Why Customer Success should underpin your SaaS solution

Switchboard Jun 1

CS key metrics
Table of Contents

    Question: What do you trust most when choosing a SaaS solution? It’s probably referrals, i.e., word-of-mouth recommendations. According to a study by Nielsen, 92% of customers worldwide trust recommendations above all other forms of marketing.

    But how do you get the most value from it? This is where Customer Success (CS) comes in. In fact, 99% of companies with a CS function recognize the value of the program for their business and their customers.

    But what should you look for in a Customer Success team?

    Measuring Customer Success

    The first thing to do is to look at the reputation of your SaaS Customer Success team. Perhaps the most obvious way is to look up their NPS (Net Promoter Score).

    NPS is a tool which allows customers to rate the likelihood of recommending them to other companies, on a 0-10 scale. Each rating of six or below counts as a ‘detractor’; seven or eight as a ‘passive’; and nine or ten as a ‘promoter’. A brand’s NPS is equal to the percentage of promoters less the percentage of detractors.

    Bain & Company (who invented the NPS system) considers a score above 50 to be excellent, and a score above 80 to be world class. Switchboard, for example, recently achieved a score of 86.7, meaning our customers are highly willing to recommend our service to others.

    So, how was our CS team able to accomplish this?

    Helping customers get the best out of the software

    SaaS solutions will connect to APIs, extract raw data, and even automate that process. However, there’s still a great deal of work left to carry out – examining different datasets to understand their structures and idiosyncrasies, performing appropriate transformations, then finding value in the unified data.

    The best CS teams are domain experts, but they are also able to work with you to close that knowledge gap. For example, Switchboard’s CS team already understands which datasets to join and how to accomplish this. Having solved some of the hardest and most valuable data problems, the team has developed a set of industry-leading practices which can benefit all customers in all sectors.

    A proactive CS program should also include planning and regular meetings with your business team, as well as with stakeholders and C-Suite executives for progress reviews and the celebration of any achievements. The CS team should follow up within 24 hours of a meeting, providing a clear summary with actions to take.

    Helping customers get to their data faster

    Businesses need to move quickly to achieve their desired results. SaaS providers who take a passive approach and leave the onus on the customer to reach out with queries won’t provide value in time, and will quickly lose favor. In contrast, a proactive CS team can help unlock new insights within data to create new solutions, optimize performance, and ultimately increase revenue.

    This begins with onboarding. At Switchboard, our CS team aims to ensure that your business realizes value within 30 days of signing up. To be successful, onboarding requires the right balance of strategic planning and pragmatism.

    Your business team decides on a roadmap, which is then carried out in tandem with the CS team. Once data sources are activated, the CS team should help you achieve results in a timely manner. Additionally, smart data handling can help find value even faster, such as Switchboard’s automation platform, which enables our CS team to spend 90% of their time on your unique goals, rather than on repetitive operational tasks.

    No software will fulfill your needs without some human element, so ensure you choose a solution with a Customer Success team who can close the gap between their product and your use case. In essence, they should be an extension of your business team, partnering with you each step of the way. And a world-class NPS rating helps, too.

    If you need help unifying your first or second-party data, we can help. Contact us to learn how.

    Schedule Demo

    Catch up with the latest from Switchboard

    subscribe

    STAY UPDATED

    Subscribe to our newsletter

    Submit your email, and once a month we'll send you our best time-saving articles, videos and other resources