How to support customers before they think it’s time for a change

This post is part of the B2B Retention Handbook series. To explore more challenges and solutions, check out the series here.

This is where the full customer journey becomes clear. When the experience is lacking in various places, it’s natural that your customers begin to think that there could be something better out there. 

At Klearly, we think about revenue as a full team sport. Product, Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success have to work together to keep customer needs at the center of their work. This strategy also allows some teams to pick up the slack when others are struggling with a problem. A customer might not take on the cost of switching to a new product if they’re getting value from the brand or relationship even while they work through product improvements or vice versa.

Here are some methods to prioritize customer satisfaction and support users through everything that might arise.

Outline

• Reasons
• Solutions
• Bonus: Can you truly claim that your company is customer-centric and data-centric?

Reasons

This is a fundamental problem that should never have arisen. Customers are not happy with your product and service, or they don’t think the value you provide is worth the cost, and they are looking at alternatives. 

There could be multiple reasons for this discontent and early signs of churn.

• Onboarding was viewed as ineffective or inadequate (see Your onboarding is more a tour than a tutorial).
• Your competitor has done a better job of marketing to your customer after the sale.
• Your customer reads recent reviews that rank your competitor ahead of you in important categories.
• Your customer feels that you have not delivered on your promises (see You don't (or can't) deliver on your promises). 
• Your customer service is slow, generic, and ineffective (see Your response to customer questions is slow and ineffective).
• In general, you aren’t paying enough attention to your customer’s needs and goals (see Your customers aren't achieving their desired goals and outcomes).

Solutions

1. Focus on building a trusted relationship with each customer from your first efforts at brand awareness through the entire customer journey - 6 Proven Strategies to Reduce Churn (With Real Examples) | Baremetrics
2. Make sure that you communicate consistent messages that solve for your customers and align with their goals - Retention Marketing from the Inbox to the Mailbox | Lob
3. Create a customer-centric culture throughout your company. Make every touch with customers professional, helpful, and human. Train your people to be empathetic and responsible for always responding quickly and effectively to customer questions and requests. - How to Build a Culture of Customer Centricity in Your Organization | Hiver
4. Gather feedback from customers and use it to evolve and innovate your product in alignment with their needs and desires. Measure and align your Customer Success team’s efforts with actual customer success in achieving their goals. - The customer feedback guide: analyzing and collecting customer feedback (and using it to grow) | Hotjar
5. Pay attention to changes in utilization and engagement. Maintain a consistent flow of helpful ideas, tips, and features. - What Is User Engagement? – The Ultimate Guide | CodeFuel

Bonus: Can you truly claim that your company is customer-centric and data-centric?

A better question might be, how can any B2B SaaS company not be both customer-centric and data-centric these days? What separates leaders and laggards is the extent to which a company embraces these fundamental approaches to business. Customer centricity implies that everything you do, from sales and marketing to product development and customer service, has the goal of satisfying customers and building customer loyalty. That means that everyone in your organization needs to be aware of and sensitive to what’s happening with the customer at any given moment. They can only do that well if everyone is aware of customer goals, customer data, and customer feedback. 

That’s where data centricity and Klearly come into play. Bringing together customer data from a variety of sources and making key insights available across the organization in real-time is how you can connect the dots and align your teams on helping customers achieve their goals. Klearly is designed to do just that.

Learn more

Back to B2B Retention Handbook →