Nowadays companies have been implementing the CRM strategy to improve the sales of a product. However, for SaaS businesses, selling is not the end of a story. It is imperative to maintain customer relationships and retain subscribers. A constant rise in churn rate can jeopardize the future of a business operating on the recurring revenue model. A SaaS company with an increasing attrition rate often misses out on a key component of customer success.
We are aware that success in the modern business world is dependent on “relationships”. Businesses often get confused while trying to figure the best software for maintaining customer relationships. It can surely get tricky when a solution like CRM and Customer Success Platform that appear similar on the surface.
While both the tools are focused on customer-centricity, they provide different functionalities to help a business evolve.
Let us dig deeper into both software to understand which can be a better investment for your company.
What is CRM software?
The popular abbreviation – CRM stands for “Customer Relationship Management”. It is a tool that helps businesses in nurturing relationships with potential buyers and converting them into paid customers. It provides a unified view of customer data and assists organizations in every step of the sales process. With the help of this useful sales tool, companies can manage leads, track customer progress, improve sales performance, streamline processes, and manage opportunities.
Customer Success Platform helps businesses of various sizes in improving customer engagement and delivering service that complies with the client needs, thereby ensuring customer satisfaction and better retention. It provides a visual representation of customer relationship hierarchy for providing delightful experiences to increase Customer Lifetime Value. With intelligent customer success software, companies can track customer behavior, get 360-degree customer view, automate workflows and scale customer success process.
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Investing in an all-in-one solution
A CRM merely focuses on the transactional stage of a customer relationship. It is loaded with a plethora of benefits but lacks the necessary features that a SaaS business needs to nurture long-term growth. On the other hand, a Customer Success Platform focuses on the entire relationship, from pre to post-sales. It gives customers more reasons to return and stay with a company. This makes the Customer Success Platform a valuable tool for subscription businesses.
Below are the benefits of investing in an all-in-one solution like a Customer Success Platform:
Increases loyalty and improves retention
The customers that trust a service, are more likely to return and stay loyal to the company. A Customer Success Platform helps in engaging, maintaining relationships, and delivering a good buying experience to ensure that the users stay for long. It is a smart way to provide the utmost customer satisfaction for preventing customers from churning.
Even customers do not prefer investing their time and efforts in purchasing and learning a new solution. So, they stay committed to a company, provided their requirements are met continuously. Moreover, long-term customers often share their positive experiences with others bringing in more users.
Spot risk before its too late
Mitigating risk in real-time can help reduce the attrition rate. With the help of the best Customer Success Platform, it is possible to identify the potential problems that could propel the customers to abandon the service. Predictive insights provide a heads-up to fine-tune the strategies for preventing any lucrative opportunity from slipping through the crack. With a Customer Success Platform centralized data repository, it becomes easier to track customer behavior and spot alarming patterns that would affect the customer relationship.
Create surveys and analyse feedback
SaaS software needs constant upgradation to maintain a strong foothold in the market and meet the changing demands of the customers. The best way to find the glitches in software is through customer feedback. Creating surveys for feedback becomes an effortless task with customer success software. An effective survey campaign can help in measuring the satisfactory level of the user. Moreover, the best Customer Success Platform even supports automated reminders to the users that did not respond.
Help target the right customers
There is no point in casting a net wide and selling a service to everyone. It will result in a wastage of time, money, and effort. To deliver the optimum value it is pivotal to identify the right buyers for the product. The best way to go about this is by building a buyer persona (ideal buyer). Thankfully, a Customer Success Platform has all the information streamlined which helps in identifying the traits and buying behavior of satisfied customers to build an ideal buyer profile for targeting the right buyers.
Seamless onboarding experience
Onboarding is a phase where capturing the interest of the user is of paramount importance. Especially if they are switching from another platform. A Customer Success Platform helps speed up the onboarding process. Most Customer Success Platforms offer onboarding playbook and timely support, making adapting and using the service a hassle-free process for the user.
Monitor account health
Closing a big account isn’t an easy task. Therefore, it is important to keep an eye on high-value accounts. You can easily monitor the health of your accounts through health scores in a Customer Success Platform and save the ones that have high possibilities of churning.
To conclude
The bottom line of a business is linked with the success of the customer. If the customer is able to grow with the service you provide, they will choose you repeatedly over the competitors. So, it is important to provide an experience that they will remember. The market is filled with tools that can help you in capturing, converting, and retaining customers. A CRM is an effective tool to convert a deal into sales. However, a company operating on a recurring revenue model needs a more powerful tool like the Customer Success Platform. Such a tool helps in managing the customer lifecycle and even decreases the chances of losing a customer. SmartKarrot is one such platform that can help you in enhancing customer experience and increasing the success rate.
Ask for a free demo to explore how SmartKarrot can help your business.
Anshi has over 12 years of experience in demand generation, digital marketing, and managing global teams. In her prior role as head of marketing operations for a high growth US healthcare tech organization she transformed marketing from cost to revenue center.
Published September 02, 2021, Updated May 22, 2024
