The crucial role of customer experiences in boosting retention

In the age of the subscription economy, customer acquisition is no longer enough for SaaS companies. Customers are fickle and willing to switch to a rival if they are not happy with a product or service.

Research shows that acquiring new customers costs five times more than retaining existing ones. So, customer retention is an important business objective to prioritize. In fact, forward-thinking organizations are already moving to a mindset focused on customer retention.

One of the best ways to boost retention is by focusing on improving customer experiences. CloudShare’s latest eBook Five steps for customer retention success explores this topic in greater detail and provides 5 practical steps to follow.

However, in this blog we will explain why delivering exceptional customer experiences can be a substantial boost not just for retention but for your business’s bottom line.

Customer experience is now the business differentiator

A survey carried out by Salesforce found that 67% of people believe that their standard for “good experiences” is currently much higher than ever before. People expect to be able to do almost anything online or on the phones – including completing complex transactions, and tasks.

When it comes to software companies looking to improve retention every interaction with a customer must be as effort-free and value-adding as possible. This means delivering exceptional software experiences at every point in the customer journey.

Value enhancement

A report by Gartner states that one of the main ways to maintain customer loyalty is to help customers gain more value from your software. Known as “value enhancement”, the idea is that customers can get more value from your product if they know how to use it to achieve their goals. The goal, therefore, is to identify opportunities and then actively deliver experiences that enhance the value of your product in your customer’s eyes. You want to create hyper-engaged, enthusiastic, “super-users”.

Gartner’s research highlighted the appeal of this. 82% of customers choose to stay with a company because of value enhancement. Therefore, positive customer experiences are not just positive for customers but will have a meaningful and tangible impact on the bottom line.

Enhanced potential

The report also found that only 15% of customer interactions currently produce value enhancement. Therefore, there is an enormous opportunity to deliver exceptional experiences across the entire customer journey, at every touchpoint and during every interaction. This way, the potential for improved outcomes is vast – a truly huge untapped resource to exploit.

You need the right technology

Technology is key in facilitating the kinds of exceptional experiences you want to offer. The platform you choose can make all the difference. An all-in-one enterprise-grade platform that can be used for demos, proofs of concept (POCs), and virtual training is a must. This way you can provide consistent and unified experiences at every interaction of the customer journey. Your solution should include the following features and capabilities:

• Virtual labs that simulate any environment and can be orchestrated in minutes
• Modern user experiences with in-app video and seamless integration
• Hands-on exploration and education that creates power users and loyal customers
• Consistent, unified, and joined up experiences
• Fully customizable training experiences for instructors leading customer education programs
• Capabilities for engaging demos, POCs, and virtual training across the entire customer journey
• The ability to scale up immersive and interactive software experiences to an almost unlimited number of users
• Analytics to track, monitor, and gain insights over user behavior for the entire customer lifecycle

Many technology vendors focus on a single-use case, for instance, POCs at the presales stage. Their solutions may work perfectly well for those interactions, but won’t help you with other touchpoints on the customer journey such as ongoing education. This lack of consistent and unified experiences can be difficult for both customer and your employees.

Similarly, multi-cloud solutions are also hard to come by. These days, most business use a variety of cloud providers across their IT environments. To deliver the level of experiences required, an all-in-one, multi-cloud, multi-purpose solution is needed.

Software experiences that stick

If you choose the right customer education platform, you can achieve customer success retention rates that other companies can only dream of. Experiences are now the business differentiator – and the next-generation of business acceleration tools are here to help you.

For practical steps to deliver better experiences from pre-sales and purchase to onboarding and ongoing customer education, read our eBook: Five steps for customer retention success. We’ll explore these vital steps:

1. Prioritize experiences
2. Showcase long-term value during pre-sales and purchase
3. Make onboarding count with unified, consistent experiences
4. Bring engagement tools into your training program
5. Choose the right technology platform

When you find the right technology, you can radically improve customer retention and discover new ways to blast away from the competition and boost the bottom line.

To learn more about how to improve client experiences and boost customer success retention, get in contact with the CloudShare team today.