Making your SaaS company stand out in an increasingly competitive world isn’t easy.
As technology continues to evolve, customers are searching not just for the best selection of features, but an amazing experience too.
The more you commit to supporting your customers before, during, and after their purchase, the more likely you are to earn their loyalty.
While great sales prices and product enhancements might capture your customer’s attention immediately, it’s the wins they get from using your product or service that keep them around.
With a customer success strategy, you set yourself apart from the competition with an unforgettable experience and show your audience they made the right choice purchasing from you.
Here's some top customer success tips to differentiate your SaaS company from the competition.
Know and segment your audience
Understanding your audience is crucial in all aspects of business sales and marketing. It’s also essential when you want to develop an excellent customer success strategy.
Even if your SaaS brand is still relatively small, it probably attracts several different kinds of customers looking for specific things.
For instance, a company selling website hosting software might attract solo entrepreneurs building their own site, agencies designing websites for companies, and enterprise IT teams.
Creating a series of user personas for your potential customers will help you to create custom onboarding strategies for each type.
A personalized onboarding process will address the specific goals and unique challenges for each segment of your target audience, helping them to access the right results as quickly as possible. You could even send resource packages with blogs, eBooks, and training materials to each customer based on the segment they fall into.
Some companies even offer videos and personalized demonstrations on how to use various parts of the SaaS solution.
Deliver quick and long-term wins
When a customer purchases a SaaS solution, they’re looking for quick and effective solutions to existing problems. The faster your clients start to see the benefits of using your software, the more likely they are to fall in love with your technology.
With your customer personas and profiles to guide you, create a series of tools to help your customers achieve the results they’re looking for as soon as possible. For instance, if you know the people who buy the cheapest version of your accounting software are usually looking for a way to create professional invoices, use an automated wizard in your software to show customers how to make their first invoice straight away.
After you’ve shown your customers how to use your software to make their lives easier, give them access to helpful metrics and reports so they can track the ROI of their purchase.
Custom reports will give your customers instant access to evidence that your software is working. For particularly high-value customers, you could also consider assigning customer success agents to answer questions and offer guidance for the first few weeks of onboarding.
Mix human and machine support
Many of the steps ensuring customer success in today’s SaaS world can be automated.
Wizards can guide your customers through the first stages in setting up their new app or service. You can even install chatbots into your software to answer customer questions and give clients instant access to FAQ documents and information. However, be careful not to manage too much of the process with machines alone.
While automated tools and bots are excellent for getting your customer up and running with their new software as soon as possible, it takes human interaction to win your customer’s heart.
Make sure each new client on your list gets the opportunity to talk to a real, human agent about any concerns they might have.
Ensure it’s easy to find the contact details for your support team and try to be available on the channels your customers use (such as social media or live chat). After your customers have used your product for a while, send an email asking them how it’s going and providing them with other resources they might find helpful, like blogs and videos.
Building a human relationship with each of your clients should help you to retain customer loyalty as your SaaS business scales.
Listen carefully to your customers
Customer success efforts have a direct impact on your customer retention rates and your ability to keep happy clients close. While new clients are great, your loyal, repeat customers are usually the ones driving the highest revenue. One study into SaaS companies found that a fifth of respondents currently deal with a churn rate of more than 15%.
Since clients abandon your company for a range of reasons, the only way to determine how you can successfully enhance customer success strategies is to listen to your consumers. Pay attention to the reasons they give for unsubscribing from your service and listen to what clients say in reviews. You can even check for social media comments about your business online.
The more you listen to your customers, the more you can implement changes to your success strategy that make a real difference to retention. You can even use your interaction with customers to guide the evolution of your software. If customers feel that their feedback helps to influence the new features and services, they’ll feel more appreciated and understood.
Stand out with the right customer success strategy
Customers want SaaS products that deliver results.
A customer success strategy ensures you can continue to demonstrate the value of your solution over time, turning customers into loyal advocates for your brand.
Done correctly, a customer success strategy can even give you access to case studies and great marketing materials to help you attract new customers to your brand. It’s also a fantastic way to convince your existing customers to stick around while referring their contacts to your team.
Invest in a reliable way to differentiate yourself from the competition with a customer success strategy, and you can avoid the risk of having to compete based on price instead.
