Do better than brute force.

Adding headcount to your customer success team every time you grow your account base will never position you to see rapid growth.  

If you're like most SaaS companies, you're paying CSMs a premium that you know you can't scale as the business grows.

You need to scale better, and faster. 

You're doing too much, already … 

I’ve been in SaaS now for 15 years, so I feel that one. And, if you’re like me, and feel like you always have too much to do (and never enough time) you’re not alone. 

Here's the truth. 

We've asked far too much from customer success — for too long. There’s got to be a better way to solve the customer renewal problem than to just throw people at it. And expect them to make a difference. 

There is. 

It’s called customer success automation. Here’s why it works. Your customers struggle with time just as much as you do. So, asking them to visit an academy or read through resources to learn your product won’t work. It’s why we’ve accepted that a 5 to 7% annual churn rate is okay in SaaS.1 

But you can do better. 

Here’s how. 

The secret to doing more, with less, is in supplying the right materials at the right time. There are four major places in the customer renewal journey where you can do that.  

They are: 

  • Pre-sales 
  • Implementation 
  • Onboarding 
  • Adoption 

Let’s take a look ... 4 reasons why — NOT to grow your customer success team _ Pre Sales

#1. Pre-sales.  

You give trials. 

Before you bring in a paid customer, you show them your platform. Now, imagine if you had a way to get feedback and collect data on the use cases they’ve identified. You can use that data to help you close a bigger, better deal with your prospect — knowing exactly what they used, and why. 

Nice. 

Find out exactly what trial users think, what they do, and get that buy-in through the sales cycle. And with the ability to survey them in real time, you can adjust as you need to. Now that’s powerful. 

4 reasons why — NOT to grow your customer success team _ Implementation

#2. Implementation. 

You’re ready. 

The customer loved your trial and wants your software. Perfect. Get them started by putting together a plan to reach every user at their company. It’s simple. You can educate their team, and remind them what they need to learn about, with a customer automation platform that sends reminders. 

Nudge them.  

Tell them when it’s time to start each stage they need to complete in their learning journey. Help them as they get stuck and fill in the gaps to make sure Every. Single. User gets into your software. 

With a proactive approach, you can automate and engage users who aren't thinking about software right now. Drop learning into their laps at the right time to remind them to take actions they haven't.

4 reasons why — NOT to grow your customer success team _ Onboarding

#3. Onboarding. 

Time to scale. 

Now that your implementation is under control, it’s time to rev up user skills.  

Picture this.  

Within minutes of a software update, or a new user joining, you can push out personalized training. That’s in. One little push and every user gets materials tailored to their role and application.  

Customers love tailored experiences, and customer success automation delivers exactly that. With it, every customer can create, automate, and update all their learning materials to excel in your software.

4 reasons why — NOT to grow your customer success team _ Adoption

#4. Adoption. 

It’s your turn. 

Not everything is about the customer. It’s also about you. More software adoption also means an easier path for your customer success team. That’s because they can spend more of their time being strategic and helping to bring in more renewals, rather than focusing all their energy on training their customers. 

Cut your playbook in half. 

It’s as simple as adding a new feature set — and letting customer success automation do the work of sharing your tailor-made content with everyone. Seamlessly deliver updates and increase knowledge.  

That’s right. 

As customer engagement increases … work falls off your client success team’s shoulders. Change, adoption, and training are now available at the push of a button. You increase user knowledge instantly, so your customer success team can re-focus on the accounts that need you most. 

You’ve got this. 

And, if you need a little help, see how BrainStorm helps with Customer Success.  


References: 

  1. https://froged.com/blog/saas-churn