Customer Success for SaaS

SaaS business is all about customer satisfaction. If your product isn't worth it, your customers can cancel their subscription whenever they want. On the other hand, acquiring new customers costs way more than retaining existed ones. Your loyal customers can even be your promoters.

How to satisfy your customers with your product or service? Can you keep them using your product and upgrading their plans? How to generate loyal customers who can widen your customer base without more marketing costs?

That's what customer success is about. In this article, we talk about this ambiguous concept that was revealed lately and spread due to the cloud computing revolution.

• Why customer success is important for SaaS business?
• What is customer success?

Why customer success is important for SaaS business?

You must have been calculating customer lifetime value (LTV) to know how your customers generate profit, and whether or not customer acquisition cost (CAC) exceeds LTV.

So do your customers; they study your service regularly to track its impact on their business and know whether or not the product meets the goals promised by your marketing and sales departments.

What happens if one of these things occur?

• The client doesn't understand how to deal with your product.
• The software is too complicated that customers can't use its functions to achieve what they want.
• The product doesn't fit your customer's needs.

If it were you, wouldn't you simply break up with a business that doesn't benefit you? It doesn't need much time to decide as there are multiple choices in the market that you can choose from. You can go to a more customer-centric competitor who understands your needs and helps you fullfill it.

That's why SaaS business needed a customer success department to take customers' hands and guide them through the joint success journey. As you support your customers, you support yourself; it's a win-win situation where you think of customers as partners whose goals are yours.

If your product helps them reach what they want, you both win. Else if it doesn't, you both lose. In short, your customer's success is your success.

What is customer success?

After the previous introduction, you have already understood somethings about the concept, but here is a definition to illustrate the term.

Customer Success is when your customers achieve their Desired Outcome through their interactions with your company.

Lincoln Murphy, author of "Customer Success: How Innovative Companies Are Reducing Churn and Growing Recurring Revenue".

Though there are so many definitions of customer success, there are common points in all of them. Which are:

• Understanding your customers' goals.
• Understanding how to achieve those goals using your product or service.
• Supporting your customers in all possible ways to reach those goals using your business's ship.
• Activating all techniques and processes that enrich the overall customer experience.

In other words, it's a way of creating a relationship with your customers that lasts even if your contract ends. They can support you later by referring to your business and writing reviews about their great experience. Thus, customer success is a long term bond that has a direct impact on your reputation and customer retention.

Conclusion

Customer success is more of a mindset that roles all your SaaS departments and techniques. In today's customer-centric business, there is no space for those who just don't care.

Remember that, at SaaS organization, one loyal customer is more valuable than hundreds of one-time subscription customers.