Gone are the days when a company was tied up to complex contracts. As more and more businesses move to use subscription-based SaaS services and while switching costs of moving from one business to another have reduced substantially, user adoption and satisfaction have become one of the most important goals for most SaaS businesses.
This has caused more and more SaaS companies to adopt a more personalized customer-centric approach to ensure their customer’s success. The obvious upward trend for customer success can be clearly seen in the last decade.
Back in the day, customer service was a reactive process, where when a customer had a problem or query about a product or a service, she used to call on a customer service number and after a series of interactions on an IVR, she was then redirected to a customer support executive where her queries were answered.
So, what is customer success and how is it different from customer support?
Customer Success is a personalized and proactive approach a Customer Success Manager would take to ensure that the customer achieves their goal while using the product. The main difference between customer success and customer service is the approach. While customer service is a reactive process where you resolve a customer’s query only once the customer has reached out to the company with a query or a problem.
Customer success would take this to the next level where a Customer Success Manager would take proactive measures to ensure that the customer is getting all the benefits of the product and is reaching the goals for which they signed up for the product in the first place. This can be done by proactive and timely follow-ups, goal setting with the customers, and ensuring all the steps and measures are taken to get the desired outcome for the customer.
Customer Success is an ongoing process which involves, proactive training to the customer, ensuring that the customer is interacting with the product the right way so as they reap maximum benefits of it. This would ensure a happy customer experience and will, in turn, help your SaaS company retain maximum customers and ward off the evil monster “Churn”. This would, in turn, increase customer loyalty to your product and ensure steady renewals, increasing your up-selling potential and referrals through word of mouth.
This article was previously published here