What is SAAS Customer Experience and Why Should I Care?
There’s a saying in the restaurant industry, “Good food brings customers, but it’s great service that keeps them coming back.” Perhaps the same could be said about the SAAS industry, too. Of course, you must have a great product, but the customer’s experience with your product is what will determine whether you keep them long-term or lose them to churn.
Today, we’ll discuss what is SAAS customer experience and remind you of the reasons you should care.
What is SAAS customer experience?
Everybody understands what a customer experience is, but what makes a SAAS customer experience different? SAAS customer experience is all about making the customer’s life easy. From the very first interaction to using the product to seeking support – every touchpoint should be as smooth and frictionless as possible. Good SAAS customer experience is built on a solid foundation of customer understanding. This means really knowing who your customers are, what they need and want, and what their pain points are. With this knowledge, you can design every aspect of the customer journey to be as simple and enjoyable as possible.
When done right, SAAS customer experience can be a real differentiator for your business – helping you to attract and retain customers in an increasingly competitive market.
Why Does Customer Service Even Matter for a SAAS Business?
For a long time, customer service and experience were seen as important parts of doing business, but perhaps not nearly as important as they are today. For SAAS companies, it’s become more and more apparent that providing a top-notch customer experience (CX) is essential to success.
First and foremost, customers are the lifeblood of any business. Happy customers are more likely to stick around and continue using your product or service. They’re also more likely to recommend your business to others. This provides your company with a competitive edge over similar software, products, or services.
Second, today’s customers have high-quality standards. With so many options available, they’re unwilling to put up with poor experiences and will leave for a competitor immediately. This hurts your sales and sales process overall.
Finally, remember that investing in your CX is an investment. It may cost you money upfront, but it’s almost guaranteed to make it up down the line. A world-class CX strategy keeps your customers around longer and can help you improve your products and further develop your software. People who love your product will also enjoy telling you how to make it better and fit more in line with what they’re trying to accomplish.
Creating Good SAAS Customer Experience
Now that we know the importance of CX, it’s essential to understand how it’s created.
Here are the key points we want to discuss:
- Know how your customers interact with your product
- Make your products and website user-friendly
- Keep your onboarding process as simple as possible
- Ensure customers are educated about your product
- Have stellar customer support
- Ask for customer feedback
- Track the customer lifecycle
Now let’s get into more detail.
How Do Customers Interact With Your Product?
It’s important to know why customers choose to take certain actions and at which point they take them. Do they use your product for a short period of time, then stop? Are they only using certain parts of your product and not the entire suite? At what point are customers expected to churn, and are they meeting that expectation or churning sooner?
Your job is to ensure that their experience with the product at each stage is fantastic, meets their needs, and, when you can, exceeds their expectations.
Having free trials can help in gathering this sort of information. A free trial is a perfect opportunity to see what customers immediately gravitate toward and where they fall short in their usage or in becoming paying customers.
Not gaining these insights can result in developing a product that customers don’t engage well with or want to spend their money on. It’s better to gain these insights earlier on rather than down the line when you’ve invested more time and resources into your product development.
Have a User-Friendly Website
A good user-friendly website can make learning about your product easy for potential customers. Bad or confusing websites are a waste of money and time. Your website should be clean, and its purpose should be clear. Any question that your customers (or potential customers) have should be answered through your site.
This can also extend to other places customers may learn about or purchase your product, such as a mobile app. If it’s not user-friendly or easy to understand, they may not bother using it.
Poor website navigation or slow load speeds can make it difficult for potential customers to learn about or purchase your product. It can also leave a bad taste in their mouths. Even if you invest in making your product better, they’ll choose not to come back and try it again.
Make Sure Your Onboarding Process is as Simple as Possible
Making customers happy begins during the onboarding process. It doesn’t do much good if a customer purchases your product and then gets confused about how it works or doesn’t see the immediate value in their purchase. Buyer’s regret can cause you a lot of money and frustration.
To make a strong, simple onboarding process:
- Make it personalized if possible.
- Don’t overload customers with features they may not need right away. You don’t want to overwhelm them.
- Removes friction points.
- Estimates where churn can happen and fixes problems before they begin.
- Provides direct communication to reaffirm your company is there if they need you.
Of course, this can be difficult to do right away. Great onboarding processes are built over time through testing and optimizations. This is why getting feedback (especially during free trials) can be crucial to customer success.
Ultimately, the goal is to make it as easy as possible for the customer to benefit from buying and using your product.
Ensure Customers Are Educated About Your Product
No matter how easy you feel your product is to use, customers will have questions on how to do specific things. You are an expert at your product, meaning you’ll likely have blind spots. You must identify those blind spots and recognize common questions customers have when starting out or when updates are made.
Having free educational materials can help customers answer the questions they have. Being able to access easy instructions quickly can alleviate the stress and frustration your customers might feel.
Developing learning portals or knowledge bases are perfect for creating these materials.
Have Stellar Customer Support
Fantastic customer support is no longer optional. Too many companies do it too well for you to lack in that department. Make it easy for customers to reach you (or your team), whether it be for questions or just to leave feedback.
This is often done through any of the following:
- Chatbots
- Social Media
- Surveys
- Feedback Widgets
Of course, it’s normal not to be able to get to everyone’s questions right away, but what’s important is that you give the impression that you actually care about their questions/concerns and recognize that they have been heard.
Ask for Customer Feedback
Customer feedback is important to any business, not just SAAS businesses. Feedback can help you learn what’s working and what needs to be changed. It can also give you ideas for new features or products.
There are a few different ways to get feedback from customers:
Surveys
You can send surveys through email lists, social media, or even in-app messaging.
Feedback Widgets
Feedback widgets are small pieces of software that allow customers to leave feedback on your website or product.
One-on-One Interviews
You can reach out to specific customers you think would be willing to chat and ask them questions about their experience.
Emails
Sending an email and asking for a reply back is a great and simple way to garner feedback from your customers. Even if just a few respond, it’s more than you would’ve received if you hadn’t asked.
The important thing is that you actually use the feedback you receive to improve the customer experience. If you ignore it, customers will know, and they won’t bother giving feedback in the future.
Making customers feel like they’re being listened to will help them be more loyal to your product as they feel a sense of ownership and pride in watching your business develop.
Track the Customer Lifecycle
Customers will leave for multiple reasons; it’s inevitable. But, it’s important to track their lifecycle while they are there. Why and when are customers buying from you? When do they leave, and what reasons do they give for leaving? What opportunities are there for you to either improve your product or make using it easier?
Tracking should start as early as the sales process. You can ask new customers why they bought the product and what they are trying to solve with it. You can even reach out to customers who didn’t buy and find out why. Some may not answer, but any answers you get could provide extra insight for improving your sales process.
Measuring this can help optimize all your processes and help you know where improvements need to happen and what future processes are worth investing in.
Conclusion
Customer experience should be a top priority for any SAAS company. By understanding and acting on customer feedback, companies can create a competitive advantage by delivering an exceptional experience that exceeds customer expectations. Gaining insights from customer experience data can help businesses identify areas of improvement and make necessary changes to ensure they are providing the best possible service.
What steps have you taken or do you plan on taking to improve your SAAS customer experience?