The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) industry, by its nature, was one of the first to tackle the issues associated with digital transformation: rather than buy software physically on disks and manually install it onsite, SaaS customers pay to access software platforms online. As well as delivering considerable operational savings for the software vendor, the SaaS business model offers a number of advantages to the customer such as removing many of the costs and hassles of installation, providing an extra layer of data security and resilience to operations, and updating automatically, ensuring access to the latest version of the software. Given the relative maturity of the SaaS industry, it provides some useful pointers on how businesses faced with the challenge of digital transformation can continue to provide great customer service. Here are five key lessons learned.
The Sale Is Just The Beginning
While the ideas of customer relationship management and customer tracking are hardly new concepts, many businesses tend to focus their available digital budgets almost exclusively on activity that will generate online sales and conversions (e.g. search engine optimization) and dedicate little thought or resource to what happens next, post-sale. In SaaS, it has always been assumed that a sale to a new customer is simply the opening stage of an ongoing relationship. In order to encourage customers over to a new way of purchasing and consuming software, the SaaS industry provided customer training and customer support helpdesks from its earliest days. As the SaaS market matured, account managers for individual clients became the norm, allowing vendors to gain deeper insight into their clients’ business operations and motivations on a one-to-one basis. Lesson 1: Any business transacting online should treat a first-time conversion as the beginning of a new relationship and, from the outset, resource their operations to deliver ongoing customer communication, tracking and support.
Every Customer Is Unique
Customers engage with your product for a wide variety of reasons. Each customer has their own unique needs and priorities, and is often looking to utilise the software in a way that differs from other customers. By providing a dedicated account management team, giving customers a familiar, consistent face/voice to engage with over time, it becomes possible to gain deeper insight into customer needs, and tailor product and service delivery accordingly. Lesson 2: Don’t be tempted to treat all online customers the same. Embrace the potential of digital to truly personalise the products and services you deliver to your customers.
Sweat The Product
Software platforms are often complex tools offering a vast range of functionality that many users barely scratch the surface of. Customers often purchase software to perform a narrow range of particular functions and are unaware of the wider benefits the same piece of software could offer their business. For this reason, SaaS vendors provide customers with a period of initial training and then ongoing support to ensure that clients are fully aware of the full range of offered functionality and how it relates to their own individual operations. Lesson 3: Keep your existing customer base engaged and up-to-date with the latest products/service improvements. Establishing ongoing two-way communication provides the opportunity to deepen engagement and increase the lifetime value of individual customers.
Don’t Forget Your Existing Customers When Rewarding New Ones
A key customer benefit of the SaaS model is that users receive product updates automatically and in real-time, removing many of the traditional headaches associated with manually installing software updates. The SaaS industry recognizes that it’s important for every customer to have access to the latest version of the product – and their business model facilitates that. Given the perpetual pressure to generate new business, marketers are often tempted to create offers and campaigns targeting new customers that, simultaneously, leave existing customers out in the cold. This can alienate your existing customer base and, in the age of social media, lead to a serious PR backlash. Lesson 4: Be careful that any campaigns targeting a new audience don’t alienate the core of your existing customer base.
Everything Changes
No matter how much consistency you provide in terms of account management, every customer will undoubtedly exhibit changes over time (e.g., the people managing the relationship at the client side may move on, or internal company changes may change the nature of your engagement). For SaaS vendors, this may mean that a period of customer retraining is required to ensure that the client’s team is getting the best from the software. Even if your business is selling to individual consumers, their needs and tastes can also change dramatically over time (e.g., the priorities of a young, single man change when he becomes a husband and father). Only by maintaining an open two-way conversation with a customer can you know his priorities. Lesson 5: Don’t presume that your track record with a customer will speak for itself: continue to communicate messages that demonstrate your understanding of their needs now and their future needs, and reinforce the relevance of your products/services in meeting those needs.