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A SaaS company lives and breathes because of its customers. Without the weightage of a customer, the B2B SaaS companies lose their shine and rust out. In such a case, it is of high pertinence that they imbibe some of the best actionable customer retention practices to steer clear of the building churn rates and attrition.
Customer retention is a huge facet of the customer success niche. It speaks volumes about how healthy your business is running and tells you whether you are growing in the right direction or not. Not only that, the benefits that retention provides are aplenty. It aids in augmenting sales as the tenure grows up. Further, it helps you in getting quick client referrals whenever needed and reduces the cost induced in customer management over a long span of time.
Many companies are looking for a simple way to augmenting sales and generate more revenue without having to invest in expensive marketing campaigns. That's why there is a growing trend that includes the use of chatbots as an alternative to current customer service methods.
Mathematically, it is expressed as the number of customers that remain with you from the beginning to the end of a year. Here we reveal 7 such customer retention practices that you as a B2B SaaS company can use to boost revenue. Let’s get started.
Table of Contents
Enhance your customer service section
Yes to Customer Delight
Work on building customer trust
Rewards and Loyalty Programs
Surveys and Feedback are the keys
Augment the customer engagement rate
Alert and inform your customers beforehand
Enhance your customer service section
The best kind of customer service is when your customer does not require a service in the first place. Simply put, develop such a seamless customer experience for your customers where they should not be awaiting help from the support team. This happens only when they get what they want. And their expectations are matched.
Having said that, it is an incredibly difficult thing to accept and complete. There could be a multitude of hurdles that stand in the way when this happens. But remember, when a customer receives the first service from your interface, all they want is a quick, friendly, and effective experience. That is why if you put up some investment in the support systems, this can act like a great customer retention practice. Get yourself one of these systems as soon as possible and see the difference yourself!
Yes to Customer Delight
If you are planning to entail a long-term association with your customers, you must pay extra heed to customer delight. That will happen only when their desires, demands, and needs are fulfilled. Also, note that delighting does not only refer to satisfying them. It goes well beyond just nominal customer satisfaction.
A customer will be happier if they see something extra from your services. Every once a while, you can send our promo codes or special discount offers to the loyal ones in the house. This will increase their dependency on you and will ensure that they do not churn away. In simpler words, it will cut down on the attrition rate and keep your customer health score healthy.
Work on building Customer Trust
A customer will stick around with you only when they have that sufficient trust in you that you will live up to their expectations. For this, you must show pure diligence to your clients in order to gain their trust. So how do we do that? To begin with, see that you give away no false promises. Promise only that what you think you will be capable of delivering to them. Aside from this, respond to their queries as fast as you can. Do not let them hanging in dismay.
A client might get really irritated with this and choose a competition over you. You would not want that to happen, right? Hence, the best way to win their trust is by ensuring that all the expectations, desires, and promises are met in a timely fashion. Because that is what matters at the end of the day.
Rewards and Loyalty Programs
Are you looking for a quick bait to win a chunk of customers? Well, in that case, say yes to rewards and loyalty programs. Whenever you see a customer of yours hitting a milestone or say, has completed a year old anniversary with you – it is time for you to call for celebration. You can do many things to kick start the celebration, some of them includes rewards.
Now rewards can come in multiple versions. One such is gifting them a coupon once in a while. This could be in form of coupon codes or promo codes as well. Additionally, you can create a creative loyalty program too where on each purchase, some calculated points and be added. And in the end, they can club to make a discounted or free purchase. This can go a long way in improving their experience and will help in retaining customers for a long time.
Surveys and Feedback are the keys
It is vital to know where you stand in the business. And a simple method used to do so is by obtaining surveys and feedback. When you conduct a survey, you get to find out how satisfied your customers are with your service. And whether you are doing good, bad or ugly. This is crucially important in a customer success space that you receive positive feedback from your customers.
Also, you can refer to some of the metrics for obtaining the level of customer satisfaction or happiness. One such is the NPS, or net promoter score. If you wish, you may also use CSAT. These metrics will let you know in exact terms how great you have done over the span of time. This will show how which are the areas where you need to work on more to generate better customer satisfaction.
Augment the Customer Engagement rate
Since the B2B SaaS companies’ main target is the customer and the business dwells on fulfilling their needs, engaging them might look like a good idea. Also, note that a highly engaged customer will have a rational amount of attachment to you as a service provider. So how do we enhance the customer engagement rate? This will take place when you prioritize their needs and aim at making your services more personalized.
You can do so by taking to social media as well. Whenever you see a customer of yours praising you on the social presence, do reply back to them, saying you are thankful and grateful for their satisfaction. Similarly, when you see a disappointed customer who does not take a backseat from showing his anger on the online presence, do handle that situation well. For example, you can look into the matter and console the customer with an apology and how you can make that right for them as quickly as possible. This will show the disappointed customer that you truly care and value their presence with you.
Alert and inform your customers beforehand
Just in case, you are updating a scheme or are changing the product updates or features, it is of best interest to alert and inform your clients way before-hand. It should not come as a surprise to them that an important feature of a tool has been changed and they are still unaware of the same. It gives them the perception that you remember their needs and value their presence with you. As they have been a part of your business, it would not hurt if they are given helpful information way ahead of time.
When you keep them informed, it showcases customer loyalty and generates customer retention as well. Also, who might know you could have saved a nearly churned away client with this message. It could be possible that your recent updates were some of the missing features that many of your clients were expecting. You will soon see how they come back to do business with you again. Therefore, always keep the clients in the loop and let them be informed of any of the important updates that you are going to do. This really carves a positive difference.
That’s a Wrap
Always remember, the best asset you have as a company is your customer. Especially the ones, who know your product, take your services, and stick around with you. It is extremely important that you take up all the necessary measures to see that they are fully satisfied. As it would hurt a lot to see them leave, especially to any of your competitions.
Hence, it is imperative to focus and channelize your energy and improve the customer experience part. And statistics does back that up. A recent states that 84% of customers say the experiences provided by a company are as important to them as its products and services. You need to ensure that the experience you provide is on point and a customer gives a second thought before churning away. The seven aforementioned customer retention practices will definitely help you to steer away from the low engagement scores and give you a chance to shine.
About the Author
Simran is a technical writer by professional and is currently employed at a Customer Success Software firm, SmartKarrot Inc. She has an extensive knowledge in penning down blogs, articles, whitepapers and reports etc. In her spare time, she likes to read journals and magazines. If not, she likes to play with her kittens.
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