Let’s step back a little before we go all into the Customer Success Funnel.
So what exactly is Customer Success?
Customer Success is ensuring that your customers achieve their desired outcomes and positive tangible results by using your product.
Customer Success is mandatory for any SaaS business in a competitive market. A successful Customer Success process will allow you increasing customer retention, engagement and satisfaction, and decreasing churn which is totally aligned with most SaaS businesses’ strategies.
You can take a look at this article to build your customer success department: 9 steps to build a Customer Success Department
How does a Customer Success funnel look like?
ONBOARD
Here’s some food for thought…
According to HubSpot, 75% of new users will be lost within the first week. And, 40-60% of free trial users will use your product just once and never use it again.
The main reason why customers churn is because they either don’t fully understand your product or they don’t see any value in it. This is where your Onboarding experience comes in.
To develop a successful Onboarding experience, you need to start off by helping your new customers set up their account. Guide them with instructions and tutorials on how to do this properly. Once this is done, help them fill with data all those empty states that some features may have at the beginning.
For your new users to stay is necessary you help them find the great value that your products offers, emphasizing on each unique case. Each customer has different concerns so make their experience fully personalized. Show your new customer how your product can benefit them rather than just explaining the features.
You should walk along them, guide them through every step of the process, breaking everything down so they get lost in the process and complete one action at a time. It’s crucial for SaaS to navigate their customers into the ‘Ahá moment’, the moment when your customer finally finds value in your product.
CONVERT
Taking into account the low probability that acquiring new customers has, 5-20%, for the best players in the game, focusing on maintaining your actual users and converting them into paying customers should be priority.
According to Forbes, on average only 25% of SaaS trial users convert into paying customers.
This is why is critical to make the process with your product as easy as possible for your new users.
Users are usually hesitant to pay for your product unless you have won them over and have made the most out of their initial experience. It’s important to understand which features will bring them the most value and focus on the benefits they will offer them. Make their initiation with your product as personalized as possible based on each case unique needs and concerns.
ENGAGE
Although the ‘Aha moment’ is very important to develop customer loyalty, it isn’t everything. You still need to increase customer engagement so your product become indispensable. You need to maintain your customers engaged to ensure that they don’t get stuck at any point and they keep moving through your funnel.
Also, rewarding users with more advanced features when they complete an action can be a great incentive to keep them engaged. It’s important that you focus on small wins, it shows appreciation and increases loyalty.
Remember what we have mentioned on previous posts, Customer Success isn’t reactive, it’s proactive. You need to identify possible churn and engage with those customers to prevent churn.
Connect with your customers frequently and don’t wait for them to have an issue because most of the times they will get frustrated and as a result, quit using your product. You can do this via email or call depending on how much value these users bring to your company. This is highly important during the first weeks.
ATTAIN SUCCESS
To attain success you need to make sure your paying customers are making the most out of your product. As we have just mentioned, scheduling calls with your top customers can ensure that any issues or concerns they may have, are resolved in order to retain them.
It’s crucial that your customers have the most positive experience possible with your product to increase their loyalty. They need to feel satisfied with their investment and be certained that they’re obtaining value. You want your customers to live up to the promises you made on your website and landing pages.
Happy customers make great brand advocates and promoters. There’s are no better referral sources than your happiest customers. Use their specific cases to demonstrate their success stories to other customers to increase retention and loyalty.
Obtain real-life feedback from your customers to guide your roadmap. Honest feedback is necessary in order to completely understand what your customers want to be offered and how you should move forward with your product.
UPSELL
At this point, Now it’s time, to once again, move your customers one step forward and an upselling or cross-selling strategy.
For customer-centric businesses, your success depends on your customer’s success, which means that both parties will benefit from expanding. At this point, your customer should already love your product and it should have become indispensable to achieve their goals. If you have successfully committed to deliver lifetime value, now it’s time to start upselling.
But before you do, ask yourself if that upsell will actually help your customer do better and if it brings him/her sustainable value. If you have a positive response, go ahead. But remember to focus your message on how you can benefit your customer instead of going in deep explaining the product.