#1 Growth Hack for SaaS: Talk to your customers!

Talking with your customers sounds really simple, right? But in fact: it's not. Because talking with your customers isn't about saying "hey" when they sign up, or when they contact you for support, no, it's talking to them in EVERY. STAGE. OF. THEM. BEING. A. CUSTOMER. That sounds hard, huh? It is, but with the right framework and mindset, it doesn't have to be that hard and you will benefit from it like you never have seen before.

It's all about the Customer Experience (CX)

We've all been there: the support of a new product or service is great until you actually become a customer. Suddenly you're not that important anymore. A ton of SaaS businesses makes the same mistake over and over again. They are focusing too much on new customers instead of their existing ones. And the funny thing is: who is paying their paychecks again? Exactly: the existing customers.Lots of studies have shown that CX leads to revenue growth, decreases cost-to-acquire, and increases the customer lifetime value.So, why don't we focus more on talking with our existing customers? They are the ones who are already a fan. They want to help build the best product possible (like yourself!) and they are willing to give feedback. Valuable feedback. Feedback that could lead to a better product. Which leads to more customers. It's a simple 123 if you put it like this, huh?

“If you don't appreciate your customers, someone else will.” - Jason Langella

You don't have to drink a beer with your customers

No, talking to your customers doesn't have to be that personal, although it sounds fun, right? Let's say: if we are a customer of yours, you can always invite us for a beer ;). But, no, really, when we talk about "talking to your customers", we usually talk about a quick talk on the phone, via email or on your actual chat. But you could also implement periodic talks by taking surveys, or, talking to them on your feedback board.It's not only about getting feedback to build a better product. It's forming a relationship too. Bumping up that customer lifetime value. Letting them become your ambassadors and spread the word. There's so much value in just talking with a customer!

It doesn't stop after onboarding!

Talking to customers for your SaaS should be a permanent loop. Let us give you one example of our own. Periodic we'll send our customers this email:By sending out this email, we'll instantly show interest in our customer and this forms a bond over time. In the email we'll trigger them with a statistic about the results they are getting with our product, plus, we'll ask them if everything is ok and if we can do something for them.Let us show you:We almost always get great responses from our customers. Whether it's about a personal matter ("I'm on vacation right now, enjoying the views at the beach") or their business ("Yeah, we're growing like crazy! Just hired our 5th employee this month!") or about our product ("I love using Upvoty, but I would like to see a new feature that we could use to up our feedback game!"). Whatever answer we'll get: we always respond with full interest. I mean. This is our customer speaking to us. Do you have any idea how valuable this is? We do :).

Track your customer happiness

Talking to customers, however, won't always do the trick. Lots of customers don't like to talk to you directly about frictions and problems. It's important to make sure you always provide ways that they can speak up about their frustrations on their terms. A couple of things that are working for us:

• Website chat: you can use tools like Intercom, Drift or Crisp and let your customers start a chat on any given moment to talk with you when they are ready to talk.
• Support tickets: we provide a support ticket in our customer's dashboard. Here they can fill in every question they would like to ask us.
• Feedback board: on our feedback board, users can submit new feedback ideas or vote for existing ideas. This is perfect to make their wishes be known.
• Bug reports: nothing is more frustrating for a customer than a bug. Our bug report board is the perfect way for them to notify us about boards or vote on an existing bug they're experiencing too.

Finding the friction

Another good thing to ask for feedback and in a way "talk with your customer" is to let them engage with customer effort scores. Just a simple "How did we handle this" with the option to choose a smiley they can identify with is a perfect way to find frictions in, for example, your onboarding process.(Image by Usabilla)The perfect follow up on a smiley would be a small survey to learn more about the 'why'. Why did the user feel it was a terrible experience? Or, on the contrary, why do they love it? A perfect tool for this is Wootric.

It's all about talking, not telling

Like discussions in real-life: customer feedback is never just about the 'yes' or 'no'. It's all about the why. Talking with your customers will do just that: uncovering the why. And you need the why. Always!? PS: Sign up for our free e-book 'SaaS Growth Tactics' and learn how we managed to get over $1k MRR in our 1st year! ?