How to Reduce SaaS Churn?

If you’ve just started to acquire your very first customers in your SaaS business, then churn may not be a big deal for you. But as you get over a thousand customers, churn becomes vital. And gradually it can be a big hurdle in the success of your business.

A high churn rate can put an impact on your company valuation, business growth, and the overall perception of customer satisfaction.

So where does the problem rely on?

High-growth expected SaaS startups think they have figured out every aspect. The path seems clear until churn begins to smack them in the face.

Suddenly, customers begin canceling and leaving at a faster rate than expected. Who is responsible for such flaws? No one will take the blame and that is obvious.

Sales team starts blaming the product team for not delivering whereas product teams blame customer success for not onboarding. Gradually marketing starts to worry about company reputation and growth. This is a common scenario.  

I’ve gone through some survey and what I found is extremely shocking. Here’s the list;

• Bessemer Venture Partners says an acceptable churn rate is in the 5 – 7% range ANNUALLY, depending upon whether you measure customers or revenue.
• Roughly 70% of SaaS companies in their survey had annual churn in the < 10% range, with 75% of those at 5% or under.
• 30% of SaaS providers surveyed have an unacceptable level of churn.

Why do customers leave?

There could be either number of reasons whereas the customer decides to hit that “CANCEL” button, and here are a few of the most common:

They’ve faced a poor customer service experience. That means they might have tried to find help for something and couldn’t get what they wanted.

• They might have had a poor onboarding experience and couldn’t achieve what they were expecting.
• They tried your software and it wasn’t meant for them.
• Your software might cost them a lot

Sometimes there’s no indication that churn is coming as customer cancels without raising any issues. However, there are some signs even before that customer cancels.

Common signs of churn-

• Payment issues: These include late or missing payments; credit card hasn’t been updated, and so on.
• Disengagement with your product: it means the customer doesn’t seem to be engaged with your product. it might include signs like fewer logins, increased bounce rates, etc.
• More complaints: When customers face numerous difficulties or bugs to use your product, they start raising issues and complain against it. This is the biggest sign that your customer is unhappy with your product or services.

Read the main article on Andolasoft Blog.

6 Basic & Easy Tips for Never Losing your SaaS Customers

It’s not at all cool to lose customers especially for your SaaS product. You lose customers; you lose money – that’s how straight it is.

If I speak in the language of SaaS (Software as a Service), we term it as Churn rate. A churn rate can be defined as “the annual percentage rate at which customers stop subscribing to a service at a specific time-period.”

Alan Gleeson is a B2B and Tech Marketing Consultant. Based in London. Passion for #SaaS.
Co-Founder of saasresources.com

With lots of research and following SaaS competitor’s activities, you have made your SaaS application for users like me to Sign Up for a particular problem to be solved like a Project Management Tool, Customer Relationship Management Tool, and Helpdesk Management Tool and so on. 

You desperately need users like me to sign up to your app and curved with next steps but you are confused that;

• I am not doing any further actions which can solve both of our problems.
• Why is my conversion rate not the way I had planned!
• Why am I getting so much of ‘Cancel Subscription’ request!

The above are some of the most basic questions that come up to your mind to haunt you every single day.

I am sure you made-up everything which are easier for me to go with your offers like free trials, no credit card info, primary sales CTAs, cool videos and graphics but still I am not active on your app and there is no more improvement in users sign up. Why?

Have you ever think is your app or website providing right information which the SaaS users are looking for?

 “Customer success is simple ensuring that your customers achieve their desired outcome through their interaction with your company. That's it.”

Lincoln Murphy – Customer Success Consultant and Keynote Speaker 

After some research and analysis I found some important reasons why SaaS users are not interacting more and how you can you maximise your SaaS growth. Let’s have a look;

Reasons why users might not be interacting with your SaaS platform;

1.     Data Security Matters for everyone: When it comes to SaaS and cloud storage many of the SaaS users think the safety of their business data. More than 75% Americans don’t trust on cloud storage and they believe their personal data and files are in risk in the cloud.

As a SaaS marketing guy, you need to educate them about the security system and make them sure to purchase through right information, easy to understand content and documentation about security, virus, spam, email management and others.

2.     Recurring Pricing Subscription:  At the initial stage of your SaaS business, some users may not interested to adopt recurring pricing subscription on new products for long-term basis. More than 69% users are not interested in long-term commitment on SaaS plans.

Offer them simple and comfortable pricing packages with options to cancel the subscription at any moment as they please. Make them aware about the benefits of subscription model.

3.     Don’t have time and Knowledge: I am pretty sure not everyone has all the knowledge while adopting a new technology or new stuff and they take some time to adjust to the environment and system - this process kills their time and resource.

In that situation, you need to give an online demo about your SaaS application features and installation. You need to provide complete documentation about the app. Step-by-step video tutorial and eBooks are more helpful to convey users about your product or app. 

Read Full Article on Andolasoft Blog