Guest Post: Ways to Improve the SaaS Customer Experience

This week we feature an article by Anand Subramanian, a content writer from Freshflows, a product management app for B2B SaaS product teams. He shares how to improve the SaaS customer experience to encourage customer loyalty.

Software as a service (SaaS) has grown rapidly in recent years, particularly in recent months. A distinctive product is no longer sufficient. It’s easy to miss the new B2B buyer demands. Many SaaS firms neglect their current clients to acquire new ones. Profits from loyal customers are a company’s most valuable asset. So, while creating a product, focus on customer success to ensure customer satisfaction and reduce churn. A happy client is more likely to become a loyal one who can help you boost income. So, offering a pleasant customer experience is critical to the success of your organization. 

Why is it Important? 

Generally, obtaining new clients is more expensive than retaining existing ones. It’s tough to keep customers and get repeat business if you don’t prioritize client pleasure. A SaaS firm depends heavily on client retention and repeat business. Customer experience is a key difference for SaaS firms. If your first-time customers aren’t happy, you’ll lose them shortly. 

Now that we know its importance, let us consider ways to improve customer experience. 

• Investing in Best Website UX 

Every company needs a proper online user experience, but SaaS firms need it more than others. This is because your website is generally your customers’ primary point of contact. They’ll use your site to do things like research information, get support, and compare costs. Your website must provide an exceptional user experience. 

What are you doing wrong? Difficulties in your site might discourage potential customers from buying it. Assume your website includes: 

• Slow website loading times,  
• ambiguous website content,  
• ineffective navigation,  
• page issues,  
• lack of mobile compatibility 
• Calls-to-Action are absent (i.e. demo or trial registrations) 

By optimizing sites that cause these sorts of problems, you’ll be on the right track to a better client experience. 

• Consumer Onboarding Experience 

You can start your customers off right with a great onboarding experience. It’s one of the most effective ways to increase client satisfaction. Your onboarding process should be tailored to your customers’ needs to help them feel welcomed and supported from the start. 

Here are 2 ways of achieving successful onboarding 

1. It begins when customers join up for your service. These may be freemium or paying customers. Non-paying users may become loyal and lucrative customers, therefore welcoming everybody is vital. Your welcome message should thank new members for joining. It should be delivered immediately so they don’t forget. When appropriate, it should provide guidance on how to get started and connect them with a resource. 

2. The next step is to help new customers set up and use your product. Onboarding is incomplete without it. Recognize that each user’s onboarding needs will vary. Others may be new to your SaaS product and need extensive training. Offering self-service materials and guided walkthroughs helps clients get what they need. 

• Plan for collecting and acting on consumer feedback. 

After onboarding and orientation, your customers are ready to utilize your SaaS products. They purchased or subscribed to your product to solve an issue or alleviate a pain point. However, clients may run across obstacles along the way that detract from their experience. How will you know whether your product satisfies their expectations? To find out, you must regularly seek user input. 

There are various efficient approaches for SaaS organizations to gather client feedback in order to assess their entire customer experience.

• Consumers may offer rapid feedback by emailing or posting surveys on your website. You might ask them whether they like your products and if there are any issues that need to be addressed. 

• You may also examine a variety of metrics derived from consumer usage data in your app, such as how much time customers spend using it, retention and engagement data, and behavioral analytics. This data may give extra insights into how users interact with and utilize your app. 

Create an action plan based on the input you received. Your SaaS experience management strategy will reap rewards as you continue to gather and act on feedback.  

• Deconstruct internal silos 

Internal organizational silos are known in B2B SaaS. Whether you are a small start-up or an enterprise SaaS firm, your users may suffer when your teams are not aligned. For example. Features that are promised but never delivered may indicate sales, marketing, and customer experience silos that need to be addressed. It is tough to do business with customers in silos, decreasing loyalty and increasing churn. 

 To get your staff on the same page, create internal teams entirely focused on customer success. A customer success team helps convert prospects into regular users. Keeping an eye on the customer journey can help your team uncover ways to boost engagement and retention. 

• Customer Experience Measurement 

How can SaaS companies measure and improve customer satisfaction? You can track improvements in your CX by measuring key customer experience KPIs. Here are some customer success metrics to consider when developing a data-driven customer success strategy:  

• NPS: NPS measures how likely a customer is to refer your items to a friend. Positive client recommendations are vital to B2B organizations, therefore achieving a high NPS is a common goal for customer care teams. The Net Promoter Score is calculated by subtracting the percentage of “detractors” (ratings 0-6) from the percentage of “promoters” (rating of 9-10). It’s an essential factor to consider when assessing current client satisfaction. 

• Customer Lifetime Value: Customer support teams should also aim to increase client lifetime value. It’s simple to calculate CLV. Calculate your average buy value by multiplying it by your average purchase frequency. The result will inform you how much your company can expect to earn throughout the lifetime of each new client, a key statistic for evaluating your customer success initiatives. 

• The Churn Rate: The churn rate is a measure of loss over a certain period, and there are two forms of churn: revenue churn and customer churn. To begin, revenue churn is the percentage of revenue losses over time. It is the revenue lost due to subscription cancellations or downgrades. Customer churn rate is more often used by SaaS companies and deals with lost clients. The churn rate is calculated by dividing the total number of customers by the total number of churned customers. If your churn rate is higher than the industry average, your customers aren’t happy with the results of your SaaS solutions. 

Conclusion 

Providing a great SaaS customer experience has far too frequently been an afterthought. But, in these competitive times, it can’t last. Your company should adopt a customer-centric strategy by soliciting input, acting on it, and assessing progress so that you know where you stand. 

Anand Subramanian is a Chennai-based visual artist and content writer. He has a diverse background in visual arts, teaching, and publishing, which has earned him recognition from national and international publications such as Lonely Planets Magazine India, Outlook Traveller, Broad Magazine, and Travel+ Leisure India. He is a content writer at Freshflows.

For more articles from Shep Hyken and his guest contributors go to customerserviceblog.com.

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