Customers these days have their pick of the litter when it comes to SaaS platforms — or really, anything they want to buy or subscribe to. And make no mistake: your competitors are definitely looking to give your users any reason to deflect to them.
Freebies, trials, discount codes – there’s so much out there to tempt people away.
So what’s a company to do?
Churn in SaaS
The average churn rate is about 10-14% annually for SaaS companies — but ones that nail their customer experience often do a fair bit better than that.
By catering their customers and honing in on what it takes to create the best experiences for them, they make it that much less attractive to deflect to someone else.
In today’s digital age, customers are used to getting what they want, when they want it, and how they want it. So companies need to do whatever it takes to make sure they’re meeting those demands.
We’ve already covered what customer experience is and why it’s so important to get right previously. Today, we wanted to focus on 10 actionable steps companies can take to get it right.
So here are 10 ways you can make sure your customer experience is up to par.
Make sure your website is user-friendly
Have you ever had the experience of landing on a website and bouncing almost immediately because it’s just not up to standard? That could mean a bunch of things. Maybe it doesn’t immediately give you a sense of what the product is. Maybe the UI is a mess. Maybe the CTAs are far too aggressive and off-putting.
There are a lot of ways to make the experience of using a website frustrating, so make sure you don’t set those traps for yourself — or your user.
Your copy should be clear, your navigation should be obvious and your design should be pleasant — not generic enough to be boring, not crazy enough to be an eyesore.
Meet them where they are
Everyone is more online than ever before, so it’s important to meet your customers where they are. B2B CX is quickly evolving past the usual subjects; your ICP is now everywhere.
From Reddit forums, to Slack Channels to LinkedIn groups, people expect to be able to get in touch with you where and when they like. So make sure you’re present on as many channels as possible, while keeping your messaging, CX and brand consistent across all of them.
Make sure to also cover all your support and communication bases, where possible: from live chat, to phone support, to help centers, to social media, make it easy for customers to solve their problems and they’ll stick around for the long haul.
Don’t leave them hanging
No one likes to be left hanging and longer hold times lead to lower CSAT scores, so make sure you’re doing everything possible to minimize that — or, at the very least, setting the right expectations about when customers will hear from you.
The best way to nail this is to perfect your customer support workflows and use software that is specifically designed to make the processes easier to manage.
Customer (support) is king
Excellent customer support is the cornerstone of any great CX setup. And it encompasses a variety of things: from the right tech stack, to the right training, to the right data strategy, customer support is so much more than just resolving support tickets.
When done right, it can contribute to your overall customer experience objectives. We’ve covered all the best ways to improve your customer support before, so make sure you read that to get the low-down on how to set yourself up for success.
Learn to listen
One of the best ways to improve your CX is also one of the most obvious: when a customer expresses disappointment (or praise!), listen and identify what you can take away from that to improve your processes and workflows.
If you’re working with a dearth of unsolicited feedback, reach out to customers and ask them for their opinion.
If you’re looking to test new experiments in CX before setting them live, platforms like wynter.com are great places to put new CX hypotheses in front of your ICPs and get their opinion on them. It’s expensive, but it can help you avoid even more costly mistakes down the line.
Make every interaction count
No one likes to feel like a number on a spreadsheet – or an obvious merge tag, so, where possible, make sure you go the extra mile to personalize all your customer interactions to make them memorable.
Just be aware that there are ways to do this correctly and ways to do this incorrectly. Customers are more privacy-conscious than ever before, so a delicate balance needs to be deployed in order to make this effort successful — rather than off-putting.
Consistency builds brands
We’ve touched on this in the point about multi-channel support, but it bears repeating: customers value consistency and it can go a long way towards building your brand.
If you do go the multi-channel CX route (and of course you should — it’s only natural that your customer journey is going to have multiple touchpoints), it’s important that you standardize the experience as much as possible.
The biggest brands in the world invest a lot in a consistent customer experience, so make sure you’re doing that too.
Some low-hanging fruit you can pluck to get there? Templates, handbooks, corporate guidelines. Everything that you can put down on paper and formalize can take you a long way towards creating consistent experiences across channels.
Read between the lines
One of the scariest facts that CX professionals have to contend with is the fact that out of every 26 customers, only one will complain about a bad experience. The rest will just churn without saying anything at all. That’s a problem. If you don’t know when someone’s unhappy with your company, how are you meant to assuage those concerns?
Easy!
Investing in proactive support and CX can go a long way towards ensuring you don’t miss a single unsatisfied customer. We’ve put together a presentation about proactive support with a ton of tips, tricks and tech recommendations, so make sure you take a look.
Another thing you can do? Invest in software like Fullview Replays to automatically record all user sessions in your app, get notified when someone is displaying signs of frustration (like rage clicks) or experiencing bugs, and get in touch with them even before they ask themselves ‘Where’s the help center?’
Wrapping things up
So there you have it: eight great places to start when you’re thinking about leveling up your CX.
With a recession looming, businesses are going to have to pull out all the stops to keep their customers from churning. Net revenue retention is more important than ever before and ensuring you are putting your best foot forward at every interaction with a customer can go a long way towards ensuring that your business’s NRR stays high.
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