Customer Success Strategies

A good customer success plan will elevate your company to the next level by not only attracting more customers, but keeping them happy and loyal to your brand.

What is customer success?

Customer success has a few complex elements, but ultimately it is the simple practice of making the journey from prospect to loyal customer as easy and enjoyable as possible. 

This is achieved by first understanding what a prospect needs to become a customer, and then what a customer needs to remain loyal to your company. Let’s take a look at the key elements of customer success.

Brand and product awareness

The first part of any customer success strategy must be to make customers aware of your brand and products. Your company’s first impression will have a big influence on the prospect’s buying decision. Most first impressions these days are formed via a customer’s online experience, so your company website and initial presentation of your products must have a positive effect.

Going deeper, your content and aesthetic beyond the first impression must be consistent to keep the customer hooked. It helps to understand who your customers are and what they expect when seeking out your products. A consistent aesthetic aligned with customer engagement solutions throughout your website is key, and these should be designed with the customers you are trying to reach in mind. Have a clear picture of who are they and what kind of problem they are looking to solve with your product. 

This can be trickier if you are a new company without an established reputation in the industry, in which case your content will need to not only present your product’s value, but also effectively demonstrate your company’s brand and ethos.

Acquisition and onboarding

Customer acquisition should be considered only the beginning. Converting a prospect into a customer might seem like success has been achieved, but the true success lies in keeping that customer happy so they return. Much of this will be covered by the customer support section below, but it begins at the acquisition stage. This is where SaaS customer success software can be very effective. A good customer success software makes the acquisition process smooth as well as letting you measure the likes of customer success KPIs.

A guided onboarding system for B2B customers or an efficiently designed sign-up or subscription process for non-business customers is crucial not only for achieving the initial conversion, but also for setting the scene for an ongoing relationship.

Customer support and loyalty

Providing reliable customer support is one of the most important customer success tools. Once a prospect has become a customer, retaining their custom becomes the number one priority. They are likely to encounter issues at some point, especially if they make multiple purchases, so your customer success plan must include the ability to help them overcome whatever challenges they encounter. 

Most people understand that problems arising is a normal part of business, but they will expect their problems to be dealt with in a timely fashion. Quick and relevant responses to customer queries help minimize churn (where previous customers stop buying from you). 

The most common customer success stories often include a few bumps in the road, but solving issues quickly and personably is the key to riding them out and retaining the customer’s loyalty. 

Using direct debits to improve customer success KPIs

Integrating new customer service software can be time-consuming, so it’s a good idea to streamline other areas of your business to facilitate it. One way to achieve this is to simplify your invoicing and payments to reduce time spent on chasing them up.

GoCardless provide a secure invoice payment service that lets you automatically collect and reconcile invoice payments. We also provide a recurring payments service for subscription and membership payments, which can be the perfect payment system for a SaaS customer success strategy involving this business model.

We can help

Want to know more about how to achieve customer success? At GoCardless, our financial experts can guide you through customer success strategies. Get in touch today to discover how GoCardless can help you with ad hoc payments or recurring payments to enable you to dedicate more of your valuable time to improving your company’s customer success metrics.