Your company will be better able to retain your customers by managing relationships with each individual and helping them accomplish their expected outcomes with your product.
But deciding on one effective customer success strategy for a SaaS is often not as easy as it looks. Especially not in 2021, with the constant inflow of information and the rapid technological developments.
Nevertheless, there’s no denying that CS is crucial for your company. So we wrote this list of seven killer strategies to help you go that extra mile.
1. Make Sure You Understand Your Customer
Ever thought about what successful businesses do differently? Well, one fundamental reason is that they might have a superior relationship with their customers. This means that they understand their audience and their needs to a T. And that’s exactly where onboarding comes into play. It’s undoubtedly a crucial step in setting the right tone of your customer success relationship.
Getting customer onboarding right is essential for long-term retention and that’s why it should be one of your very first customer success strategies to put in place. It’s key to teaching your customers the value of the product you’re offering them. Because, let’s face it: if you can’t get people on board quickly and smoothly, your adoption rates are going to be low.
Your customers are more likely to become long-term clients if they achieve initial value during onboarding. Simply put, it’s a worthy investment towards preventing churn.
2. Integrate Everyone in Your Customer Success Efforts
Now that you have your customers in a good position & satisfied with your product, they’re less likely to cancel or churn. But they’re also more inclined to increase their spending. That’s exactly why touching base with your customers on a regular schedule is crucial. Your customer success managers should be helping your customers take full advantage of your product.
Keeping track of when and how your customers are using your product with a customer success management platform like HubSpot can be a big help in determining when to reach out. The tools help manage all your customer relationships in one place and deliver AI-powered insights like health scores. This lets you quickly pinpoint whether there’s a downtrend in the relationship with a particular customer and see exactly when that trend first occurred.
Every member of your team that has touchpoints with that customer must have full access to your customer success software & data. Checking the adoption and usage rates helps keep the relationship positive, and heads off minor problems before they grow into major ones.
3. Proactively Reach Out to Customers on Your Own
Let’s say you’re doing a great job with your onboarding and you’re including everyone in the team in your customer success efforts. But it somehow doesn’t add up?
Are your customers giving signals that they’re not using your product in the most efficient way to provide value for them? Well, one tactic you need to include in your customer success strategy in order to become successful is proactive reach out.
You might already have a good idea of the recurrent issues that your customers might encounter. And they’ll usually contact you in case they have difficulties.
But the key to a successful customer relationship is to up the amp on the consultative aspect. Reach out to them first. Give them advice on how to better use your product. Offer them helpful resources or introduce them to any newly available training materials. Even give them ideas for expanding their business. It’s about adding value.
4. Use Marketing to Publish Educational Materials
Usually, marketing is thought to be all about binging in new leads. But it also provides immense value for your customers. Educational marketing materials like eBooks, case studies, etc. can bring in leads & at the same time drive solid returns.
Publishing educational materials about your product or business should definitely be part of your customer success strategy. If you’re posting content about issues that your target audience deals with daily, you’ll establish a great relationship and loyalty before they even become customers. Also, handing out these materials free to your current existing customers helps you nurture your relationship with them through actionable advice.
And afterward, it’ll not only help you minimize any potential roadblocks that people might find themselves in when using your product, but it will also create a more user-friendly customer experience in the long-term.
5. Chase the A-Ha Moment
Although it’s ideal, the scenario where your customers immediately understand the value of your product is very rare.
Don’t wait around for them to figure it out – actively try to showcase your best features during the onboarding process & work with them through the implementation. Of course, it’s absolutely essential that you have a good understanding of your customer’s expectations in order to successfully chase their a-ha moment.
And if you want to quickly make your customers aware of the value your product brings, you’ll have to also anticipate their needs at every stage of their engagement. Actively checking-in on your customers making sure their goals are being met will help you big time in cementing a long-lasting relationship with them, which will eventually lead to their full loyalty for your product or service.
6. Improve Your Product Constantly Based on Data
If you constantly see people who don’t get the value of your product, go ahead and improve it. If your performance metrics don’t look peachy, make sure you extend a helping hand before your customers get annoyed with your product. Don’t wait for them to complain, or worse, to churn.
The data you get from your customers is very valuable – so make sure you use it! Customer success platforms can help you big time – you get to see exactly when your customers use your product, how they interact with it, if and when they’re dropping out of your onboarding process, why they’re leaving by implementing an offboarding process, and a whole lot more. Keeping track of all these metrics will help you know when it’s time to take action. So there’s no question that constant improvement of your product should be on your list of top customer success strategies to implement in 2021.
7. Re-engage with Customers after Improvements Go Live
Once you make sure your product is improved, it’s important to go back to those customers who either complained before or who didn’t get the promised value they were expecting out of your product. Your customers are probably one of your most valuable sources of information, so collecting their feedback is a viable customer success strategy that you should always have up your sleeve.
Re-engage with your customers. Tell them what you changed and tell them how their feedback helped you reach this point. When you implement your customer success strategy and start making improvements at every step along the way, you’ll see that your customers will be getting more out of your product or service. That’s when customer success really starts to pay off and you’ll be headed for great things.
It All Comes Down to…
Every company’s journey with its customers is different. But once you’ve committed to customer success, start by implementing one of these strategies, with adjustments and necessary tweaks along the way. Whether you start by improving your onboarding progress, your marketing efforts, or the product itself, you’ll be sure to build a company that’s focused 100% on your customer. Let’s do a quick recap:
- Understand your customers early on
- Include everyone that has touchpoints with your customers in your CS efforts
- Reach out proactively
- Publish educational content for added proven value
- Go for value realization
- Constantly improve your product based on data
- Collect feedback & reengage with your customers
So what’s left now is to pick one of these tactics and start running it to see results. Every company needs to find its own tactics that work best for its customers.
What’s one CS strategy that really did it for your company?
