For SaaS businesses that are growing, Customer Success happens to be a comparatively new approach. It is quite possible that you might be confused about how they need to go about the practice of customer success and how they should pick the best customer success platform from the many options that can be availed today in the market. Find out when you can consider yourself ready for a Customer Success platform.
When do you need integrations?
If you need integrations, you should get a customer success platform. Generally, a SaaS startup in the initial stage does not contain sound data within the CRM. That kind of data can be mostly availed in a billing system. This can be an invoicing system like Chargify, Zuora, Chargebee or some other full-scale SaaS subscription platform or Quickbooks or a similar invoicing system or an Excel sheet. You can precise data in the billing system.
Such kinds of data, like license plan, amount and renewal timelines are the main sources of truth. Thus, for any SaaS company, billing happens to be the most vital integration. Your business might require communication/support integration like Intercom, Zendesk or Freshdesk, Feedback score / NPS integration, billing integration or CRM integration.
It is important to consider the types of systems that you require for the Customer Success solution to get integrated with. You have to think about the community systems, HR, billing, marketing, services, support, CRM and more about your company. You have to think about how to plan for capturing usage information. Do you wish to synchronize data to the Customer Success software from your existing database, or wish to use code to make your own application operational?
Success Strategy
You have to use a Customer Success platform when you need a solid customer success strategy. Find out what your consumers can expect or what the market expectations are. Do you wish to be in a very successful team and greet and meet consumers? Or you want to be in a low touch team and make remote management. Or you wish to be a part of a completely technologically advanced touch success team. The recent years have witnessed a rise in the hybrid model of tech touch / low touch.
Success objectives
It is also a good idea to check your success objectives, both long and short term. There is no need for you to look at objectives beyond three years. This would be an overkill. Your success objectives will mature and change as your business grows. A few instances of success objectives could be User Engagement Score for the type of product that you have, Expansion Revenue and Retention or Churn. NPS / Customer Satisfaction Score is an indicator of lagging and not a major one, given that your consumers might churn in the first 3 months.
Scale
If you have a large scale requirement, a Customer Success platform can also be necessary. Enterprise-grade solutions are not dependent on how many features they offer, or the type of reliability or service. It depends mainly on the operational scale. For instance, there are many customers of Adobe. It surely requires a platform that may scale that kind of level.
But for anyone having many customers, such as a few hundred or thousands in number, an enterprise-grade level platform is not needed. This will be nothing short of overkill. You can get the option to have new solutions that are unlikely to be scale ready and boasts of a few features that can help in thought-leading and are lacked even by enterprise solutions.
Team working style
This type of factor is also a determining factor. Check whether you have a team that is successful in the field. Find out whether your account managers fly out for engaging with consumers in meetings that are one-on-one in type. In most cases, the team is within the office while it moves out on the field in the remaining time.
You have to consider whether you have traditional teams where there are successful managers within the office, and achieving communications with phone calls and emails, as well as also carrying out meetings and training remotely through apps like Zooms and Gotomeetings. Customer success teams are increasingly becoming a hybrid.
Account health
Generating account health is among the most vital features of any type of customer success platform. Account health is not simply the health of an account but also the capacity to generate milestones, alerts etc. The kind of scoring that you require is the primary question in this case. 3 kinds of account scores have been claimed by many platforms. The worth of account health should not be underestimated. You have to think about the kind of analysis that you wish to carry out on your own Customer Success system.