The SaaS industry has exploded in the past few years. This is because the benefits of having a SaaS product are legion. They are cost-effective, scalable, secure, flexible, and simple. Also, they provide companies with a steady revenue stream every month. This has led to both individuals and organizations becoming customers of SaaS companies. The demand for SaaS applications just keeps on growing, making the measuring of customer journey touchpoints more important than ever.
The entire SaaS market is expected to be worth an astonishing $132 billion at the end of 2020. Additionally, Cisco has conducted a study that indicates nearly three out of four organizations will run purely on SaaS products at the end of 2020.
In this article, we will go over the importance of mapping out the customer journey and measuring touchpoints in customer journey, to ensure your SaaS product is one that will be useful to all your customers. Touchpoints are a moment where customers come into contact with, or get exposed to, your product or brand in some way. This usually occurs in the form of an ad, social media post, or email they see. To measure customer journey touchpoints, you should be involved in mapping the customer journey.
Identify the Customer
The first step in the entire process is to identify who your customer is. Who is going to be using your product? This will require creating a buyer persona, which will include any relevant identifying information. The buyer persona should also include their needs and intentions for using your product. What goals do they want to achieve with the help of your product? What challenges will they potentially face?
Identify a Problem to Be Solved
Your customers will be using your product because they want to make some aspect of their lives, or business, easier. You should understand what the problems they are looking to be solved are. Put yourself in a customer’s shoes and identify a pain point.
Identify Customer Journey Touchpoints
It is important to identify those moments of interaction a customer has with your product. You want to know when they engage with it or your brand. These have the power to create a lasting impression on customers. This is why all potential touchpoints in customer journey should be clear when it comes to explaining how your SaaS product will solve a problem they have.
Ensure Touchpoint Interactions Are Enjoyable
When customers are in the interaction phase of their customer journey, you want to make sure it is as painless as possible for them to interact. This means easily interacting with both your brand and employees. A dedicated team that can provide outreach to customers in this phase of their journey can be very helpful. They will have the ability to enhance a customer’s experience with your brand, due to several engagement opportunities possible. If a customer is having any issues, they should be logged, reported, and examined.
Spur Customer Engagement
Towards the end of the customer journey to buying your product, you will have to compel them to engage with your brand. They will do so when they understand what value and benefit your product could provide them. Additionally, the customer should understand what they will be missing out on if they make a decision to stop engaging with your brand. They will match up the advantages and disadvantages of becoming a paying customer, after which they will make a well thought out decision.
A Deeper Understanding of Identifying and Measuring Touchpoints
Let’s good a little deeper into customer journey touchpoints.
You should, of course, first understand who your target customer is, which you will know after developing a customer persona. You will have identified what is their primary need or problem that can be solved with your product. Solving the pain point will ensure you gain and retain the customer.
Select a touchpoint where a customer is getting exposed to your brand. Identify engagement metrics with that touchpoint to see how effective it is at engaging other customers. The more effective it is, the more replicable that touchpoint becomes. You can infer that you will receive similar results when you use it as a model for future touchpoints. This could be a well-crafted social media post that gets plenty of likes, shares, and comments.
A successful touchpoint can lead to increased interactions with your brand. The customer may look further into your product and get a better understanding of it and how it works. Their engagement will lead to them assessing whether your product can fulfill a need they have, for their own individual lives or their organization. When they like what they find, they are likely to share your content with others, which expands the reach of your touchpoint. This provides new opportunities to engage with new customers. This is why measuring which of your touchpoints are working well is essential.
The customer journey should be a simple, pleasant, and different one. Make your content easy to share with others. This usually involves placing social media share buttons somewhere alongside your content. When your content engages your customers and provides them with value, it will be more likely to enjoy increased engagement, which exposes it to more potential customers.
Wrapping Up
SaaS companies should ensure they create shareable content that engages customers, acting as touchpoints that can be measured to see how effective they are. You will be able to replicate successful touchpoints and use them as blueprints for additional touchpoints elsewhere. Ultimately, you will enjoy more engagement with potential customers, which will turn into more paying customers for your subscription-based products.
When you have mapped out the customer journey, from the moment you create a customer persona to the moment a customer buys your product, you have taken the steps necessary to increase your revenues and grow your business. Measuring touchpoints in customer journey is vital to understanding what attracts people the most to your brand and product.
Rohan has over 11 years of experience in client services, marketing and hospitality field. Previously, he was head of digital marketing for a hi-tech mobile application. Rohan is driven by new challenges and the possibility of making an impact on individuals and businesses.
Published June 30, 2020, Updated December 30, 2020
