During the expansion stage, so much of building a business focuses on acquiring customers.
In order to expand, after all, companies should continue to grow sales and revenue. One obvious way to accomplish this is to continually find and acquire new customers.
But the one point that’s sometimes lost in that course of action is an equally significant need to keep those new customers loyal and happy. That’s especially important for expansion stage software companies, whose industry is often convoluted by lookalikes and wannabes in a quite transparent web environment.
For those companies, it doesn’t matter whether their enterprise model is based mostly on three-year acquisitions or a SaaS offering with month-to-month contracts. It’s all about customer service and an attitude that will keep your clients coming back for more.
Customer service is an important and necessary component of every business’ success. This is why OpenView decided to hold a Customer Service Forum with Bill Price, author of The Best Service is No Service, to produce a 90-day plan of attack for improving the client experience.
My colleague Firas Raouf compiled much more regarding Price’s philosophy. The basic synopsis is that customer service should entail a proactive attitude rather than a reactive one. If you listen to your customers and work to solve your product’s problems before your customers come to you for solutions, you may not need to really implement the traditional idea of customer service.
It normally requires company-wide accountability and shared responsibility to accomplish that, but the reward is content customers that will stay with your company for years to come. Here are a few recommendations to keep in mind.
Be a problem solver
Your customers want to know that you’ll be there to help them with any problems that may arise. If you are an active problem solver, who will work with clients until they’re definitely happy with the outcome, a ripple effect will occur and this will create a sound sense of confidence within your customer base.
Keep in touch
Send targeted and relevant letters and e-mails to customers to keep them engaged and aware. They need to know that you care about their business and it’s a wonderful way to gauge any potential troubles that may come up with your product. OpenView marketing analyst Amanda Maksymiw created a wonderful blog post on how to develop your own company newsletter from a blog. A newsletter can be a wonderful way to access prospective customers, but it’s also a great way to keep your existing customers updated on the progress of what you are doing.
Offer renewal discounts
One simple way to your existing customers’ hearts is to provide them means to save money. With renewal discounts, you help them to save a buck and give your business a boost in cash flow. For example, with a yearly subscription model, offer customers the opportunity to pay $1,000 up front for their renewal, rather than $1,200 over 1 years time at a $100 ASP.
Continually Innovate
Soliciting and utilizing customer feedback via the product management process is crucial. With that feedback, you can continue to iterate on your product offering and then your users will know that you’re listening to their suggestions. That customer engagement builds trust and leads to a longer term relationship.
Price’s book goes into far greater detail regarding the need for outstanding proactive customer service so it can be eliminated altogether. Customer service shouldn’t be labor intensive. And if you’re able to keep your current customers loyal and happy, it might even lead to helping you acquire the new customers that all expansion stage companies desire.
Daniel Killeen is an Associate at OpenView responsible for the identification and analysis of investment opportunities.