If your business is like FROGED and built on a Software as a Service (Saas) model, then you’re in the game for the long haul. The product success, and therefore customer success, at your Saas company (and ours) is dependent on how well you can understand what customers want and need, and to constantly create new products that keep them happy.
The most successful Saas companies are able to build customer-centric product development teams that provide transparent feedback, collect insights about customer needs, promote continuous innovation, and deliver exceptional service.
This blog post will explore some of the different ways in which product success and customer success go hand in hand when it comes to Saas. In essence, you will have a moment where you know if being product-led is in your DNA.
Why Product Success is Important for Saas
Product success is important for Saas, because well, it’s essential to the health and growth of your business. If customers are not satisfied with the products that your company offers, then they will eventually stop using them and move on to something else. And they won’t come back. If you aren’t paying attention you’re essentially giving up potential sales and revenue without any chance of making a second impression.
Additionally, it can be costly. If you have to keep developing new products in order to keep up with customer demands. Customers expect more from your company as time goes by and so will the competition. For example, Slack has a web app that allows people to use their service from any device instead of just from their desktop computer.
You might think that this is a great idea, but it’s not without its downside. When Slack released its web app, it had to spend plenty of resources on development and design. This means they were forced to add additional resources or risk being left behind as their competitors continued to evolve their offerings.
How to Build a Product Team for Customer Success
The most critical component to success in Saas is your product team. Trust us – we are a young company and consider the concept of product-led to be in our DNA. We have more folks focused on product and customer success than sales and with reason.
It doesn’t matter how great your product is or how much customers love it if you can’t keep up with demand. This is why it’s essential that you build a product team for customer success, which includes:
- Product Managers
- UI/UX Designers & Engineers
- Customer Success Managers
- Marketing Specialists
Below we will explore what each of these roles entail, and how they contribute to building an effective product team for customer success.
Product Manager – is exactly what the role sounds like – ensuring that the product updates, features and benefits are in alignment with customer needs
UX/UI Designers and Engineers – building a great customer experience from navigation to flow and design
Customer Success Managers – your customer point of contact – in essence, the face of your brand when it comes to onboarding, solutions, and upselling. Consider a commission schedule for upselling
Inbound Marketing – is about connecting brand awareness with acquisition generating quality leads and converting them into paying customers
Create Innovative Products
The most successful Saas companies are able to create innovative products that keep customers happy. This sounds obvious, but how many times have you not felt the value of a product or service over time?
This is why customer feedback and engagement are key to retention. One of the best ways for your product team to collect insights about customer needs is by interviewing them to gain a better understanding of their wants and needs. This can help shape your product roadmap in the future. At FROGED we do this formally every quarter, on client check-in calls and with every product launch.
Asking questions like “What do you dislike about our product?” or “What features would you like us to add?” will allow you to improve your service and create innovative products that will not only attract new customers but also retain current ones.
Specifically, asking about what would make people stay longer is an excellent way to get insight into what aspects of the product they enjoy most. It might be something as simple as the design or the layout, or it could be more complicated like how often support is available. A great tool that you can implement is a Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey for an honest and deeper dive.
The point is, that with all this information, you’ll be able to develop new products that meet these expectations and keep them happy over time. And remember, once you have this information, you have to deliver through your product! But once you do…voila! Product Success.
What Is Customer Success?
Customer success is the term given to the idea of strengthening customer relationships while providing support and satisfaction. This encompasses not only how happy customers are with their products, but also how likely they are to come back and purchase again in the future.
How to Measure the Success of Your Saas Company
There are many different ways to measure the success of your Saas company, but the most important are customer retention and customer acquisition. What’s the point of creating a product that customers don’t want? It makes no sense. If you have happy customers, then you should be able to keep them around for the long haul. You can measure this by looking at customer retention rates or by focusing on acquiring new customers.
Product Success Leads to Customer Success
Helping customers reach their goals is fundamental to success for any SaaS company. But the success of your product is also key to your company’s success.
A product team can help you build innovative products, while a customer success team can help you measure the success of your company. And in the end, both teams are working to achieve the same goal: your customers’ success.
Without customer success, you risk churning customers and diminishing that all-important lifetime value. Implementing a product success strategy means you’ll enjoy loyal, happy customers who renew their subscriptions and refer their friends – aka, customer success