Salesforce
Customer focus. Make your customers happy
A happy paying user is the main goal of any saas software and one of the main ways to reduce the churn rate. At first glance, the call to please users does not seem revolutionary. But it remains a key component often forgotten in marketing.
These 5 ways to satisfy users are designed to help you understand your customers:
- Smart interaction with the client – build the right channel for communication with the client and collecting feedback, and then automate the personal approach to the client. In addition to sending trigger messages and chatting, encourage users to leave feedback and voice opinions.
- Expand the image of the ideal customer – create more flexible segments of the audience based on the metrics of your site.
- Analyze the right data – see how your users interact with the site and content. This data will help you understand what your audience likes, what they avoid (where they spend the least time) and how you can improve your site. Various ways of data analysis exist and you might need to learn more about it if you want to have a better understanding of how data analysis works.
- Influence strategy – your proposals should never stand still. The response to user feedback and market research will naturally determine the marketing strategy and customer satisfaction.
- Put yourself in the shoes of the customer – Follow the same path your customers follow to determine exactly where your process needs to be improved and where it can be automated (for example, email reminders for those who have expired). Contact users at the right time to increase their satisfaction with the service. Each time your client interacts with a brand, you have one more opportunity to help him become happier:
- Inform and educate;
- Give bonuses for loyalty;
- Solve problems and questions of users;
- Provide support after purchase.
Each step is an opportunity to strengthen the brand image and customer satisfaction. A happy customer will not only not want to leave your product, but he will also protect and recommend it.
Provide the right user support in your saas software
Making users happy is only the first step towards reducing churn. It’s almost certain that customers will have difficulties and questions. And here your ideal support service comes to the fore.
Provide the right support to your users to retain more customers. Zendesk has done research on how customer support actually affects your customers. Here’s what they found out:
42% said that they were most annoyed to explain their problem over and over again when working with different support agents;
Poor support can lead to the fact that users either stop using the service (35%) or that they share their negative experience with others (25%);
Experience from communicating with support affects reviews that 60% of users get to know before buying;
People are twice as likely to post negative reviews than positive ones.
Simplification of the customer service model and effective work with them can lead to 3 directions for growth:
Switching to another tariff plan. The longer the client remains in the service, the more opportunities you have to transfer him to a more expensive tariff.
Referrals. Satisfied customers bring new customers. This is the cheapest type of marketing.
Decision makers. Satisfied decision makers and opinion leaders will reach new customers and increase reach.
We already wrote once how the model of communication on the Internet has changed and what support users are now expecting.
Onboarding and activation in saas software
The largest outflow is observed among new users and users in the trial. From here it becomes clear that your goal is to conduct new customers as quickly as possible from the registration stage to full subscribers. You need to make sure that new users are fully involved in the product and understand its value.
- User Success Metrics
- Conversion rate
- Reviews
- Clear pricing model
Use the first few weeks after registering new users to provide maximum support. Help the user quickly see the full value of your product through additional communications: videos, tooltips or emails.
Create personal success indicators for each user by finding out what tasks your customers want to solve. So you will understand how to produce a wow effect and activate the user in the product. Get feedback to prevent frustrations and solve problems early on. Make the subscription process as smooth as possible and make sure that the pricing model is simple and straightforward.
Analyze your customers
Analyze why users leave and what features make your product valuable. These interrelated aspects of SaaS service can become a window to the development of outflow reduction methods that can be individual for your company.
- Why are users leaving?
- Does the product solve their problems?
- Do they have problems using the service?
- What are the key features?
- Who is your ideal user?
- At what stage does the user experience difficulties?
You can quickly find out why customers left by calling or sending an email with a question. The faster you can understand the reason, the faster you can change the positioning or add the necessary functions.
Often users leave in the early stages, and have not figured out the key features of the service. If you suffer from an early outflow of users, perhaps you should take another look at your product to determine which features activate and show the full value of the product.
What unites these users? Maybe this is a small business? Or did they come from a particular advertising channel? The more accurately you select a segment, the more chances you have to adapt your offer and lower your churn rate.
Build business processes
Do not hide the unsubscribe button
Some companies are trying to make the unsubscribe process as complex as possible. Perhaps they hope that the user does not want to understand and remains longer. The truth is that such gray user return techniques do not work from the word “completely”. If the user decided to leave, do not complicate his life, because you still can not keep him.
When a customer decides to refuse your services, you have only a few possibilities to turn one loss into a long-term gain. Here’s what the unsubscribe process should look like:
- Make the unsubscribe button easy to find
- By clicking on this button a questionnaire should be launched, figuring out
- What the user expected to receive
- What, in the opinion of the user, he actually (not) received
- Can something keep them from leaving?
- Look for patterns in the answers
People leave the service when a discrepancy is found between expectations and reality.
As soon as you have information about this “gap”, you can find patterns that show how your company correctly tells its story and reaches the right audience.
If they say “lower the price”, this does not mean that you should lower the price – it means that you could not convey the value of your product.
After research, place a page on which in a concise form remind you of why the user has subscribed and what he will lose if canceled.
If you have a loyalty program (like “buy 10 boxes and get the 11th as a gift”), a reminder of it can stop the user from unsubscribing. Other services may remind you what information and efforts invested in the product will be lost by the client in case of leaving.
Let me weigh the pros and cons, but if the decision is not in your favor, let the client leave. Do not hide the cancel buttons!
Bad ways to keep from unsubscribing:
- Fee for unsubscribing (including various sanctions);
- Incomprehensible process;
- Negative support.
- Good ways to keep from unsubscribing:
- Loyalty program;
- Personalized information (which the client loses);
- Ease of use of the product.
All good things come to an end. This also applies to customer relationships. Outflow is a natural component of the business process, and no business has an outflow of 0%. But you can reduce the effect of customer turnover by knowing how to correctly calculate this indicator, delighting and researching your customers, as well as improving business processes. Your efforts will be justified.
