SaaS customer onboarding is a process that describes how customers can start working with your company and successfully use your software. It also helps your new users get started and interact with your product. A successful onboarding process leads your customers to jump to your product, customize it, and benefit from it.
SaaS organizations analyze user behavior to understand how they interact with their product by implementing analytics. They track how customers use their product and will also help users revisit the metrics analysis.
Here are some best practices that your SaaS business can implement to improve customer retention and reduce customer churn, ensuring an efficient and easy-to-use customer onboarding process.
AI and ML are Taking Centre Stage
In SaaS, machine learning is used to automate responsiveness in customer service reports and applications, such as AI-powered live chatbot operations. It will also streamline the SaaS signup process.
AI solutions are great for adapting buying procedures, but they can also help you personalize your consumers' entire journey. AI can be used for onboarding to assist prevent churn by collecting data to better understand your customers.
When SaaS is integrated with AI capabilities, businesses can get more value from their data, automate and personalize services, increase security and replace talented individuals.
The cloud computing market is now led by SaaS. According to Gartner, the cloud application sector will be worth $143.7 billion by 2022, a rate of growth that will affect SaaS trends during the year. Gartner also predicts that by 2026, public cloud investment will account for more than 45% of total enterprise IT spending, up from less than 17% in 2021.
Integrations will be Smarter with Digital Transformation
With digital transformation, businesses may streamline all of their procedures while exploring new development opportunities. Digital onboarding refers to the execution of all onboarding activities using technology with minimal manual intervention.
One of the main ways to satisfy your customers, especially when it comes to software services, is to ensure seamless integration. The digital onboarding process is one of the most profitable strategies for retaining customers and generating profits. Handled correctly, this means both you and your customers will prosper.
Scaling Your Customer Success Teams
For SaaS organizations, customer success is sometimes neglected. Most businesses are focused on getting new clients and overlook the importance of retaining existing consumers. Customers must be acquired and retained in order for a SaaS firm to develop quickly and sustainably.
You should hire a dedicated customer success manager to help you establish a customer-centric firm. Hiring early demonstrates that your clients are your top priority, you're devoting time, energy, and money to ensuring their success with your product and organization.
According to a survey, customer success teams will grow in 2022, and the need for more employees to fill these positions will be in great demand. Nobody could have predicted how many CSM jobs would become available.
Improved Customer Experience for SaaS Users
To improve your SaaS customer experience, you must examine every touchpoint, interaction, and engagement with your customers, as well as the behind-the-scenes personnel interactions that have an impact on the customer experience.
By providing an amazing SaaS customer experience, you may increase your client’s loyalty to your brand. According to Gartner's research, consumer experience is responsible for more than two-thirds of customer loyalty and 70% of companies use customer feedback to deliver the best customer experience.
In 2022, a greater focus on customer data will be placed on understanding the behavior and acting to support customer experience, which is the mantra of customer success. SaaS providers will need to continue to improve their customer experience to build long-term loyalty.
Create Self-service Offerings
The highest-rated SaaS product is not necessarily the best product, but the best combination of product and customer service. In 2022 as a growing SaaS trend, we expect more SaaS companies to follow in the footsteps of tech giants and offer more than just products.
The current trend in SaaS is to create self-service offerings that can respond to customer requests. When you give your SaaS business users self-service assistance, you're allowing them to execute tasks and fix issues on their own.
For example, Amazon is built in such a way that it is totally automated, allowing it to scale without harming customer care. When was the last time you called Amazon customer service? It’s more than likely that you have never had to contact their customer service department (or at least, rare). All the inquiries are sent to the right knowledge base page for proper solutions.
Use A Collaborative Platform
Without understanding your customers' goals, onboarding is likely to be ineffective because it won't steer them in the right direction. To be successful at onboarding users, you need to understand the large context in which people might even think about using your tool or you can also try for a collaborative platform like Rocketlane to provide a delightful experience to your customers.
A survey of Rocketlane, states that the onboarding process appears to be burdened with inefficient processes. The report, titled “The State of Customer Onboarding”, reveals the challenges and trends identified through a survey of customer onboarding professionals from companies such as Microsoft, Intuit, and Pendo.
The survey shows that 60% of respondents utilize at least 4-6 tools for client onboarding, 56% say lack of insight into project progress is the leading cause of customer escalations, and 58% say holding customers accountable is difficult. To overcome all these challenges and to manage customer onboarding, you can trust Rocketlane.
To be successful in helping your customers, you need to know the technical details of your products to better interact with your customers. Working with a SaaS marketing agency can help you create a robust customer onboarding process that meets the unique benefits and solutions your product offers.
With these important trends in the SaaS industry in mind, trusting your products and keeping your finger on the pulse can help you get started in 2022 with greater success, growth, and access to valuable business insights.