It’s easy to say. We’re “customer oriented,” but such statements are hard to put into practice. In many companies, the product and customer success teams are separate entities, and when they don’t work together, a dynamic is created that creates all kinds of problems for the customer, which can lead to dissatisfaction and dissatisfaction.
Most companies cannot afford these issues in a recession. Maintaining and growing your existing customer base is a very cost-effective and win-win solution for both of you. And Your customers. Helping clients achieve more from their current investments is a formula for growth as they take on new initiatives, if not stagnant.
A team focused (dare I say, obsessed) on the product and customer success functions on the customer experience is the best way for SaaS companies looking to nurture happy customers, build better products, and generate more revenue from existing customers.
Here’s just one example of how a silent team approach can go wrong: In some companies, the customer may experience a dozen rounds between signing the contract and logging into their application. At one of my previous companies, there were 14 handoffs between different functional groups, including sales, onboarding, customer support, professional services, and account managers.
Today, customers can cancel at any time, so you have to have your seat at the table with your customer every day, and there’s no room for any missteps.
That much hand-wringing creates a huge margin in the customer experience — not to mention the lack of ownership when something goes wrong. Most importantly, you won’t miss out on valuable insights into how your products and customer experiences can improve, as your customers think carefully about their most important suppliers and make them think about how invested they are in their success.
This example and many other field reports show that customer success and product teams create misaligned incentives among teams. Here are a few other reasons why and how you should unite forces into one customer experience team.
The reason: Customers just want to talk about your product
Customers buy your product because they believe in your vision, your approach to solving existing problems, the capabilities of your technology, and your promise for the future. Now you have to provide these expectations.
For modern SaaS companies, “resting” the client is only the first step, but it was not always like that. In the past, when the contract was signed, permanent license companies accounted for the lion’s share of their total revenue. Earning maintenance income was nice, but compared to the original contract price, it was peanuts. As a result, there was not much risk in the customer’s lifetime. As a result, product teams find themselves deeply disconnected from customers and often rely on external research or secondary data on what customers want rather than actual customer feedback.
