Why Customer Success Matters for Small Business Owners
Why Customer Success is Important for Small Business Owners
In this week’s episode, I talk about why customer success matters and how you can increase your annual revenue for your course based business or SaaS using 3 simple strategies.
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Table of Contents
Customers are the lifeblood of any business. People who buy your group coaching program, membership, retainer service, or SaaS product spend not only their money to achieve their goals, but also their time and attention. Customer success can be a critical factor in turning a one-time customer into a long-term customer, which means fewer costs for small businesses and more income as well as less work for the owner. If you’re a coach with a group coaching program, membership, or B2B SaaS product owner – you already know the struggle of getting customers in the door. But what happens to those customers after they enroll or subscribe to your program or product? Are they actually achieving the goals they want to? Many people find themselves working hard for a first-time customer and then struggling to figure out how to keep them around. With that in mind, it’s worth looking at customer retention efforts. Customer retention is key to long-term growth and profitability.
The Cost of Losing Customers
A recent study by Forrester Research found that it costs 5 times more to acquire new customers than it does to retain current customers. Other studies say this cost could be as high as 25 times that of a returning customer. It can be much more cost effective to find ways to keep the customer you have over trying to find a new customer.
Three Customer Success Stragies for Small Business
Improve Your Customer Onboarding Process
A customer’s first experience with a subscription-based business (memberships, group programs, or SaaS products) is often the most important. You have one shot at getting it right and making a good impression. Customer onboarding is a process that aims to help customers move from their a purchase or trial of program or product, leading to the customer seeing value and increasing customer retention – saving you pricey customer acquisition costs and higher customer lifetime value.
Education plays a crucial part in the customer’s experience and success learning how to apply the product or program towards their overall business or personal goals. This can be done through the use of self-service help documentation, video tutorials, or even on-demand email marketing automation or SMS campaigns.
Tweak Your Customer Onboarding Form
It’s important to create an onboarding form for your customers so that you can review the main reason someone signs up for your program, service, or product. The post-purchase customer journey is one of the best ways to elevate the customer experience. Consider adding questions about where they heard about your product or program first, what their ultimate goals are, and if there are any other questions they have about features or aspects of your program. Over time, you can collect feedback through mini-surveys to inform your marketing campaigns, product roadmap, business goals, and create a more personalized experience for your customers.
Analyze The Entire Customer Sales Cycle
The customer sales cycle is characterized by several steps that are completed before customers are ready to purchase or commit to a final offer. The process starts with an awareness phase, where the customer is aware of what they need but doesn’t know which product suits them best. The next step in their journey is the evaluation phase, where the customer researches the different options available and decides which one is best for them. Once the customer has made a decision, the sales cycle goes into the final step, the purchase phase, where the customer finalizes their decision and purchases the product or enrolls in the program.
In the past, marketers had a fairly straightforward strategy for acquiring new customers. You may have previously created an organic marketing approach – relying on social networking, referrals, or Facebook groups or Instagram direct messaging. You may have created a sales funnel like a lead magnet or sales webinar. Or, perhaps you’ve already invested in paid marketing campaigns on Facebook, Linkedin, Youtube, or Google to drive traffic and increase leads and sales. Whatever your marketing approach, you’d hope that those who purchase would become repeat customers. Yet in today’s digital world of on-demand services delivered by remote providers, customers are constantly on the search for innovative alternatives. To improve customer retention, the focus should be on improving customer engagement to see progress towards their goal towards implementing and using your product or program.
Free Training: Activate Your Customer Success Cycle & Increase your Monthly Recurring Revenue
Learn how to increase profitability without worrying about increasing customer acquisition costs (CAC).
In Conclusion
In conclusion, customer success strategies are necessary for all businesses, including small ones. Helping your customer achieve their ultimate goal through your course, program, or product is ultimately the best way to improve customer loyalty and retention. In this way, not only will they feel valued and appreciated for purchasing from you but they’ll also be more likely to tell their friends about the experience! Are you looking for 1:1 support and help to map out your customer success strategy? Join me inside of the Client Success Activator Program!
