The short answer: treating SaaS customers so they want to continue being a customer.
SaaS businesses have an interesting advantage over brick and mortar companies. Software doesn’t have physical costs and digital distribution is straightforward. Margins on SaaS software, particularly on subscription-based software, are great.
Customer Success is a new domain that emerged from the SaaS world in reaction to the scale and simplicity of the SaaS business model. Yes, you can sell software to a million people, but if that’s as far as your thought process goes you are in for some nasty surprises. Just because software is economical to produce and scales well, your customers are still human. The team that produces the software is also human. Your software will have problems and your customers will run into those problems and a million others you haven’t thought about. For customers to continue being customers, they need to have a good experience.
This concept, of reducing subscriber churn, is at the heart of Customer Success. Reducing churn means creating a great user experience, providing help when customers have problems, and doing all you can to delight them. It takes sales, support, product, design, marketing, and engineering working together to make this a reality. It’s hard work! The result of good Customer Success work is customers who continue to be customers, month after month, year after year.
If you aren’t striving for that then why are you making software?
