When we think about SaaS and customer service, we know that it’s increasingly important to provide great support. There are so many different tools and digital solutions out there to streamline processes and make work more efficient and cost-effective.
That said, we shouldn’t forget that ultimately we are dealing with humans, and a human-centric approach is exactly what we need if we want to retain both our customers and our support team.
Great customer support will not only keep your current customers happy, but you’ll also have better opportunities to turn them into ambassadors for your brand and upsell more services or features to them.
8 SaaS Customer Success Best Practices in 2022:
1. Analyze and Discuss Customer’s Journey Map with Your Team
It’s important that your support personnel truly know and understand the product or service that you are providing. This means that you need to start with effective customer journey mapping. Your support personnel then need to go through the exact same user experience that your customer goes through so they comprehend all of the details and places where people might run into trouble.
I always ask new team members to sign in and pay attention to every detail of the customer journey. Every support person should have the ability to test the problems themselves so that they can see how everything works with their own eyes. You have to understand what the customer’s path is to truly know what you are supporting them with.
2. Communicate in the Right Way and at the Right Time
It’s crucial that you map out the customer’s journey and select the right time to communicate different pieces of information. This avoids frustration and confusion because it makes their experience with you clear and easy to follow.
Simplify the messages you communicate, and think about what information or details are necessary for your customers to know. The goal is to make everything as effortless as possible for your customers. For example, When the customers sign in, you have to send the right details about what they need so that onboarding is easy for them and they know what to expect next.
It’s also important to tell them about new features when they come out and to let them know if you have upcoming holidays or any reason that there will be a longer response time. People really appreciate this kind of proactive and clear communication, and it builds trust.
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3. Involve Customers in Your Feedback and Development Process
If you want to evolve and develop in the right direction, it’s natural that your customers need to be a part of that development process. No one knows better what they want and need from your service than they do. Have a clear procedure for how you react to and communicate feedback with customers.
Support personnel should also have an official process for reporting feedback. We ask for the net promoter score from our customers once every three months, and we always react to the feedback that we get in a timely way. Every time our customer service agents close a chat, the customer gets to rate the experience. Whenever customers say they want a feature or have comments we always respond.
People can interact with your platform in different ways, so you also need to understand each individual use case so that you can advise and develop accordingly or come up with a new solution. The key to making your product or service a must-have is understanding how you can make your customers’ lives easier.
Listen, and they will tell you! Always keep in mind that your support team is a crucial link when it comes to future planning for your developers and programmers. They are the ones who interact with your customers and understand their needs.
4. The Secret Is to Listen and Be Empathetic
How would you like your own loved one to be treated if they needed help with something? I always encourage people to think like this, and it puts things into perspective about how we want to treat our own customers. It’s also important to create a culture of empathy within the workplace and amongst staff, as that translates to customers.
We want people to feel like we understand, we are sorry when things don’t go right, and we’ve got their back. We want people to feel like they are cared for, and when they have a problem they aren’t alone in solving it. It’s easy to forget about the humanity of each individual, especially when we operate online and don’t necessarily see each other face to face.
But for us, the human-centric approach is key to customer success. When something goes wrong and we make a mistake, we always own up to it and apologize.
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5. Localize as You Expand
As your business grows, you may find yourself operating in new countries. Localizing can help you to increase revenue in new markets and attract new customers more quickly. It can be tempting to save money by having all of your support in English, for example.
However, you should offer support in the local language. Everyone feels safer and more included when they can communicate in their own language. It also builds trust with customers to have support in the local language.
Localized staff might also give valid market information or insights that you wouldn’t expect. Also, since we have different cultures, it is important to have someone local who understands the specific needs and behaviors of a given place.
6. Focus On Your People and Put Them First
Of course, it’s easy to think of putting our customers first, but I am also suggesting that prioritizing and investing in your support people and their needs and development is just as important. They are your most valuable resource. As a leader, it’s important to understand and support your employee’s motivation and talents.
In order to grow, we need to have enough passion and motivation to invest in the company. We need to have enough challenges for them to want to stay on board and grow with us. Your support people need to want to be there, so it’s important that you listen to them and create an environment where they feel heard, inspired, and supported.
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7. Respect Goes Both Ways
We also expect that our customers treat us with respect, and if our support staff feels like they haven’t been treated well, I think it is important to go through the conversation that they had with the customer in order to learn and develop. Everyone deserves to be treated well and with respect, regardless of what side of the line they’re on.
Most customers are respectful, but if there is an incident where a staff member doesn’t feel comfortable with how they were treated, we ask our team members to inform us about that. If we don’t see a change in that customer’s behavior, we will address it.
8. Emphasize Teamwork
This sounds like a no-brainer, but actualizing a true feeling of teamwork is easier said than done, it’s something we need to make an effort to create. Everyone on our team should feel like they have someone to lean on within the team.
Especially during times when many of us work in remote or hybrid situations, it’s important that people don’t feel isolated or alone to deal with the issues they encounter. It’s human nature that we all need to belong to a bigger community and somehow feel a part of something larger than us.
Whether it’s a job or a platform. You want people to feel like they have others to fall back on and like a true support network exists when they need it.
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Conclusion
SaaS customer success best practices are all about delivering a smooth pre and post-sales journey to your customers so that they want to stick around, and they will even recommend you to their friends and colleagues. In turn, that means that your support team needs to feel appreciated, well trained, and inspired.
After all, they are the ones to guide those customers through that journey. There is nothing more expensive than having people leave your company (I refer to both customers and staff alike) because they don’t feel heard and supported, or because they find themselves getting lost in confusing customer journeys or inadequate training.
In a world of digital solutions, the bottom line is to treat people well and make sure that they feel heard. Offer great support and quality training, and communicate thoughtfully and with clarity.
