Customer Training: A Key B2B SaaS Retention Strategy

In 2022, McKinsey surveyed customer care departments of various companies. The participants of the survey reported that in the coming 12-24 months, the strategic focus of companies is going to train the best people who can offer customers the best experience while reducing call volumes.

So, the KPIs like customer retention rate, churn rate, and churn deflection rate are the points of focus for SaaS companies. However, in this article, we will discuss what could be the best strategy to retain your customers in the coming days.

If you have a robust SaaS product, your pricing strategy is competitive enough, and you are reaching out to the right customer base, but still fail to achieve sales and revenue targets, then customer education is mission-critical for you.

The concept of a solid customer education strategy is that your customer base knows how to use your SaaS product for the benefit of their business. And if you succeed in doing this, then you will not only increase the B2B customer retention rate but also it will be a lot easier to get more customers.

Also Read: Building the Customer Success For Different Subscription Businesses & Finding Factors That Help In Retaining It

What Are Your Customer Education Goals?

Before you kickstart anything, there are some targets in your mind. First, you need to jot down all targets that you want to achieve with your customer education strategy. Sometimes, businesses set unreal targets regarding customer education. We suggest you avoid such an impractical approach. Customer education indeed is one of the B2B customer retention best practices, but you cannot expect:

• Immediate results
• Zero customer support request
• Complete mastery to use the SaaS product

Customer education is a powerful tool for driving customer satisfaction and reducing support costs. However, it’s important to manage your expectations about what it can realistically achieve. Set your customer education goals, but keep them practical and real.

The Customer Education Strategy for Your SaaS Business

Coming towards how to craft an education strategy for your SaaS business, first, you need to segment customers based on their tech knowledge.

1. Customer Segmentation

Not all customers are on the same level when it comes to technical knowledge. Sometimes, the most experienced and trained customers face difficulties at the basic level. So, while segmenting your customers to base your customer education strategy, you need to be cautious.

So, technically, here you will need to craft learners’ personas. A learner persona will be a fictional representation of learners in your customer education program. The parameters to define these learners’ personas will depend on your SaaS subscription business. Thereafter, you will tailor the content as per your learner persona and segmented customers.

2. Customer Learning Paths

When you are done with customer segmentation and learner personas, the next step is to set customer learning paths. Setting a learning path is important because not all customers, the content that you have set will not be equally comprehensible for all customers.

Possibly, you will need to improvise the learning path for every new customer depending on the complexity of your SaaS product.

3. Interviews with Sales & Support Teams

Those who have direct interaction with your customers are customer sales representatives. They are equipped with knowledge about customer psyche and their issues. The only thing is to conduct communication sessions with sales and support teams.

Extract the issues that most customers face. Then you can simply provide your customers with a manual where basic queries and FAQs are addressed.

4. Identify Metrics That Customer Education Will Impact

Now, you need to identify all those metrics or KPIs that will accept the most impact of customer education strategy. They include the following:

Product Adoption Rate

The improvement in the product adoption rate is the biggest indication of the success of the customer education strategy. When customers know your product, they actively use it. Not only that but they also convince others in the market to come on board. And that’s how an educated and tech-savvy customer base benefits the SaaS business.

Customer Churn Rate

The next metric that is most affected by customer education strategy is the customer churn rate. Many SaaS customers cancel their subscriptions when they do not know how to use the product for the benefit of the business. So, the churn rate is one of the most important KPIs to monitor while strategizing for customer education.

Net Promoter Score

By analyzing your NPS (Net Promoter Score) results, you can identify the specific areas of your product or service that are pleasing customers and those that are not. This can help you to continuously improve your educational content and ensure that it is effectively addressing the needs and concerns of your audience.

5. Customer Education Software & Applications

Almost all SaaS businesses offer their manuals, contact support teams, chatbots, and customer care representatives to help customers resolve their queries and issues. However, we suggest you go the extra mile. You can either have your own customer education application or integrate one. There are various customer education platforms that you can easily integrate with your SaaS product.

6. Educate Customers throughout the Custome Lifecycle

Another important thing that must be part of your customer education strategy is the education of the customers is a continuous process. You cannot think of conducting one-on-one sessions and training enough for the rest of the customer journey. You need to be there for the customer throughout their journey. Keep educating your customers as it will also improve your customer engagement which in the end improves the retention rate.

Also Read: Customer Retention Report 2022 with SubscriptionFlow

In conclusion, whenever you think of formulating a customer retention strategy, customer education should be at the top of the list in 2023. Realizing the importance of customer education, SubscriptionFlow has integrated chatbots, all-time available support representatives, and training sessions with its customers. And it has helped significantly in improving our B2B customer retention strategy as well as the retention rate.

If you look for the best subscription management platform that will help you boost B2B customer retention, then you need to schedule a demo for SubscriptionFlow now.