The goal of any company is to ensure customers stick around and become loyal, and this is only possible with product success. Product success is necessary to ensure that your customers are receiving the value they signed up for from your product.

But what if your customers aren’t achieving it? This can lead to customers not reaching their desired outcome and a sharp decline in revenue, which is why it’s so crucial. In this guide, see what product success is, why customers aren’t achieving it, and its solutions.

What is Product Success?

Product success can be defined as the impact and value of your product with customers and is measured with metrics that define success. Product teams use information from these metrics to improve the product, implement better practices, and make strategic decisions. This will also allow companies to understand how the product works for different customer segments.

Reasons Why Your Customers Aren’t Achieving Product Success

There are various reasons why products fail with customers or customers can’t find value in some products. Below, we’ll discuss some of those reasons.

Inability to find product-market fit

Product-market fit is when there’s a market demand for your product. A bad product-market fit is where there’s little to no demand for your product. Your product needs to fill a need in the market because, without it, your customers won’t be able to get value from it.

Bad-fit customers

Even if your product does help your customers solve a problem, an excellent product-market fit doesn’t mean your product fits everyone. When there are no criteria for the customers you’re allowing to use your product, they can’t see its value because it was never created for their specific needs.

Customers don’t know how to use the product

Product abandonment is commonly seen during the earlier days and weeks after your customers have signed up for your product. After all, how can your customers be successful with your product if they don’t know how to use it?

Your product did not meet their expectations

This is a highly possible situation and typically occurs because of unrealistic expectations they obtained before they start using your product.

They cannot see the value

There are various reasons your customers can’t see the value in your product. For some customers, there’s a misalignment between what your product offers and what they need to solve. At the same time, others are expecting your product to fix their problem within an unrealistic time frame.

Lack of proactive customer success

If your customer isn’t satisfied with your product, they won’t stick around. And unfortunately, some CSMs aren’t aware that a customer isn’t reaching their desired outcome until it’s too late due to being more reactive than proactive.

Change management issues

If customers have established a process, they might not want to disrupt it with a new product, which can happen if there are change management issues.

How Can You Ensure Product Success for Your B2B SaaS Customers?

Customers face multiple challenges while trying to succeed with your product; here are some pointers to help them along the way.

Optimize onboarding strategy

Most customers who don’t know how to use your product didn’t go through efficient onboarding. And even if you have an onboarding strategy in place, your customers need a customer success manager to proactively help them get the most value from your product.

Help customers take charge with helpful resources

Every company needs to create helpful resources for their customers, like blogs, webinars, videos, etc. This resource center can help customers refer to these resources if they need help or guidance. You can even include product training for better understanding.

Drive change and adoption in a streamlined manner

Change management is crucial for customer success. You need to facilitate that change for customers with adequate resources and product value. Include testimonials and customer examples. Reaching out proactively to customers will also enhance and streamline the process.

Communicate with customers frequently

Communicating with customers through various touchpoints in their customer journey is pivotal. This communication includes emails, workshops, meetings, or video chats. You can set up designated calls with customers, and conferences are also a great way to disseminate product knowledge.

Ensure product and customer success team meetings

To ensure product success, you need to have product-customer connect sessions. These sessions can help your product team create a product that better serves your customer.

Choose a customer success software

Choosing a customer success solution for your B2B SaaS business is a great way to ensure product adoption. You can notice when product usage rates decrease, find patterns, and understand customer behavior more efficiently. Customers need to know that the product can solve their problems and deliver the results.

Conclusion

Customers need to achieve product success. These steps make it possible to work with customers and ensure product adoption occurs and customers see its value. Because ultimately, product success is the foundation for a lasting customer relationship.

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