As a SaaS customer success manager, you aim to improve your clients’ experiences by quickly acclimating them to your product or service and helping them achieve their business goals through its use. Doing this well benefits your company by improving the bottom line as customers renew subscriptions, upgrade services, and advertise through positive reviews and word-of-mouth.

Giving thousands of customers the attention and training they deserve to help them quickly realize value will likely require (significant) additional CSM resources. That is, unless you utilize digital customer success strategies and tech-touch customer success. Digital technology, data, and automated processes help your customers achieve their desired results and help you, the CSM, work smarter instead of harder.

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The best time to start implementing digital strategies, such as chatbots, event-triggered notifications, and knowledge bases is now and at whatever price point your budget allows. Adjust your processes in small ways to realize significant savings in time and money as you grow. Digital methods for proactive customer outreach can help you scale your efforts, improve the customer experience, increase upsell opportunities and boost revenue.

Set expectations early to align on success

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Want to know more about what to automate and when? Begin by mapping the customer’s journey. Identify where digital processes and automation would help optimize their experience. Various subsets of customers could result in different journeys, so consider digital customer journey mapping tools to help.

Segmenting customers according to where they are in their journey is an excellent way to know what touchpoints to use and when to use them. For customers nearing renewal, the CSM can send a notification to renew a certain number of days out. They can follow up 30-60 days later with current contract details. Automated playbooks can guide CSMs with best practices and templates based on the customer’s point within their journey and past practices that have proven effective.

Welcoming and onboarding

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Don’t underestimate the power of a well-crafted, useful welcome email. In it, you can diagram contact points for your customers' different needs and links to training and self-help tools. This one-to-many communication cuts down on CSM touchpoints, allowing agents to focus efforts on higher-touch actions.

Onboarding and adopting new software can be challenging for any company. CSMs strive to make the experience as smooth as possible and quickly guide users to realize value and identify solutions. As clients grow, there can’t be a one-to-one experience for every user’s adoption journey. Instead, create one-to-many solutions, such as knowledge bases, FAQs, and training videos addressing common questions or concerns from previous clients.

Improve the customer experience with DIY resources

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You might compare learning to use new software to learning to ride a bike. Initially, someone has to provide instructions, demonstrations, and support to the new user, and then–gulp!–let them go. Can you imagine if there was too little instruction or support? Or, at the opposite end of the spectrum, if the instructor never let go of the rider?

So it is with customer success and the customer experience. Your customers want personalized help, meaning the right amount of assistance at the right time. That may sound impossible, but it’s easier with digital solutions when CSMs can group and personalize touches based on influential factors like the client's industry or journey stages. Then, CSMs can solicit feedback and learn what they did right and what could use improvement.

Increase upsell opportunities with internal data analysis

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Data-backed insights into customer journeys and user habits can help with success efforts such as well-timed and personalized emails, informative in-app pop-ups or advertising advanced features. Organize customers according to similar needs and send a one-to-many communication, reducing the time it takes you to reach your clients while multiplying your results.

Help customers make the most out of your software by guiding them towards features they aren’t currently using. Digital data can reveal customer needs based on behaviors. For instance, are they maxed out on seats for users? Do they need access to a feature they have yet to adopt? Capture these opportunities using digital data insights to reach them through email, in-app pop-ups or phone calls.

Boost revenue with a consistent renewal cadence

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Revenue from upselling, cross-selling, and renewals grows due to impeccably timed, personalized, and pertinent information. Don’t rely on your customer’s memory or satisfaction with your service to prompt their renewal. Well-timed renewal reminders and progress updates significantly increase your chances of securing future services without relying on a constant stream of new clients.

Working smarter, not harder

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Digital and automated touches may seem robotic and impersonal, but in reality, customers have the opposite impression–they feel pampered and supported without feeling like customer care is excessive. It gives low-touch and mid-touch situations the right amount of attention, freeing CSMs to focus and reinforce high-touch human interactions.

Start prioritizing digital customer success in whatever ways you can–little shifts here and there add up in a big way as your company grows. Consider a customer success platform ready-made for automating such touches as: onboarding reminders, training materials, satisfaction surveys, renewal reminders, upsell offers, support issues and more.

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By swiftly introducing your clients to your product or service and assisting them in using it to accomplish their business goals, you as a SaaS customer success manager want to enhance their experience. Encouraging clients to upgrade their services, renew their subscriptions, and provide favorable reviews and word-of-mouth advertisements, doing this properly helps your business's bottom line.