The DriveSales™ | SaaS Customer Success: A Roadmap to Improving Customer Success for SaaS Startups & Enterprise and Structured Approach to Key Roles, Strategies, and Tools!

According to the popular definition, about half of startups survive the first 5 years and only 1 in 200 become actual scaleups. Many startups in their early stages believe that customer success isn’t for them. Well, that’s something where they get it wrong!

What is Customer Success?

Customer success is methods, strategies, and ways of getting your customers to achieve value with your product or service, rather than momentary satisfaction. Although it is not yet a fully structured concept, customer success teams still follow a relationship-based, proactive approach to solve customer pain points before customers even realize them.

SaaS stands for software as a service. The basics of SaaS lay in the word “service” which means it is not a one-time deal, but a continuous experience that provides the clients with value. Customer Success in SaaS means making sure that customers achieve the “desired outcome” that your product promises. This is achieved via interactions with your product and your company.

Why is customer success important for SaaS companies?

SaaS companies have come to realise the importance of customer service increasingly over the past years and are developing new ways to connect with and help their customers better. Customer Success Managers are responsible for making this happen.

· Reduces Churn- The higher is the customer churn rate, the more difficult it will be for your SaaS business to achieve growth through new customer acquisition.

· Maximizes Customer Lifetime Value- If your customers are successful using your product, they’re less likely to churn. A one-year contract becomes two or three — or even longer — and can grow with the customer if there are good fit opportunities to upsell and cross-sell.

· Unlocks Second-Order Revenue- Second-order revenue is revenue that comes from customer referrals as well as from customers changing jobs and bringing your product to their new companies. Making your existing customers successful makes it more likely that they’ll want to recommend your product to their network or continue using it when they move on to new roles.

The Role Compared!

Their role is to be customer’s advocate within internal teams. It has to be relationship based. A relationship-focused customer success strategy includes involvement in the purchase decision, implementation and use of products or services and customer support.

The Role Elaborated!

Customer Success is not a lone job. They need support from their team. In addition, they need:

• The right product for

• The right customer who gets

• The right services to achieve their goals

The Aim/Goals of a Customer Success Manager-

CSMs have couple major goals:

• To reduce Churn and to improve portfolio

Customer churn refers to the percentage of customers who stop using your service within a particular time period. Reducing churn is always the goal. It is in the best interest of a company if customers stay. But why would its stay? Just because they get good product and good service? NO. They stay if they get value. If they achieve their goals.

For instance, all Project Management software help you plan, track and monitor your projects. And all such software sellers have customer Support with 24 hrs availability. Then how does a customer decide which one to buy? They might buy, if sales guys put up an amazing show, an elaborate product demonstration and perhaps some false promises.

But would that solve customer’s goals? Because that is what customers are here for.

Then how do you solve for this. Well, for starters don’t make false promises. Other than that, following needs to be kept in mind-

· Adjust your ICP.

· Adjust your strategy

· Start by asking your prospects what is they looking for. Can you provide that? Does your product fit? If not, make an excuse and leave. Having the right customers would help you reduce churn and improve your portfolio.

· If you see an existing customer whose goals no more align with you, they are good churn.

What are Customer Success Metrics?

A Customer Success Metric is a quantifiable measure that tracks and assesses the success of the CS team and is therefore an indicator of the customer’s success as they adopt and use the product. These metrics are most often used by SaaS or technology companies, although other industries also use some of the same metrics and terminology.

How do you measure Customer Success?

The connection between your customers’ success and your business’ success is clear. When your customers are happy, thriving, and spreading the word about your business, your business will experience growth and prosperity.

There are different ways by which metrics that determine Customer Success can be captured, collected, or calculated. Let’s walk through a few of these:

NPS- Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a measure used to gauge customer loyalty, satisfaction, and enthusiasm with a company that’s calculated by asking customers one question: “On a scale from 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this product/company to a friend or colleague?

· NRR- The Net Revenue Retention (NRR) is the percentage of recurring revenue that’s retained from existing customers over a specific period of time. It measures how good your company is at renewing or sustaining your existing customer base, as well as how good it is at generating additional revenue from those same customers.

· If you want to prove the ROI (return on Investment) of customer success you need to identify and showcase the correlation between customer outcomes and their revenue impact. Like how many customers who e.g., improved their revenue by 20% in the last 12 months bought renewals, expansions, and upsells.

Finding relevant metrics is important and asking exploratory questions to your customers are the answer!

Conclusion

Customer success metrics and KPIs are vital parts of a successfully running business and key to keeping customers happy.

Trying to find the underlying issues behind increased churn rates and loss of customers can be challenging. However, when systematically evaluated, these metrics uncover the strengths and weaknesses of your company, product, or service.

Once you find out the underlying problems, customer success, and support teams, as well as the managers can better focus on developing effective strategies. Keep in mind that every improvement requires a vision, in this case, provided by CS metrics.

Now, as an effective SALESPERSON! We can do three things from here.

1. Not ignoring the opportunity and blaming the situation for revenue loss.

2. Taking important notes and going back to revisit your sales strategy with the growth mindset.

3. Reaching out to The DriveSales™ if you need any specialized help for sales.

To conclude, what you choose to think also provides some idea of your development as a consultative salesperson. It is something like Maya Angelou quotes “By going out of your way to identifying customer needs, interests, expectations, and desires, and then by taking extra steps to satisfy them, you can surely help guarantee customer and brand loyalty.”

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