Rising customer expectations and the emergence of a subscription-based business model has disrupted traditional customer engagement strategies.
For SaaS companies, closing a sale is only the first step in establishing a successful, long-term customer relationship. Companies must get creative to ensure high customer satisfaction, prevent churn, and improve retention.
Discover the tool that instantly raises customer engagement and boosts retention.
Four top tips to boost customer engagement
In addition to closing new business, the success of a SaaS company depends upon its ability to “re-sell” or “up-sell” customers monthly or yearly.
That’s why it is crucial to develop an effective customer engagement approach. Here are four tips to get you started.
1. Use insights from advanced data analytics
Make the most of your company’s customer data by performing analytics to identify customer behaviors, preferences, and trends. It can also be used to identify how and when to upgrade a product, how to spend advertising dollars most effectively, and how to provide tailored and personalized customer assistance.
According to a survey by Radius and Harvard Business Review, 60% of executives reported their companies are highly focused on investing in data and analytics tools. Of these, 61% see great potential for using such tools to improve the customer experience, and 60% see potential to boost customer loyalty.
Analytics of customer data provide insights on customer patterns. You can use them to prevent churn through the identification of promotions, features or other special offers that have proven successful in the past.
2. Improve Your Customer Support
Companies can significantly raise customer engagement by raising the standard for customer support.
An important element to this is training your customer support team by placing emphasis on the skills and behaviors that will will enable them to achieve customer satisfaction. Businesses must invest in effective employee training so that they communicate with customers and handle their problems quickly and efficiently.
3. Embrace AI
Artificial intelligence and machine learning are fields that are already making an impact in the enterprise technology scene.
Implementing AI can help bolster your customer engagement approach. For example, AI-powered chatbots can be a valuable resource to customers while freeing up your customer support reps to focus on more demanding cases.
With chatbots, customers have access to expert help at any time and from any place, fulfilling their desire for self-service and efficiency.
4. Pay attention to your competition
Keep in mind that customers choose to do business with you because they think you provide the best value and experience for the price. But, if they find something better, they won’t hesitate to leave for your competition.
That’s why it’s important to always keep a pulse on what your customers want and expect, and make sure you are fulfilling those demands. Pay close attention to how other companies approach customer engagement, as well as the general standard in your field.
What do you have to learn from your competitors? What can you do to better meet your customers’ needs?