The team can efficiently onboard new customers to your SaaS. They’ll begin with attracting prospects to your brand. Also, they’ll show these prospects how effectively your product/service will solve the challenges they encounter. This way, prospects become buyers. As part of the onboarding process, the team guides them on making the most of your product/service to achieve set goals and get desired results.
- Continuous Customer Training
Following the onboarding process, the team has to keep customers abreast of all changes that’ll boost their efficiency. This training can be in newsletters, blog posts, or webinars. Mind you, this proactive measure of tackling issues is more effective than providing support.
- Brand Image Building
A customer success team ensures that your audience portrays your brand positively. To achieve this, the team will see that every business transaction leaves them fulfilled, not frustrated.
- Revenue Increase
Customers make a meaningful percentage of a SaaS’ revenue. However, without maintaining a robust relationship with your customer, it would be impossible to generate revenue through sales. The customer success team establishes this relationship and generates meaningful insights into consumer behavior and purchasing trends. These insights guide the team in adopting the right sales and marketing campaign.
- Customer Loyalty
The customer success team will ensure that your product/service satisfies customers so much that they become loyal to your brand. You already share a relationship as you offer solutions and guide them through their customer journey. So, if this relationship births the expected results, customers will stay with your brand and even recommend it to others.
What are Some Customer Success Strategies?
Here’s how to set up a proper customer success strategy.
- Understanding your customers
Understanding your customer allows you to deliver excellent services to them. This step requires you to determine your customer’s needs and their reasons. To understand your customers, you need to research. You can conduct surveys or look within your community to discover their questions/uncertainties. In short, know who your target audience is & their challenges, and solve them.
- Customer Acquisition/Education
Guide your customers to make purchasing decisions. Begin the acquisition process by attracting them to your product/service. Then, nurture them to the conversion stage.
After this customer acquisition stage, you should not neglect education. Suppose you meet customers skeptical about converting; you can continue to educate them. Show them how your product/service can fix their problems. The education process also goes for existing customers. It helps them rest assured that your SaaS will guide them on their customer journey. Educational materials can be blog posts, videos, webinars, etc.
- User Onboarding
The onboarding process requires getting users ready for your product/service. Features for onboarding include welcome emails and greeting messages. Other onboarding steps include product setup, filling out forms, providing help, etc.
- Reaching Desired Goals
Commit to helping your customers achieve desired outcomes. You should be with them through their customer journey. Ensure your relationship gets stronger and guide them till they reach their goals.
- Customer Support
Even after your customers have reached their goals, you must constantly provide them with the support they need. Answer their questions, provide practical solutions when necessary, fix issues, and so on.
Key Takeaways
- Your startup should handle customer success seriously, as it is crucial to their journey.
- Customer success is essential because it raises successful customers, aids customer retention, and increases revenue.
- As a SaaS startup, you need a customer success team. The team will onboard & educate customers, build your brand image, offer customer support, and maintain customer loyalty.
- You need an effective customer success strategy. This strategy involves understanding your customers, customer acquisition, customer education, etc.
When customers aren’t successful, a startup has failed. It doesn’t matter how much such a startup has made from making frustrated customers. Therefore, SaaS shouldn’t dwell on merely offering product/service solutions. Instead, they should ensure that they adequately invest in customer success strategies for SaaS. This way, their customers would feel fulfilled after using their products/services.
Setting up an effective strategy to raise successful customers requires funds. This strategy will help you research your customers and meet their needs. If your SaaS struggles to take this step, we can help you at Intrepid Finance. Our goal is to provide companies and startups with the capital they need to ensure customer success. You can request capital now or schedule a call to get you on the path of making successful customers.
