5 Tips to Improve SaaS Customer Experience in 2023

Software as a service, a model of development and distribution of software, is only gaining momentum every year. According to Statista , while in 2020 the SaaS market was estimated at $120.7 billion, in 2023 the number reached $195.21 billion. Based on the given data, no decline in demand is expected.

Such popularization results in a high level of competition and forces players in the niche to offer something that would positively set them apart. And it is the customer experience that can win the upper hand. Today, let’s find out how SaaS companies can succeed in 2023.?

What is SaaS customer experience

SaaS customer experience involves each customer interaction with employees, a brand, messages, and a SaaS company product on any channel or device; meaning everything that affects customers' perception of your brand.

A quality SaaS user experience gives them value, helps to navigate the buying cycle, educates, and encourages them to use a particular company's product. Success depends on whether customers recognize this value.

Why CX is important for SaaS companies

There is a direct correlation between a company’s success and customer service. You promise an easy-to-use product, offer an automated alternative to what they do themselves, and talk about saving time and costs. Meaning, you sell an enhanced experience as it is.?

Your main offer is customer experience. It is the reason for them to chose your company again and again.?

Good CX enables SaaS companies to:

• build a competitive advantage;
• optimize revenue on CAC and renewals;
• make intelligent product development decisions and many more.

The main benefit you get from the quality and positive customer experience is a customer return. I’ve prepared some advice that will help you improve your CX.???

5 tips to improve SaaS customer experience in 2023

To provide a good customer experience, a SaaS company must take the right steps and prioritize the right areas of user experience.?

Discover how clients engage at the beginning of interaction?

In the SaaS world, exceptional customer service depends on how well you understand their behavior and why they take certain actions.?

Free trials or freemium models as a starting point of customer engagement help SaaS companies get first impressions of how users discover the product and navigate within the program. Allow consumers to register and try your product for free.??

You will thus improve customer service and provide the Product team with corresponding behavioral data. This approach results in customer loyalty and higher LTV.?

Create effective onboarding

Onboarding (user adaptation) is the process of introducing the product to customers in order to share the company's core values and benefits, and to retain users. This mechanism reduces the time it takes for a customer to discover the product. An efficient adaptation process helps new clients to learn how to use the product, find answers to questions, and get rid of initial doubts.?

A personalized adaptation plan is an obligatory condition for building long-term relations with users. A confused and frustrated client with a negative onboarding experience can prevent a company from growing and set a tone for future purchases and business interactions. No doubt, it can be challenging to achieve complete personalization in mass production with a relatively low average check and focus on the self-serve user segment. Still, you can form various interaction funnels for those users who gave up your product on various levels by offering a relevant solution at each stage.??

If the product and resources allow, it makes sense to implement human resources as well. It can be a whole team focused on training or a support team that allows for overcoming difficulties with the product. You have options to choose from. The key is to retain customers at the stage of the introduction of a new tool.?

Also, review the process of customer adaptation and the steps they take. Some users happen to spend time on difficult and unnecessary processes.?

• Eliminate all unnecessary steps from the registration field;
• do not show users more functions than they need to see for the activation;
• create context interactive step-by-step guides instead of linear ones;
• consider the experience of various customers.

And the key thing — do not overcomplicate. You cannot teach your customer everything in the onboarding process. It is better to give them a chance to find additional information themselves.?

Collect feedback about the product?

The next step to improve CX is to listen to customers. They are the ones who know what they want and how they see the ideal product. Below are the main types of questions that will help you hear clients’ voices and get their expectations.?

NPS surveys. A group of people are asked one question to measure customer loyalty to a brand through the ratio of the number of promoters to the number of critics.

CX surveys. Usually, this format is used to determine a user's attitude towards a brand through a series of questions. In most cases, the survey is based on a rating system.

Usability surveys. Such a survey allows for understanding the level of interactivity of the brand and the quality of services provided.

Social listening. Various social platforms, search engine rankings (SERPs) and other tools, such as Brand Mention, are used in this case. The format is required to understand how your customers perceive your company or what they say about it.

The data obtained are consolidated into users’ ideas of the company, its product, and existing development areas. This information can then be used to optimize work with customers, improve service and product development.?

Measure customer support experience?

Net Promoter Score is an index of user commitment to a product or company. It is useful for SaaS companies with a developed reputation management strategy. Still, this metric does not provide accurate information on the negative feedback users leave on the Internet.?

If you want to get a holistic understanding of customer satisfaction after the interaction, monitor CSAT metrics. Specific goals can vary depending on the character, demography, services, and complexity of your business processes.?

You should also track the Churn Rate of customers who have not registered or renewed their use of the product. This will allow you to understand what is wrong with your Customer Success strategy.

Reduce friction and create customer delight

The secret to keeping users happy and making them come back to your services is providing a quality and easy customer experience. Companies that provide simple and straightforward CX are rewarded with increasingly higher conversion rates, customer retention, loyalty, and lower customer service costs.

Reducing customer effort requires cross-functional product and support teams, as well as a careful approach to collecting user feedback and interpreting it further. To set the company apart from the competition, you need to go beyond the standard Customer Success scenario.

To do this, product managers, developers, customer support representatives, and customer success representatives work together to identify interaction points, and understand user experience, user behavior, and the reasons behind it.

Here are some simple actions that will enhance user experience:?

• collect feedback and analyze customer journey;?
• renew design based on feedback;
• simplify self-service;
• make a user-friendly website, etc.?

These items are critical to the SaaS company and therefore to the customer experience. By optimizing anything that can make it difficult for users, you will automatically improve their experience.

Conclusion?

Positive customer experience is a direct way to develop and scale your SaaS company. You don't always have to dig deep to improve it. Often the secret is on the surface — you just need to make sure that you provide an easy-to-use and easy-to-understand product, providing users with the support they need when they need it.