Featured article by Cher Zavala, Independent Technology Author
When you own or run a software-as-a-source business, it’s easy to get continually caught up in the day to day general tech side of things – after all, developing the product is what got the organization happening in the first place.
However, while this is obviously incredibly important, for your venture to keep growing you must also have a focus on retaining customers. If you’re keen to reduce your churn rate, read on for some tips you can follow today.
Know Who Your Target Market Is
For starters, be sure you know who your optimum target market really is. You need to know the demographics, needs, wants, motivations, customer support requirements, and communication preferences of your ideal customers so you can ensure your business processes are aligned to suit them.
Think about each element of your service from your target market’s perspective. This includes everything from when people first come to your website or app and then sign up for your service, through to the types of newsletters and social media posts you send out, and the times people need to contact you for assistance, to change plans, or for other actions. Work out if how you currently run things is suited to the types of clients you’re catering to, and when and how they want to communicate with you or otherwise interact with your service.
The more targeted you make each touchpoint, the happier customers will be with the service you provide. In turn, this will ensure they choose to stay on as customers, and find ways to keep using your service as their needs change over time.
Increase Value for Money
Next, to retain clients you must continually look for ways to increase the value for money they receive. Based on what you know about your customers, think about how you can improve the features that really matter to them. Some will be more important than others, so focus on making these as cutting-edge and comprehensive as possible.
Think about creating new features too, especially those that will be “sticky.” This refers to features which end up embedding themselves into the daily workflow or lifestyle of your customers. Once your service becomes a part of their everyday life, they will be highly engaged with your product, dependent on it, and less likely to go elsewhere.
Enhance the User Experience
It’s also vital to make your SaaS as easy to use for people as possible. If clients get frustrated when they use the software, they’re soon going to be looking for an alternative. As such, monitor and track the user experience constantly so you can keep improving it, particularly as you scale products or create new ones. Testing should happen from pre-production onwards, including onboarding, every day usage, and upgrades.
You should conduct end-user experience monitoring on aspects of your service such as the performance of the application itself, plus that of the data center infrastructure your software runs on, all the stops along the network path between the program and your users, and the browser or client software on your users’ mobile gadgets or computers.
As well, remember that some people might access your software from a device using a cellular data network, while others will be using desktop computers on broadband connections, or utilizing a public Wi-Fi hotspot. Your testing needs to factor in all these different user experiences, and the various combinations that can result. To help with this process, check out some of the different monitoring systems on the market that can analyze how, when, and where customers use your offerings.
Make Payments Easy
To boost retention, you also need to think about the payment options you provide. Make it easy for people to pay you using their preferred method, such as debit or credit cards, PayPal and Apple Pay, BPAY, direct debit, and the like. By giving multiple payment choices, you’ll increase the likelihood that people will find the method that suits them best, which in turn will make them happier to keep using your service.
Encouraging recurring payments, though, such as direct debits, is best, as this means you have less chance of losing customers because they can’t be bothered, or forget, to make a payment. It’s also wise to be proactive about expired or cancelled credit cards. Many SaaS companies lose clients because customer cards have expired or been cancelled due to being lost or stolen.
To avoid this situation, remind customers their card is going to expire well before it will actually happen. Arrange for automated emails to go out, or call people at least several weeks before the expiration date arrives so they can update their account with you. Similarly, keep track of occasions when payments are declined because credit cards have been cancelled, and get in touch with clients ASAP to ask for new card numbers.
