7 Proven SaaS Practices For Customer Success
Customer Service refers to providing support services like application support for your customers. Customer support services are the bedrock on which the existence of an enterprise is based.
Considering the paramount importance that customer services have regarding the existence of an organization, many of them are outsourcing their customer support services to experts so as leverage maximum benefits like focussing on the core functionalities. Statistics have shown that it is multiple times difficult to gain a new customer as compared to retaining existing customers.
Having understood the importance of customer service, why don’t we dive into some of the best practices for customer success.
1)Create a Road Map for Servicing Customers
The customer service team should properly document each instance of a customer reaching out to them. Customer agents should further ensure that the documented information is further communicated throughout the organization. Such a documented approach can enable the customer support team to better address the grievances of customers and can also ensure that customers don’t have to reach out personally. Your roadmap is your path to your future goals and it should have a ‘mission’ and ‘vision’ as it helps you to clearly understand what your customer wants and how you can accomplish it. Scalability should also be considered while creating your roadmap as your services can rapidly progress in the next couple of years.
2)Better Customer Onboarding Services
The customer service team should see that every newly subscribed customer is walked through every step of your onboarding process. Interactive video sessions that take them through a virtual ‘product tour’ can all be incorporated as a part of customer onboarding. This can indeed help your customers to know more about your products and services rather than themselves trying to understand your services. Graphical User Interface(GUI) support-based web portal services that highlight your products and services through blogs, videos, etc can better reach out to customers who like to better seek the ‘self-help approach’.
3)Know what is Meant by Success for Customers
Customers should be provided with the best feedback mechanisms that enable them to review your products, services, etc. If your products do not satisfy customer expectations your products are sure to lose the market. Collating customer feedbacks that are obtained through various means like the door-to-door survey, online response gathering, social media, etc and subjecting it to statistical methods like qualitative and quantitative analysis can better help you to identify your strengths and weakness. It can also enable you to better identify the ‘weak points’ and redefine your Key Performance Indicators (KPI).
4)Don’t Hurt Your Off-Boarding Customers
A customer having stopped availing of your services doesn’t mean that they have forever unsubscribed you. Be kind and generous to them. Find out as to why they are leaving and let them leave with a sense of goodwill. They might have stopped availing of your paid services, but do ensure that they are still entitled to your free services and they are informed about your latest product updates. Maybe in the future, they might come across some of your products and might again become a regular subscriber of yours!. As far as possible you should ensure that customers do not stop subscribing to your services. Identify customers who are likely to churn out, take suitable course corrective measures to retain them because it is five times difficult to earn a new customer.
5)Maintain an Up to Date Database of Customers
Best customer success teams have the best in class methods to maintain, access, and update their customer database. Find out how your customers are using your products, reach out to them frequently to enable you to know their concerns. Identify if there is an opportunity to upsell your services. Identify how many of your customers have unsubscribed from your services and why they have stopped availing of your services. Maintaining such a database helps you to have better access to informations like customer demographics, purchasing history, etc. If you have your operations spread across many regions maintaining such a database helps you to determine the operations at which regions are at the risk of losing customers.
6) Customer Education
For any SaaS product to retain the market, it is inevitable that they are subjected to the latest updates and upgrades like security updates, malware resistant updates, etc. Provide online web portal-based support services to enable your customers to get accustomed to your latest products and their updates. Apart from educating your customers, you should ensure that they have the best support channels to reach out to your team to address their concerns. Education support can be effectively provided through social media platforms also. Commonly used customer education tools include Learning Management Systems, Product tours, Blogs, FAQs, etc.
7)Monitor Metrics for Continous and Comprehensive Improvement
Not only you should implement the best practices but should also ensure that you are monitoring their performance so as to further refine the KPI. Automated software mechanisms could be developed which can identify your strength and weakness. Data analytics tools can be used to monitor performance and implement automated corrective measures. These tools can be as simple, open-source, and free of royalties as Google Analytics or they can also be sophisticated software. Better monitoring and analysis of the KPI can optimize the business constraints subject to costs, team composition. Analyzing the KPI metrics can provide crucial information with respect to the quality of customer service, revenue, and sales of the business, etc.
We at Activelobby ensure that we strictly adhere to the above best practices with zero tolerance. We have a quality-driven approach to customer service. We have an in-house monitoring mechanism that can correlate our services with customer expectations. Our continuous and comprehensive feedback mechanism ensures that we incorporate customer expectations and concerns in each successive upgrade with regard to our services. We ensure that our service agents are updated with the latest technical know-how and upgrades regarding our products and services.
We provide future road maps for your products and services that can help you to better meet customer expectations. We have product tours for our customers as part of their onboarding. We educate and train our customers to enable them to get acquainted with your products and services. We provide customer support through emails, live chats, helpdesk, etc apart from holding other customer training programs. We always ensure that we leave no stone unturned as far as improving our services is concerned.
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Author: Rohith Sk
