Customer success is an extremely vital concept in the business world that has developed considerably in the last few years. Initially used to measure customer churn rate, it now represents a strategy built to ensure overall business success. Customer success is made up of multiple layers that help businesses guarantee customer satisfaction. This includes product success, which helps you understand how customers use and value your product. With so many aspects, it’s clear to see that customer success isn’t just about making your customers happy, it’s about how your product makes them happy.
This is where product success platforms come into play. These tools allow you to combine your customer and product metrics for more comprehensive insights, including customer conversion rate, active users, and product usage. Although these platforms have emerged from the SaaS industry, these metrics represent the core of any business strategy.
This article covers:
- What is Customer Success?
- What is Product Success?
- What are Product Success Platforms?
- Why are Product Success Platforms important?
What is Customer Success?
The concept of customer success has developed at the same pace as customer behavior. It began as a way to monitor customers who stopped using the product or were about to, i.e., churn-risk customers. Nowadays, customer success is considered to be more of an industry or business strategy rather than a marketing strategy. It is not just a way to measure how happy your customers are with your product, it’s an indication of how well your product is understood and whether it is relevant for the market.
Companies need to work harder on anticipating challenges that a user might face when using their product. This is why developing the right onboarding process has become a key element in any customer success strategy. For example, let’s say that you are an e-learning platform focused on foreign language learning. By providing users step-by-step guidance on how to use the tool, you’ll increase their chances of a successful outcome using your platform.
Acquiring new customers has also become more expensive for software companies. Why? Because customers continue to buy from brands that they trust, and this trust is gained through user recommendations; at the end of the day, people continue to trust people over brands. By focusing your customer success strategy on existing customers you’ll see your profitability grow more than if you focus it on gaining new ones. The question is, can you ensure customer success? Yes! You simply need to take your product’s success into account as well.
What is Product Success?
Product success is a cog in the customer success wheel that focuses on the customer’s experience of your product, as well as the value it has for the customer. You must have product success to have customer success.
Product success is all about focussing on knowing your product inside out, knowing how customers use it, and knowing how useful and effective customers find it. By creating the right product strategy, you will be able to answer important questions such as “is our software intuitive enough for users?”, or “is the site easy to navigate, so customers can quickly solve their needs?”.
Product success is all about creating a product that’s valuable and easy to use to leave customers satisfied. But measuring the success of your product can be quite a complex and tricky process. That’s why product success platforms have been developed to help you analyze product experience and make sure that both your business and product are achieving the desired impact.
What are Product Success Platforms?
Although customer success and product success are both measured using different metrics, the information used to calculate both are sometimes identical. If not, it’s definitely easier if the database is unified in one system. This is where Product Success Platforms have gained more traction lately, especially in the SaaS industry.
Let’s say your company has separate departments for customer success and product success, and the customer success manager needs to compare this month’s retention rate to the previous month. Having access to the product features that are less used can inform their strategy to provide a better onboarding experience for users.
Let’s take a look at 4 product success platforms that could help you manage and achieve the success of your product, customers, and business.
SyncForce
SyncForce is a software vendor which provides a full solution that addresses the full product life cycle, starting from the physical storage and management of products to making information immediately available for users.
Visit SyncForce
Propel
Propel provides product success solutions including Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Product Information Management (PIM), and Quality Management Systems (QMS). It helps companies successfully develop their product from the very concept.
Their most popular product is the Propel Product 360, software that is based on Salesforce, the largest customer relationship management software to date. It integrates most enterprise systems and enables information flow between departments.
Visit Propel
Smartkarrot
This B2B intelligence-driven platform provides insights on product usage, including how and when your customers use the product. Develop reliable tactics related to onboarding, customer acquisition or retention, subscription renewals, and revenue growth, from one single database.
Visit SmartKarrot
FROGED
This SaaS company helps other SaaS companies reach product success. It has already proven to be successful in the domain of Cybersecurity, FinTech, eLearning, and eHealth. You have full control over every touchpoint in your customers’ journey by accessing behavioral data in key points including onboarding processes, engagement, and advocacy.
Visit FROGED
Why are Product Success Platforms important?
Product success platforms are an optimal solution for any business looking to ensure customer success. By combining both customer success and product success metrics, you can receive practical insights not only on how your customers experience your product, but also how valuable it is – a key metric that is often hard to calculate. As a result, you have the key information you need to fine-tune your product and achieve overall business success.
You should now be more familiarized with both concepts and understand the purpose of product success platforms. What’s more, you’ve learned about four key platforms that have proven to be successful for companies in various industries, including Education, Technology, Health, and Finance.
If you are interested in learning more about Customer Success in SaaS companies or other related topics, head over to our blog site.