A year ago, I had no idea what SaaS was and how it could make you millions of dollars. Everything changed when I joined a SaaS company as a Content Writer. I was a part of the marketing team and there I got to experience the wonders of a SaaS product from up close. Today, I’ll share some of the best lessons I got to learn from that experience. You can use these tips to beautify your SaaS or any other business.
For anyone who still does not know what a SaaS company is, it is a business where you sell software as a service. Basically, you develop software that solves a problem or provides a solution and then offer it on a monthly or yearly subscription.
Take Zoom, for example, a software solution for remote meetings, conferences, and even educational classes. Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, Zoom is now one of the top SaaS products in 2021.
Anyway, SaaS benefits your business big time, but how? Here are the tricks.
Get down to the basics
This is going to save you a lot of effort and bring you so much better results. All you have to do is focus on the basic things about your software and make them flawless.
If you have an email automation software, make it rich with basic features like scheduling an email campaign, and importing and exporting contact lists.
Most SaaS companies lose track of what matters the most. They start developing out-of-the-box features in their software to impress their customers and stand out in the competition. But the truth is customers don’t even care about those exceptional and extraordinary features. All they want is to do the basic things with your software.
Your best shot at offering the best software solution is to make the basic functions powerful and flawless. Do not overwhelm the users with bizarre features.
Take customer feedback into account
No matter what industry or niche you are working in, your customers are the backbone of your business. If they are happy with your product or service, you have got nothing to worry about. If not, get to work, you have a lot to fix.
But how do you know if your software is actually working for your customers? You need to take their word for it.
Customer feedback can help you grow and build trust in your company. It’s nice to hear positive feedback from customers, but it’s the negative things they have to say about your software that really help you get better.
Use unhappy customers as your resources.
You don’t even have to do much to find their negative feedback, it will find you. Ask your customer support team, check online reviews, scroll through comments on your social media pages, you’ll see plenty of stuff to work on. Let’s get cooking!
Provide top-notch customer support
Excellent customer service is crucial for any type of business, especially SaaS. Since your product is a software, it is bound to have crashes and complaints. Your customer support team has to be there for the customers when things are not looking good with your software.
No product or service is perfect, and you cannot guarantee that yours is. But the problem with software glitches is that they are frustrating as hell. Even a simple loophole can cause serious data loss to your customers, so it’s natural for them to take it out on your support guys. For that reason, you need to make sure your customer support team is the best of the best.
Train your customer support guys to not only understand the problems of customers, but also solve them in minutes.
Be hungry for referrals
The last and most important lesson I have learned is that word-of-mouth marketing is the key to the growth of a SaaS business.
I was a part of the marketing team and we used to write engaging and valuable content for our customers, make product videos, conduct webinars, do email marketing, and so on. We did win leads with all those efforts, but none of it worked like word-of-mouth marketing of our customers.
Referrals are when your existing customers tell others about your product and bring you new customers.
You can gold plate all the good things about your software and post them everywhere, nobody would care. But you have one customer talking about it, and everyone will pay attention. That’s the power of happy customers. If you got some, make sure they do your service justice and bring you new leads.
Alright, these are my insights into running a successful SaaS company. I have not done it but I have seen a great man doing it, and I cannot end this post without crediting him. Usman Butt, the CEO of RepairDesk who started his SaaS company on a really small scale and built it into a brand in just a few years. Thanks for everything boss!