Renewals: Where the Profit Lies
If you’re a SaaS company with a subscription based model, leveraging Customer Success to decrease churn and increase renewals should always be a priority. Every client that churns is not only a huge lost opportunity for revenue, but also a wasted investment of dollars spent on acquisition (more on that here). Often startups are too focused on chasing new deals versus making sure their current customers stick around. If your SaaS startup is guilty of this – you’ll want to read this blog post.
The first step in making sure renewals occur is improving the customer experience. Increasing customer satisfaction starts with investing in a Customer Success rep/team, tracking user engagement, and using an internal collaboration tool. Not to mention, as an organization you have to commit to treating each renewal like a sale – something that needs to be worked and closed.
Recently, we wrote a Case Study on how one of our clients is using Salesforce Chatter as their internal collaboration tool to support Customer Success. As an organization, Swept, has dramatically improved how they serve their customers and is seeing this benefit their business in many ways, including an increase in their rate of renewals.
Swept: the Challenge
Six months ago Lyly joined Swept as their first Customer Success team member. When she arrived, user information was silod in Sales team’s heads or scattered across google sheets and numerous email inboxes. Lyly began to shop around for a product that would help centralize customer data, increase collaboration between Sales and Customer Success, and provide her with a snapshot of the health of each client.
During her search, she struggled to find a product that seamless integrated customer information with corresponding tasks and could exist as part of their Salesforce instance. Then she discovered Salesforce Chatter.
Centralizing Customer Data
“At the beginning of the day I log into Salesforce, take a look at my tasks and quickly check in on all my customers. In one place I can see each user’s account information, every email, case submitted, as well as how often they’re logging in and using the product,” says Lyly. Being able to see the engagement level of each user, as well as every interaction they’ve ever had with Swept allows Lyly to provide seamless service. “When I speak with customers, I can quickly pull up their file and know exactly how to help them based on their account information,” says Lyly.
Additionally, Chatter makes information searchable across documents, tasks, people, groups, and teams. This significantly decreases the time Swept’s team spends looking for specific account details and ensures colleagues across departments and geographies are all accessing the same information.
Increasing Collaboration
Now that Swept is able to identify which users are having the most success with the product, upselling has become much easier. Chatter eliminates all the unnecessary back and forth between Sales and Customer Success. “When there’s an opportunity to upsell, I simply notify the Sales team via Chatter and they can take it from there without having to reach out further to review the account.” says Lyly.
On the flip side, Chatter has also been an avenue for Customer Success to recognize customers who are struggling and work with Sales to make sure their issues are resolved.
“Internally I can see if a user isn’t logging in or having difficulties with the product. This prompts me to follow up with that user and if I don’t see the user’s engagement with the product increase, escalate the case to Sales using a Chatter post. Chatter simplifies this process by consolidating account information and the conversations Customer Success has with Sales in one place. This system has helped reduce churn and ensure renewals occur by being proactive in engaging users that are at risk for abandonment,” says Lyly.
Celebrating Success
Like many startups, Swept’s team consists of employees who work remotely and a busy CEO who’s on the road a lot. Celebrating successes as a team was difficult before Swept adopted Chatter. However, because Chatter licenses are free, all of Swept’s employees (not just Sales) are connected. Now, celebrating as a team is easy. Lyly simply shares positive customer feedback using #HappyCustomers or #HappyCleaners via Chatter.
“In the past, relaying positive feedback from our users to our product team was especially difficult. Now our developers can see how their hard work translates into people using and seeing value in the product they’ve built,” says Lyly.
Customer-Centric Roadmap
Beyond all the ways Chatter helps facilitate effective Customer Success, it also helps Swept develop their product for the future.
“Gathering feedback helps us shape our roadmap and make sure we are developing a product that serves our customers. Discussing their challenges and hearing what our users have to say is how we decide internally our priority projects and a timeline for those projects. Like all startups, we have limited resources so being able to gut check our priorities with what our users biggest pain points are helps us focus our efforts on what matters most,” said Lyly.
Wrap up
Download a pdf version of our Case Study: “Swept Uses Salesforce Chatter for SaaS Customer Success” here. If you have any questions about the Case Study, Salesforce Chatter, or how to implement or improve Customer Success at your startup, don’t hesitate to contact us.
