Last editedApr 20232 min read
For SaaS companies, building a culture that centers around the customer is crucial. With the ongoing personalization of subscription services, customers increasingly expect an individualized product or service. Fail to provide them with this, and they could walk right into the arms of your competitors.
To maximize user experience, you need to optimize every stage of the customer journey. That’s why an effective customer engagement strategy is so important. But how do you implement a customer engagement model that works for you? Check out our selection of top tips.
What is customer engagement?
First off, a simple question: what is customer engagement? Customer engagement is essentially a measurement of the degree and depth of interactions between customer and company.
In other words, it’s all about the emotional connection forged between your brand and customers. But customer engagement isn’t just an abstract concept – it can be measured.
Customer engagement is very important, chiefly because of its role in your business’s ability to sustain growth and retain customers. So, how can you improve your SaaS customer engagement strategy?
1. Get your metrics right
There are many different SaaS metrics that you can use to measure customer engagement, including active users, usage frequency, and time spent within an application.
Having a practical measure of how much, or how little, your customers are engaged with your product is the first step towards maximizing user engagement.
Focus on multiple metrics and use these learnings to communicate with your customers and optimize your customer engagement model.
2. Provide a customer loyalty program
Emotional investment in your brand is a valuable asset for any SaaS company. By adding value to customer engagements, you’ll build up that emotional investment and stop your customers from switching over to your competitors.
So, if you’re learning how to engage customers, a loyalty program could be key. According to a study by Bond in collaboration with Visa, 81% of consumers agree that loyalty programs make them more likely to keep doing business with a brand.
Award points whenever your customers make a purchase, showing that they have just as much to gain from engaging with your brand as you do.
3. Communicate with customers using live chat
When customers run into an error or can’t figure out how to use a feature, they get frustrated. And frustration is likely to lead to disengagement.
However, if you provide a way to engage with customers and help solve their issues quickly and efficiently, you can keep your customers happy, educated, and engaged.
One of the best customer engagement solutions is to provide a live chat feature which can help your customers get the answers they need as fast as possible.
4. Connect with your power users
If you’re trying to figure out how to engage customers, it helps to talk to the customers who you rely on most. SaaS companies tend to have a base of highly engaged users, sometimes referred to as ‘power users'.
By converting power users to product champions, you’ll have a ready-made base of brand evangelists who can help you spread the word about new products, features, or upgrades.
It may also be a good idea to get these engaged users involved in user tests. This way, you can incorporate feedback from your most devoted customers into the design of your product.
5. Implement just-in-time (JIT) training
Education plays an extremely important role in customer engagement. As a result, providing training beyond the initial onboarding process should be a crucial part of your SaaS customer engagement.
But you’ll need to provide the right type of training for your product. Long, highly detailed content is more likely to result in disengagement. Customers want to resolve the issue and start using the product as quickly as possible.
All content should be flexible, readable, and bite-sized. Just-in-time training (where information is delivered to users and the exact moment and location they need it) can drive customer engagement and improve retention.
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