3 Ways SaaS Companies Can Get Feedback From Their Customers

We’ve written a lot about the importance of putting your customers first and have explored plenty of growth hacking strategies that are being used by many successful SaaS businesses and startups. One common theme has been the importance of talking to your customers throughout every stage of their lifecycle.

We wrote about each lifecycle in a recent post called The SaaS Growth Hack You Weren’t Expecting and today we wanted to dig even further into this concept, and discuss some specific ways in which you can connect with your customers on a regular basis.

SaaS companies, in particular, have a unique opportunity when it comes to engaging with their customers because they have the ability to track pretty much every single click that’s happening within their platform.

Every click should be seen as an opportunity to understand the customer, understand their behaviors, and uncover what’s driving them to take certain actions and steps.

Here are 3 creative ways to get feedback from your customers at every stage of their lifecycle:

Track customers through onboarding and beyond

This is an easy one to explain – track more stuff! Your monitoring should start in the very beginning stages of onboarding, and continue as the user engages with your app.

Tracking every step throughout the onboarding process will quickly show you things like:

• How long does it actually take for a user to become successful for the first time?
• Where are customers running into trouble and requiring support to move forward?
• Which customers give up before becoming successful, and at which point do they throw in the towel?

Success gaps can be easily missed if we assume that just because someone continues to use the app, they are satisfied. If customers are regularly requiring customer support to get their desired results, it’s clear that there is an issue along the way. Plus, the longer it takes people to become successful, the greater the risk of losing them.

Tracking every stage of the onboarding process may not feel like “talking” to your customers, but it is. You’re getting their raw, organic feedback without them even realizing it. You can’t get better data than that!

When you’re tracking every single user behavior, it becomes easier to know when the right times to ask for specific feedback are.

For example, let’s say you’ve identified a page where you’re losing people – a lot of people. You could dive in to make a change – or – you could take this opportunity to ASK the customers what’s going wrong and what they’d like to see happen instead. This is taking a failure and turning it into an opportunity to fix the problem.

Build a social community around your product that prioritizes relationship-building

Creeping your customer’s movements and asking them for feedback when you see there’s a problem is an incredibly effective way to give your customers what they want. But, we can’t ignore the importance of the human element.

As a SaaS business, you’re looking for long-term relationships. You need people to subscribe, and stay with you for the long-haul. You know what that means? You need to also prioritize building relationships.

Creating a social community around your product is one of the best ways to stay engaged with your customers, and it can also turn into a great way to talk to them and get authentic, valuable feedback.

Having real conversations in your community will give you the ability to:

• Get feedback from happy, delighted customers and gain a better understanding of what’s working
• Connect with your users individually and directly
• Create a culture around your product or service
• Help people in real-time and publicly, for everyone to see

You can use options like Facebook groups or even tools like Slack to create your own personal community that is dedicated to helping like-minded people become successful with your product, engage with one another, and have fun. This community will serve as a direct line to your customers.

Those are just a few of the many ways in which SaaS companies can connect with their customers on a deeper level. While it’s essential to use technology to its full ability, we mustn’t forget the importance of human-to-human contact and relationship building. When you use both, the results might just blow your mind!