The Ultimate Guide To Implement Customer Retention Software For Your SaaS Business

From the last couple of weeks, we’ve been writing about the importance of customer retention, key metrics to track and how Customer Success can help you drive retention, and whether your organization is ready to implement Customer success software. Equally important is to understand the implementation of such softwares. Read on to know more about implementing customer retention software for your B2B SaaS business.

I’m sure by now you’re convinced about the importance of having a customer success platform and want to implement one, but scared .. Don’t know where to start? Want to avoid the common pitfalls? Want to fully maximize the value by implementing Customer Retention Software?

Implementing a new technology can be daunting but don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.

1. Define Scope

It’s very important to take a piecemeal approach. It’s all about identifying the main challenges that they want to address, prioritize, and then tackle the high-priority items? For example- If reducing churn is the main problem, the entire implementation should be focused on achieving this as the first value from the platform. 

2. Appoint a Power User

Appoint one power user from your existing CSM who would be comfortable working with Customer Success Software. Someone the rest of the team would look up to, probably a senior CSM, Ideally would recommend including them in the decision-making process of choosing your next customer retention software. In case, you’re not being able to identify a power user, you’ve to invest sufficient time and resource in training your CSMs to use the software. There would be no use purchasing and implementing CSM software as it will not deliver expected results. Your Power user should also be good at interpreting data to set up better client success processes. However, with AI-powered Customer Retention Software like CustomerSuccessBox, AI analyzes 100s of data points to generate alerts and recommendations for proactive interventions by CSMs.

3. Collaborate With Your Executive Sponsor

It is very important that you collaborate with your executive sponsor as they would be in charge of leading new projects, communicating changes, and also instrumental in ensuring the team works together in order to implement the changes successfully. Without collaboration with an executive sponsor, the implementation of your Customer Retention Software may be unsuccessful. It is always prudent to set expectations as per your CS org maturity and resources. The executive sponsors could be CEO/CRO depending upon the Org structure.

4. Involve Early Adopters And Champions

Involving early adopters and champions during all status meetings and review sessions during the implementation phase have manyfold benefited-

• Can help you drive new ideas and values to the team
• Can give you quick functionality feedback
• Can help your team members struggling with software adoption 
• Can play a key role in driving software adoption.

5. Setting up Key Processes for CSM

You need to set up key processes for CSMs so they know exactly what needs to be done in each case. For example- In the case of renewals, the account would automatically get enrolled in a renewal playbook, they’re supposed to make sure the playbook for the account gets completed in X days. If that doesn’t happen, you escalate to your manager and so on. Most of the time CSMs are clueless about what needs to be done on the platform so having clear processes really helps.

6. Training your CSMs

In most Customer retention software, you can group customers as per segments and create workflows, alerts, and tasks. You can also use the playbooks. There are different modules for different business cases to help you CSMs deliver value to the customer.  But to make use of these features, your CSMs need to be trained else a lack of understanding of features can lead to delays and less than optimum level of customer success processes. Although initial user training will be imparted by the software company it’s always better to go for the “Train the Trainer” approach. Here your power users can present the training to your team members on an ongoing basis. When selecting any Customer Retention Software, it’s important to find out about their training offerings- is it live or pre-recorded how-to videos.

Pro tip: Responsibilities of CSM

Step 1- Kick-Off Call

There is a kick-off call where the sales team handovers the client to the Customer Success team and explains to the Customer Success team the specific use cases that the customer wants to solve using the software. The CSM for the account explains the plan 

Step 2 – Project Readiness

The CSM confirms a certain amount of pre-work that needs to be done before the actual go-live/implementation. The integration with the customers’ technology stack (CRM, Support Tool, Billing/Subscription Tool, Analytics tool, etc.) is completed. The data is then tested and have the customer review the data and then move to production

Step 3- Configuring Health score 

In consultation with the Customer, Configure automatic calculation of 360-degree customer health by pulling data from different sources. Health 360 is defined using 4 different parameters: product adoption health, Financial health, Service, and relationship health.

Step 4- Configure alerts and tasks based on rules

The rules are configured based on the engagement data. These rules need calibration at frequent intervals as customer behavior and product features change. But now with Sheldon[AI], it automatically analyzes 100 data points from past user behavior and also adopts new user behavior to generate triggers and recommendations for proactive interventions. Create playbooks for automating repeatable tasks. For example- Onboarding playbook, Renewal Playbook, etc. The Product Adoption milestones are configured to ensure customers achieve the desired outcome by using CustomerSuccessBox.

Step 5- Configure engagement analytics 

Implement analytics on client usage data and key SaaS metrics for client meetings or internal executive and board reviews.

Step 6- Training Session

Impart training to all the power users/admin users. Show them how to configure rules and processes.

Step 7: Successful Rollout Of CustomerSuccessBox

Roll out CustomerSuccessBox to the rest of the team and train them to use the platform

Step 8: Regular Onboarding Business Review Meetings 

To keep the onboarding on track, to be conducted till the customer is fully onboarded to understand what they have achieved, where they are lacking, and how it can be improved or helped.

Most of the steps listed above are standardized and followed for a large segment of customers during Onboarding but for anything which is specific, we use Scope of Work. However, typical CustomerSuccessBox customers benefit from this standard process, given that our accumulated knowledge of how best to implement CustomerSuccessBox is embedded into it.

Suggested Read: The ultimate guide to customer retention

Operational Management

For every step, there is a timeline given and we follow our Onboarding playbook. So when a customer misses any important product adoption milestone (to complete a certain step within x number of days), an alert is triggered to CSM with subsequent tasks that need to be done to fix it. The tasks can range from a meeting, additional training, or whatever it is required to move the customer ahead in the customer lifecycle journey.

Now you know the detailed steps on how you can implement Customer Retention software in your SaaS organization. If you still have some questions or want a personalized solution as per your business needs, Free feel to book a demo now!

P.S. – The main image has been taken from pexels.com