The customer journey is the process by which a customer interacts with a company in order to achieve a goal. Today’s consumers interact with brands in ways that are tricky to pin down. Customer journey maps are a tool to understand how people and companies buy your software.
This isn’t something you can assume or predict based on your internal perspective. A customer journey is very specific to the physical experiences your customers have.
Importance of Customer Journey in SaaS
In the SaaS business, the customer is the ultimate boss. Mapping customer journeys in SaaS is very crucial to influence every interaction and make it a positive experience so that the customer remembers and is happy to come back. The customer journey has various steps. These steps are the moments where a client interacts with your product or services.
A report by McKinsey states that “customers prefer to do business with brands that have multiple digital touchpoints.” Hence, the chances of your service or product being referred or purchased also increase with this.
Create your customer journey map
A customer journey map is a visual representation of the process a customer or prospect goes through to achieve a goal with your company.
Onboarding
Customer onboarding is the first thing that a customer goes through after buying/subscribing to your product. Customer onboarding experience is almost wholly in the hands of the customer success team.
Bonus Tip: Designing a Customer Onboarding Framework for B2B SaaS
Adoption
Adoption is the phase where customers get acquainted with your product, integrate it into their workflow and learn ways to use it that maximizes their benefit. Customers only adopt a product if it helps them achieve their goal.
Escalation
Customers will have problems while using your service. The Customer Success Team supports them to remove obstacles and escalate in their journey.
Renewal
SaaS renewal rate refers to the percentage of customers who choose to renew their subscription at the end of each subscription period. Having a playbook that explains the process and the steps to renewal well is vital to orchestrating the customer lifecycle.
Read, Renewal Playbook- What magic can it do?
Growth and expansion
Customer needs may change and hence they’ll need to adopt advanced features. According to customer requirements, your product has to expand its limits. As your customers become long-term users, it will give you more opportunities to grow, thereby increasing the LTV(lifetime value).
Referrals
A referral program is one of the best ways to get high-quality leads and customers for your SaaS business. Long-term users are also much more likely to become promoters of your product and bring in more customers via referral or word of mouth.
Benefits of customer journeys in SaaS
Shared understanding of customer experience
Customer journey maps are a strategic tool to communicate across your organization to show how people and companies interact with your brand and product.
Define data to track and attribute
To design a well-structured customer journey, you must define the data you need to track, attribute and sync your tool and team and have a shared context on where your customers are in the customer journey.
How can your SaaS Customer Journey Boost Retention
Customer journey mapping helps you plan the steps for an optimized customer experience. When your customers are satisfied with the service you provide them, they stick to you and continue using your product.
A well-planned customer journey results in long-term users which lower the churn rate. Hence increasing the retention rate.
Suggested Reading: 6 Exclusive Hacks To Accelerate Customer Retention For Your SaaS
B2B vs. B2C Customer Journeys
A B2B company has other companies as customers,whereas B2C tends to have a larger number of customers with shorter and simpler buying processes.
The levels inside the B2B and B2C customer trips are similar, beginning with lead acquisition and progressing through income to copy business and referrals. However, the specifics range significantly, especially in a saas context, due to differences in advertising, purchaser engagement, and customer personas.
- In B2C promoting, decision-making usually resides in a single character, while in b2b, selection-making authority may additionally contain several individuals or a formal procurement procedure
- B2C buyer needs involve consumer issues such as personal finances or convenience, while in the case of B2B buyer needs involve organizational issues such as efficiency or profitability.
Customer Journeys at CustomerSuccessBox
They helps you automate repeatable lifecycle activities. Customer Success Automation facilitates human-intervention as and when required.
Also it allows you to design automated customer success workflows for customers through their lifecycle. Among many use cases, key ones could be account assignment, self-onboarding drip for new customers and renewal reminder emails.
Features
Human Intervention Task (HIT)
There is scope of human intervention when the automation breaks to ensure smooth customer journey
Drive Product Adoption with automated engagement
With automated engagement, you can guide new accounts through their lifecycle.
Don’t ever miss a Touchpoint
Never miss a touchpoint with customer success automation for any lifecycle event, be it renewal, upsell or an executive business review.
CustomerSuccessBox helps you reduce missed opportunities and increase CSM productivity by facilitating Targeted and Repeatable customer success automation at scale.
