Sophia Young https://www.vitally.io 4m 1,011 #revenuegrowth
The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
You’ll always have to consider your customer base when thinking about strategies to increase revenue and develop your business. Companies will constantly look for new methods and solutions to retain and acquire new clientele. Because with solid customer relationships, your business is pretty much unstoppable.
Growth operations in B2B SaaS wouldn’t be complete without customer success. This phrase has been picking up steam over the years for a good reason. Customer success fosters positive brand experiences, encouraging repeat business and retention.
Of course, there’s more to it than that. So let’s dive into this concept even further below!
What Is Customer Success?
Customer success is a business strategy that leverages your product or service to help customers achieve their goals. It’s a relationship-based client management technique that aligns your customers with your business objectives, sparking favorable outcomes for both parties.
To further define customer success more accurately, it would be beneficial to see it in each stage of your customer’s journey. For instance:
Success during the lead acquisition phase may look like your website containing all the information visitors were looking for when they searched for the keyword or keywords that brought them to your site.
Success throughout the purchasing process may be defined as convincing clients of the value of your item or service through powerful sales copy.
Success throughout the onboarding phase might mean that new clients find it simple to begin using your product or service.
Success during the adoption phase may be characterized as the use of your product or service by your customers enhances their business or personal life.
Success during the escalation phase might mean that your clients can quickly resolve or find solutions to support-related issues.
Success in the retention phase might mean that your customers want to buy from you again and refer you to their friends and family.
More than ever, customer success is crucial to B2B or SaaS businesses. As competition increases and more companies adopt recurring revenue models, this business strategy is a massive growth engine. In fact, 87% of CEOs cite customer experience as their top priority to propel their business.
Is There A Difference Between Customer Success and Customer Experience?
Customer success and customer experience can seem confusing at first. But worry not! You’re not alone in this confusion. They sound remarkably similar, and as each discipline matures, we’re finding more and more points of overlap.
Customer success and customer experience have the same goal in mind: to create a successful and profitable connection between the customer and the company. However, despite the parallels between customer success and customer experience, there are a few significant differences to note:
Location in the customer journey: Customer success focuses on the period after the sale, whereas customer experience begins before the customer is aware they are in the buying process.
Team objectives: Customer success aims to ensure that customers successfully use a particular product or service. In contrast, customer experience aims to create an all-around pleasant connection and experience with the customer.
How Does Customer Success Drive Revenue & Business Growth?
Curious about how customer success results in product-led growth? Here are a few ways that customer success encourages positive outcomes throughout the business:
Customer Success Drives Upsell Revenue
Your business objectives and your customers’ needs are constantly changing. Therefore, for customer success to be effective, you must consistently and continuously evaluate your customers’ needs to help them accomplish their goals.
When this happens, your customer service staff is in a unique position to advise clients on the features or services they need to add to carry out these new objectives.
This kind of upselling develops naturally and fits with a genuine business need. It is not a sales presentation from someone the consumer hasn’t seen in a long time. Instead, it is supported by a reliable referral from a trusted partner.
Customer Success Reduces Churn
The harsh reality is that your customers will always be in control. They have access to your competitors’ prices and reviews and are usually on monthly contracts. With this in mind, you know well that they have the power to leave you at any moment. Therefore, predicting it before it is too late is the best approach to protect clients from leaving.
While your customer service staff is fostering connections to prevent churn completely, they may also foresee potential departure by examining user data associated with a client leaving. Customer success may intervene early in this scenario to fix any problems and help the client get back on track.
Remember, it’s costly to acquire new customers, so if you have the means to retain them, do it!
Customer Success Assists In The Renewal Process
Renewals can become problematic for B2B SaaS solutions or any business with a subscription-based business model. Customers may still require confirmation or a confidence boost during these periods, even though many tech companies try to automate this process.
For renewals, customer success can play two roles. If a business has a renewal team, the CS team can provide data points and customer progress reports to the renewal team to equip them with the necessary insights.
Customer success teams, however, can manage the renewal discussions independently. It makes sense for them to take the lead if they can successfully balance their strategic partnership duties with the renewal obligations. They control the connection and are most equipped to deal with challenges.
Help Your Customers Reach Their Goals with Customer Success
Due to today’s broader cultural emphasis on putting your customers first, every company in business today can benefit from creating a customer success program. It’s an excellent method to improve consumer satisfaction with your product, give valuable feedback to your internal teams, and even simplify current processes or features to increase their effectiveness.
No matter how big or small your customer success team is, they will have a massive influence on your churn, revenue, customer loyalty, and so much more.
Need assistance in ensuring that your customers are succeeding? Check out NoteToServices products and services today!
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