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Software as a service (SaaS) companies have many different strategies at their disposal for growing their brand: marketing-led, sales-led, and product-led, to name a few. There's rarely a one-size-fits-all approach to growth. All are great and have their place in the mix at different points in a company’s life cycle.
Seeing through our customer success lens, we've found that customer-led growth is one of the best strategies for a start-up or young SaaS business. Most budding companies do well with this strategy as it optimizes funds because the focus is on gaining and retaining customers by giving them what they ask for. You and your product development team avoid wasting time and money on developing something the customer doesn’t care about.
Not only can you optimize spending by giving your customers exactly what they want, but a customer-led growth strategy also:
Planning, collecting data, and communicating are essential ingredients for success and transitioning to this new strategy takes time and planning. Here are some steps to guide your team to the best results in a customer-led growth strategy.
Chart your customer’s journey. Create a diagram of their different stages, indicating what they hope to achieve, common pain points, bottlenecks, and solutions.
You'll need the proper CS tools to collect feedback and gain valuable insight into your customers' habits and values. Learn how they feel about the user interface (UI) and experience. With the right tech, you can begin collecting that kind of beneficial information from your client's very first interaction with your product. Look for technology that can help you segment customers and recognize commonalities to improve your product and their experiences.
Once you know what your customers need or value, keep them looped in on product updates and new, relevant features. This touchpoint can be easily automated with a customer success tool.
If the thought of having your customers driving changes makes you nervous, first of all, that’s understandable, and secondly, have no fear–it isn’t as chaotic and all-consuming as it might sound when implemented effectively. As you respond to customer needs, keep the following tips in mind to keep you on the path to business growth and customer success.
Product-led growth is a popular growth strategy in the SaaS industry. Customer-led growth closely aligns with it but is more holistic and all-encompassing. Customer-led growth also focuses on the product, but to the extent that customer needs and demands are considered when revising or adding new features.
Catering to the customer is effective with the right tools and methods. It has worked for well-known SaaS companies like Slack and Workday, and it can work for you. Successful customer-led growth strategies must include data collection so the CS team can track patterns and discover prevalent trouble spots and successes that they can either fix or lean into for superb customer experiences.
With the direct connection between CS and customers, you’ve got a goldmine when it comes to customer marketing.
With your goal(s) in mind, work backward to find the customer success software that helps you achieve your objectives.
Don't burden your CSM with franken-tools and half-measures. Dedicated CSPs will get you the best results.