The continued growth and domination of cloud SaaS solutions are transforming the business marketplace. From the manner in which brands connect with customers in their market to how colleagues interact with one another and get work done. SaaS solutions continue to innovate and deliver increasing flexibility, productivity and value from the cloud.
SaaS solutions empower companies to shed on premise architecture, maintenance contracts and IT resources which frees up capital to invest in other parts of their business. Most importantly, SaaS solutions also provide the flexibility to quickly pivot from providers that are not meeting their needs to alternatives with significantly less cost and effort than the legacy “on premise” world.
In the early days of SaaS solutions, integrations with third party systems were a key strategy to promote stickiness and retention, however, integrations are not as sticky as they used to be. API’s leveraged to facilitate integrations are becoming more flexible, robust and easier to administer. Granted, unplugging and replugging are no walks in the park, but in comparison to the replacement of physical hardware and data migration from the legacy on premise world, the costs and effort are significantly easier and more likely to occur if you are not meeting your customer’s needs.
For these reasons, the weight and importance of maintaining recurring subscription revenue is paramount for the success of your business. The Customer Success organization is table stakes to ensure your customer base remains satisfied and delighted with your product.
A common oversight of many SaaS providers is to presume that the Customer Success (aka Account Management) function is primarily predicated on developing strong relationships, customer face time and artfully managing customer expectations. While these functions are still a critical part of the account management discipline, the increasing ease of transition between cloud based providers means the thresholds for customers jettisoning for alternatives are much lower than they used to be.
SaaS providers too often mistakenly presume customer churn as a failure of the Customer Success organization’s inability to manage customer expectations and relationships while overlooking the influence other parts of their business are having on their customer’s experience and perception of the company as a whole.
To truly be successful in the SaaS universe, the voice of your customers must permeate throughout the entirety of your organization beyond the departmental namesake of Customer Success. Too often customers will have a strong relationship with their account managers but churn because the SaaS providers give poor customer support from the help desk, ignore long standing bug fixes or long standing feature requests in favor of prioritizing new feature development.
While the Customer Success organization is the most critical link in the chain that secures the relationship with your customer, the saying holds true that the chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Too many times, I’ve seen what seems to be an innocuous action taken in a non-customer facing part of the business become the fuse that ignites an eventual termination. This is why I am passionate and insistent that Everyone Plays A Role In Customer Success.
To move beyond the platitude, how does a SaaS provider instill this notion as a mindset throughout the organization that each function and individual plays a critical role in the success of the customer? It is not an easy task, but it is possible. Moreover, the rewards your company stands to gain in retention and growth of your customer base are tangible, measurable and real.
Naturally instilling this mindset begins with sponsorship and commitment beginning with the Chief Executive driving accountability throughout the C-suite and the remainder of the organization. Beyond executive sponsorship I have outlined a strategic framework and approach based on two areas of focus that will help you as a SaaS provider take the relationships with your customers to the next level. These approaches will help your organization begin the process of adopting the philosophy that Everyone Plays A Role In Customer Success.
Invest In Continuity & Transparency -- SaaS providers, as most companies, invest heavily in software solutions to make teams more productive, however when choosing those solutions a common oversight is the continuity of the customer experience throughout the organization. It is not uncommon for the varying organizations within a SaaS provider's business to use different stacks of software to run their organizations more efficiently and effectively. This approach perfectly makes sense from the perspective of each department head. The sales organization needs an effective pipeline management solution, the product and engineering teams need effective scrum, agile and release management software. The same goes for professional services and support teams as well. However, continuity in the customer lifecycle is often overlooked leaving information disparate and disjointed while finance and operation teams invest untold hours cobbling disjointed information together for the C-Suite in order to run the business.
This often leads to departmental silos where leaders and individuals only focus on what is right in front of them while neglecting the overall impressions influencing the customer experience.
Ensuring continuity in the customer experience through your business systems in a manner that is transparent and accessible at all levels within the organization is critical in driving the right mindset that Everybody Plays A Role in Customer Success.
The underlying goal and question you should ask yourself for each of these areas when selecting a technology provider is how the data from each functional software stack can tie into executive dashboard reporting as well as live at the individual customer record level within your CRM.
Empowering your employees to see the continuity across all departments will provide invaluable insights related to how their individual functions influence customers and their success (or lack thereof) with your platform. You shouldn’t presume your employees will voluntarily look at this data. It is imperative that these dashboards and reports are part of “All Hands” and Company Review meetings.
This approach also has other benefits as well. When properly implemented, it makes your operations more scalable. This is especially beneficial for smaller SaaS providers and helps ease the growing pains when implemented early on. It is much harder (and costlier) for larger companies to put this structure into place, however, still well worth the investment.
Develop A Customer First Mindset -- Easy to say but what are the things your company can do to help nurture a “Customer First” frame of mind? Consider the following initiatives to put into place within your business:
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Develop A Customer Highlights Program -- A customer highlights program should be a regular feature of company newsletters, bulletin boards and all hands meetings. You should focus on highlighting the customer’s business, how they are using your products and services and the value they are getting from your product.
Customer Success staff should participate at least once a month in smaller internal staff meetings to share customer highlights in a more intimate and collaborative setting as well.
Moreover, a highlights program is easily transferable into customer promotional marketing materials for referencability purposes. Nothing will sell your products and services more than your customers singing your praises.
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Survey & Follow Up -- Customers often complain of “survey exhaustion” but this is usually because customers are left feeling that their surveys are going into a black hole. It is key and critical for leaders to not only make survey data actionable within the organization but to let their customers know their voice has been heard.
The most effective survey programs are those where there is follow up with the customer. Letting the customer know their voice has been heard and demonstrating the actions you are taking to improve on what you are doing well and course correct in the areas customers are dissatisfied. You will go a long way in building confidence as a trusted partner with your customer’s interests in mind.
While it does not scale for Customer Success leaders to follow up with each customer individually, follow up can be done to scale when you take your data and consolidate it into general common themes. A brief video or newsletter to customers summarizing survey themes and actions with an individual follow up by account managers will go a long way in improving your relationship with your customers, CSAT & NPS scores.
Surveys are not just tools for customers to air their grievances. They are also great sources for driving innovation, prioritization of features on product roadmaps as well as finding reference-able customers for Customer Highlights and Marketing campaigns.
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Conduct Customer Advisory Boards -- These should be conducted based on the development cycles of your product roadmap and should be reserved for your most important and strategic customers. Customer Advisory Boards often fall into traps of “all show” and “no listen” or the alternative of complaining sessions from customers.
Customer Advisory Board meetings must be approached with defined outcomes in mind. Too often, the obvious objective of driving new product adoption rules the day. There needs to be a firm commitment to listening, collaborating and follow up as well.
You should structure your Customer Advisory Board sessions with a balance of sharing your roadmap with new features, review & clarification of enhancement requests. I also recommend having a portion of the meeting dedicated customers sharing and highlighting how they are benefiting from your product today. This should not be a “feature” conversation. The customer presentation should tie your product to key performance indicators within their respective businesses and their recommendations and insights for how they can achieve greater value.
An interesting dynamic of these collaborative sessions are the insights not only gained but shared amongst other customers in the room.
Most important is the commitment of follow up. SaaS providers must be committed to taking action and sending customers updates on what was discussed and agreed to in the room. Even more important, there must be a commitment to sharing with the broader organization the highlights and key insights from what occurred in the Customer Advisory Board throughout the organization. These should be done through company newsletters, all hands and departmental meetings.
Final Thoughts
When you make the investments to ensure there is customer continuity in your business systems it provides you the foundation and tools to effectively run a customer first mindset program. Moreover it will ingrain the right frame of reference for the non-customer facing employees in your company. No longer should an employee think of themselves simply as an accountant, network engineer or a database administrator.
Instead they should know your customers not only in name but how your product brings value to their business and the stories behind the customer. They should have a keen sense of their contribution to that value.
Most importantly, they should know that they too are part of the broader Customer Success team and the role they play in building that success.
