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.

Tags: customer engagement, expansion stage, product management process

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