It is hard to acquire new customers and that is a known fact. To ensure that customers are retained, they need to like the product and be loyal to it. And the latest buzzword is product-led growth. Product-led growth is one where the key growth facilitator is the product itself. This means a shift to a product-led strategy leads to customer success. Customer success strategies are necessary for company growth. The key to product-led growth is by getting customers to use the product consistently. In this article, you will know-
- How product-led growth is important for customer success
- How customer success strategies and product-led growth work together
What is Product-led Customer Success and its Importance
The most important way product-led success is different is in how the customer’s view of the product takes center stage. Product-led customer success is based on monitoring user data, engagement, behavior and customer health. There are multiple in-app metrics that are essential for product-led growth. To boost conversion rates, it is important to improve retention and focus on product improvement. Product-led customer success is when data tells us how customers feel about our product. It is not based on guessing or doubts.
The three pillars of product-led customer success
To set up a product-led customer success model, you need to base it on three pillars.
- Defined user journeys and clear product feature adoption flows
- User segments differentiated like for example- account /product based
- Be able to reach customers and educate them
Let us see each one in detail to understand customer success for product-led growth.
Pillar 1: User Journey defining and feature adoption flows
The major factor in this part is scalability so you will know where exactly your customer is stuck. You will be able to create feature adoption flows, user onboarding, and user journey. This is when the aha moment is mentioned so that user feels the value of the product. So when you understand how the product works based on in-app experiences, you can alter your customer success strategy accordingly. This is based on a good user onboarding which goes beyond educating the customer on the basics.
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Pillar 2: User Segmentation
You can help someone use the product better if they are segmented by some pre-decided factors. The two methods of segmenting users include in-app segmentation and account-based user segmentation. So having a helpful onboarding flow and a set of valuable queries will help segment users. When you segment users, you can achieve a better product-market fit. Some features of segmentation include company size, type of clients, lifetime activation status, and freemium clients.
Pillar 3: Proactive Outreach and Education
Reaching your customers when they need you is very important. If your customer has many doubts about the product, you need to have fast and helpful outreach. Proactively reaching out to customers and helping them understand the product better is important for product-led customer success.
Why is Product-led Growth essential for Customer Success?
If you want customers to succeed, you need to offer a great product experience. Product-led growth is when you focus on making customers advocates of the product and happy. Here are some reasons why product-led growth is essential for customer success.
- Product-led customer success streamlines the renewal process
- Lesser churn occurs when customers understand the product potential
- Drives revenue with increased product offerings such as upselling and cross-selling.
Customer Success for Product-led Growth
Till now, we have seen how product-led growth is essential for customer success. Now, we will see how customer success is important for product-led growth. When customer succeed, it is obvious that the product has also succeeded. Product success is directly related to customer success. While customer success is all about ensuring that customers are satisfied and happy with the company, product success is all about ensuring customers are satisfied enough to become product advocates. To ensure that product growth happens around customer success, it is necessary to keep some pointers in mind.
- Deliver value by putting the product first.
- Put customer success before sales
- Personalise wherever possible
- Invest in product data
- Design keeping the user in mind
- Foster communication among teams: sales, marketing, product, and customer success
| Customer Success | Customer Success through Product-led Growth |
| Locate customer issues or pain points | Find users who will be benefitted with your product and a pain point you can solve |
| Promise the ROI and ensure you solve it | Let customers do a trial or go freemium; let them use the product and check if it fits their requirement |
| Sign the contract | Ensure their feedback is counted |
| Show customers how the product works | Sign the contract |
Measuring Customer Success for Product-Led growth is necessary and some key metrics can help with that. Customer experience is pivotal to any company for growth. This is what can be altered with product success. Having product data can help show roadblocks, product delights, ensure team changes, and adopt a customer-centric approach. Product engagement can now be mapped with some product-led growth metrics which will help analyse customer success. One thing to keep in mind is that customer success is not your product. You can enforce customer success by telling customers about product launches, new features, training them on new products, and more. So, to get your customer success aligned with product experience, you need to align marketing, sales, product, and customer success teams. Having a cross-functional team will reduce churn rates, establish a feedback loop, and offer a stellar customer experience.
Bottom Line
Briefly speaking, customer success for product-led growth is a scalable way of growing. Customer education is another great way to ensure that customers understand the product and are successful. Revise your business models and product-led growth metrics often to supplement marketing KPIs and business growth. Make sure it is a customer-centric approach and gives importance to the customer lifecycle. Ensure that you have a feedback loop in place to increase chances of better product improvements. Through this, you can ensure that customer advocacy increases and there is a decrease in churn levels.
Kruthan Appanna is a Customer Success Analyst with 5 years of experience. Passionate about leveraging data-driven insights to drive customer satisfaction and retention. Skilled in building strong client relationships and providing strategic solutions.
Published April 08, 2021, Updated June 07, 2023
