If you start looking online for a Customer Success Platform or a solution you’ll most likely come across a lot of discussion on B2B SaaS businesses. This might prod you to wonder if Customer Success is only for B2B Subscription-based (SaaS) companies. Well, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Any company operating via the subscription model is entitled to have customer success as an indispensable functional department. Customer Success in business is critical.
While living in the Subscription Economy, 80% of the Potential Lifetime Value of a customer is dependent upon the retention cycle. Because when you acquire a user or a subscriber, you actually don’t make any money, in fact, you only make potentially between 5%- 20 % of the Potential Lifetime Value of a customer.
Therefore, it becomes extremely important for a SaaS business to not drop the ball post-acquisition/sale. In fact, that is where the real battle begins, that is when you are able to deliver the real value of your product or service. By delivering success, you are able to achieve their desired outcome. You enable them to achieve their original need of why they purchased the product in the first place. This is where Customer Success comes in. Customer Success is not a role for a few designated people, rather it should be a mindset across the entire organization.
What is Customer Success? How does it help achieve growth in the SaaS economy?
Customer Success is the business methodology of ensuring your customers achieve their desired business outcomes using your product and services. Customer Success in SaaS businesses is more proactive, data-led, relationship-focused client management that ensures the client and the vendor goals are aligned for mutual success.
That approach helps businesses reach a number of top-level goals, including:
- Increasing renewal sales and revenue
- Increased customer loyalty and customer retention.
Read more about Customer success best practices
Acquisition-driven growth is dead. Retention driven growth is the future.- Puneet Kataria, CEO & Founder- CustomerSuccessBox
How Does Customer Success Help Reduce Churn?
It is a very obvious thing that if we want to stop our customers from churning we need to keep them happy with our product and service. However, what is less understood is what makes them happy? Most SaaS founders believe, product engagement and usage. That’s just partially true. Customers have bought your product to solve a key business problem and to make them happy you need to ensure they are getting the business benefit they hoped for.
Customer Success for B2B SaaS is a function of all departments with the obvious contributors being- Customer support, Onboarding specialist, and Customer Success team. It’s the job of the obvious contributors to educate, train and guide the customer in their ideal customer journey crafted. And in the process gather a wealth of feedback from the customer. When combining them with customer health data, inform the product and development team of product enhancements and additions. As long as your product/service is able to solve the business problem of the customer, he has no reason to leave.
Difference Between Customer Success and Customer Support
Data shows that for every customer who contacts customer support, 26 customers with a problem don’t reach out. Those are all customers a business stands to lose if their problem isn’t fixed. And research also shows that 91% of those who don’t complain simply churn instead.
By proactively eliminating potential customer problems and proactively fixing those that arise, customer success gives your business a better chance at retaining those other 26 customers.
Customer success aligns closely with customer support to take customer satisfaction to the next level.
- Customer Success
Customer success is focused on working proactively in partnership with customers throughout their time as a customer to help them get more value out of their purchase and share their feedback with you. It drives the customer experience forward and ensures a successful path into the future. - Customer Support
Customer support focuses on working reactively on the front lines – fielding customer questions, issues, and requests over the phone, email, live chat, and social media. Support is the function that solves problems when customers raise them; it’s reactive fulfillment to specific customer requests.
Read more on the difference between Customer Success and Customer Support
How to choose an ideal customer success platform
When you provide help your customers to achieve the desired outcomes, your success and theirs go hand in hand. Supported by the right customer success tool, you and your team can
- Predict churn,
- Reach out to customers just at the right time,
- Improve retentions,
- Increase upsells and expansions and do a lot more.
Choosing any customer success platform is not just enough. You need to select the tool with an eye for a “larger success stack” which will grow, shrink and adjust according to the ever-changing needs of the customers.
Remember your Customer Success Platform for B2B SaaS is not going to be used just by your CSM but it should be a mission for your whole organization. Your CSM will act as your business partner so be honest, upfront, and flexible during the final purchase.
So when choosing a Customer Success Software, analyze the positive impact of investing in the tool. Read 5 key factors to consider while choosing a customer success platform
P.S. – The main image has been taken from pexels.com
