Customer success is a term we often hear when talking about SaaS (Software as a Service) businesses. For these companies, customer success is all about helping customers get the most out of their software and subscriptions. But here’s the thing: the principles of customer success aren't just for SaaS businesses. They apply to all kinds of companies, no matter what industry you're in—whether it's retail, healthcare, manufacturing, or e-commerce.
What is Customer Success for Non-SaaS Companies?
Defining Customer Success Beyond SaaS
Customer success in non-SaaS companies is all about the strategies and efforts a business puts in place to make sure its customers get the most out of its products or services. While SaaS companies focus on helping customers succeed with their software, non-SaaS companies have the same goal—ensuring customers enjoy a seamless experience and truly benefit from what the company offers, whether that’s physical products, services, or other business solutions.
In a non-SaaS environment, customer success takes on many forms. It can include things like:
Providing exceptional customer service to address any issues or questions quickly.
Offering personalized recommendations that align with each customer’s specific needs.
Building strong customer relationships to keep customers happy, satisfied, and loyal.
Ensuring that the entire customer journey, from purchase to post-purchase, is as smooth and fulfilling as possible.
The Importance of Customer Success for Non-SaaS Businesses
For non-SaaS companies, customer success is about so much more than just selling a product or service. It’s about creating long-term relationships with your customers, making sure they get the value they’re looking for, and turning them into repeat buyers—or better yet, advocates for your brand.
Here’s why customer success matters so much for non-SaaS companies:
Customer Retention: It’s more expensive to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one. By focusing on customer success, you can improve retention rates, which is vital for the long-term health of your business.
Brand Loyalty: When customers feel they’ve had a positive experience with your product or service, they’re more likely to return, leave positive reviews, and recommend your business to others. That loyalty is powerful.
Revenue Growth: Happy customers tend to buy from you again, try out other products or services you offer, and refer friends or family. This kind of customer behavior leads to steady revenue growth over time.
Competitive Advantage: In today’s crowded market, customer experience is what sets businesses apart. Having a strong customer success strategy can give you a clear edge over competitors who only focus on the transactional side of things.
Why Non-SaaS Companies Need to Prioritize Customer Success
Building Long-Term Relationships with Customers
In the world of non-SaaS companies, the customer journey doesn’t stop once the sale is made—it’s really just the beginning. Customer success is about keeping your customers engaged and making sure they’re happy with their purchase. Whether that’s by offering outstanding customer service or helping them get the most out of the product or service they’ve bought, it’s all about ensuring they feel supported after the sale.
When you focus on customer success, you're building trust and creating long-term relationships. Satisfied customers who experience real benefits from your product or service are more likely to stick around. This reduces churn and increases the likelihood of repeat business. Simply put, customer success helps turn one-time buyers into loyal advocates.
Aligning Customer Expectations and Business Outcomes
One of the key principles of customer success for non-SaaS companies is making sure your business goals align with your customer's expectations. When you really understand what a customer expects from your product or service, you’re in a much better position to meet those expectations and avoid any misunderstandings or disappointments.
It all starts with setting realistic expectations right from the beginning. Be clear about what your product or service can do—and just as importantly, what it can’t do. That transparency helps your customers understand the full picture. From there, regular check-ins and updates on how things are going can go a long way in keeping everyone on the same page and maintaining that alignment.
Customer Success and Revenue Growth
A solid customer success strategy can have a direct impact on revenue growth for non-SaaS businesses. When your customers are happy and their needs are being met, they’re more
likely to:
Return for more purchases: Happy customers are prime candidates for upselling or cross-selling, giving you the chance to offer them additional products or services.
Recommend your business to others: Word-of-mouth marketing is incredibly powerful, and satisfied customers are more likely to share their positive experiences with friends, family, and colleagues.
Engage with your brand more often: The more touchpoints you have with your customers, the higher their customer lifetime value (CLV) becomes, which ultimately boosts your bottom line.
Key Components of a Customer Success Strategy for Non-SaaS Companies
To implement customer success effectively, non-SaaS companies need to have a clear strategy in place. Without it, you're just winging it. Below, I’ve outlined the key components of a customer success plan that can help ensure you're setting your business up for success.
Building a Customer Success Team
Even though non-SaaS businesses might not need technical support teams the way SaaS companies do, it’s still crucial to have a dedicated customer success team. This team plays a key role in nurturing customer relationships, resolving any issues that come up, and ensuring customers are satisfied with their experience. They’re the ones who make sure your customers feel valued and supported every step of the way.
Who should be on the customer success team?
Customer Success Managers (CSMs): These are your main point of contact for customers. CSMs guide customers to success, making sure they’re getting the most out of your product or service.
Customer Support Representatives: These team members handle customer inquiries, troubleshoot problems, and ensure that customers are happy with their experience.
Product Experts: If your company offers a complex product, having specialists who can provide in-depth assistance is super helpful for addressing any technical challenges or questions.
Understanding Customer Needs and Expectations
Before you can create a customer success strategy that works, it’s important to really understand what your customers need. For non-SaaS companies, here are some great ways to gather insights:
Customer surveys: Sending out regular surveys is a simple but effective way to measure customer satisfaction and spot areas where you can improve.
Customer interviews: Having direct conversations with customers lets you dig deeper into their pain points, goals, and expectations, offering more personalized insights.
Support tickets and feedback: Looking at recurring issues in support tickets can help you identify common problems and see where there’s room to improve your product or service.
Developing Customer Onboarding Programs
Customer onboarding is often overlooked, but it’s one of the most important parts of the customer success journey. Getting off on the right foot is essential for setting your customers up for success with your business. A solid onboarding program should:
Welcome new customers: Start things off right by clearly outlining what customers can expect and highlighting the key benefits of your product or service.
Provide easy-to-follow instructions: Make sure your customers can easily understand how to use your product or service. Keep things simple and straightforward.
Offer support and resources: Give customers access to helpful resources like video tutorials, FAQs, or live chat support, so they know where to turn if they need help.
Proactive Customer Support and Engagement
In non-SaaS companies, customer success isn't just about answering questions or solving problems when they arise. It's about being proactive—engaging with your customers in a way that anticipates their needs and helps them achieve their goals before issues even come up. Proactive customer success means identifying potential challenges early and offering solutions to prevent them.
Here are a few key strategies that can help:
Personalized outreach: Make it a point to regularly check in with your customers. A quick personalized email, phone call, or message can go a long way in making customers feel valued and supported.
Proactive problem-solving: If a customer hits a roadblock, don't wait for the issue to escalate. Address it quickly by offering a solution, sharing a helpful guide, or even scheduling a meeting with a product expert to resolve things.
Customer education: Help your customers use your product to its fullest potential by providing ongoing training and resources. Whether it’s hosting webinars, creating tutorials, or building a knowledge base, the more you educate your customers, the more successful they’ll be.
How to Measure and Track Customer Success in Non-SaaS Companies
To make sure your customer success strategy is actually working, it's crucial to measure and track key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics. Keeping an eye on the right data helps you see if your customers are reaching their goals and highlights areas where you can improve. Without tracking these metrics, it’s hard to know what’s working and what needs attention. By staying on top of the numbers, you can ensure you're always moving in the right direction and continuously improving the customer experience.
Defining Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for Customer Success
For non-SaaS businesses, there are a few key KPIs you’ll want to track to measure the success of your customer strategy:
Customer Retention Rate: This is the percentage of customers who keep coming back over a certain period. A high retention rate is a great indicator that your customers are satisfied and see the value in what you offer.
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): This is usually measured through surveys after customer interactions, and it gives you a quick snapshot of how happy customers are with your product or service.
Net Promoter Score (NPS): NPS helps you gauge customer loyalty by asking how likely your customers are to recommend your business to others. It’s a solid metric for understanding overall satisfaction.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): CLV estimates how much revenue you can expect to earn from a customer throughout their entire relationship with your business. It helps you understand the long-term value each customer brings.
Customer Success Metrics and Analytics
To track these metrics effectively, non-SaaS businesses can lean on CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software and customer success platforms. These tools make it easy to centralize all your customer data in one place, helping you keep tabs on engagement, satisfaction, and retention in real-time. Some popular tools you might consider are Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zendesk. These platforms give you the insights you need to monitor your customers’ journeys and make data-driven decisions to keep them happy.
Collecting and Acting on Customer Feedback
Regular feedback is key to improving customer success. Whether it’s through surveys, interviews, or even social listening, gathering feedback gives you valuable insights that you can use to make real improvements. When you get feedback, it’s important to:
Analyze trends: Look for recurring patterns or issues in the feedback. This helps you identify what’s working and what needs attention.
Implement changes: Don’t just collect feedback—act on it! Address any concerns and make improvements to your product or service where needed.
Communicate improvements: Let your customers know that their feedback matters. Share the changes you've made based on their suggestions to show them that you truly value their input.
Best Practices for Scaling Customer Success in Non-SaaS Companies
As your non-SaaS business grows, scaling your customer success efforts can definitely get tricky. But with the right tools, strategies, and mindset, it’s absolutely possible to keep customer success front and center at every stage of growth. The key is to be adaptable and always look for ways to streamline processes, even as your customer base expands. That way, you’ll ensure your customers continue to feel supported, no matter how big your business gets.
Automation and Technology for Customer Success
Personalized customer success is super important, but as your business grows, scaling your efforts through automation and technology can really help you manage a larger customer base efficiently. Automation tools can be a game-changer for tasks like:
Onboarding: You can set up automated emails and tutorials to guide new customers through the process, so they get off to a great start.
Engagement: Automate reminders or check-in messages to keep in touch with customers and maintain that personal connection without manually reaching out each time.
Surveys and feedback: Use automated surveys to collect feedback after key interactions or purchases, making it easy to track customer satisfaction without extra work.
Creating Personalized Customer Experiences at Scale
While automation is a great way to scale, it’s important to remember not to lose that personal touch with your customers. Here are a few ways to keep those personalized experiences even as your business grows:
Segmentation: Group your customers based on things like behavior, preferences, or purchase history. This way, you can tailor your communication to each group, ensuring it feels relevant and specific to them.
Customer Journey Mapping: Create a map of your customers’ typical journey with your brand. Understanding the steps they take helps you anticipate their needs at each stage, so you can proactively offer the right support or product at the right time.
Cross-Department Collaboration for Customer Success
Customer success isn’t something that happens in isolation. To create a truly effective customer success strategy, cross-department collaboration is essential. Here’s how different teams can pitch in:
Sales: It’s important to ensure a smooth transition from the sales team to post-sale support. Sales should set clear, realistic expectations with customers right from the start, so there’s no disconnect once they begin using your product or service.
Marketing: Marketing can play a huge role by creating educational content, like blog posts, videos, or eBooks. This helps customers understand the value of your products and ensures they’re getting the most out of what you offer.
Product: The product team should work closely with customer success to gather and relay customer feedback. This helps them improve existing features or create new ones based on real customer needs, making your offerings even more valuable.
Challenges in Implementing Customer Success for Non-SaaS Companies
While customer success can bring incredible benefits, there are also some challenges that non-SaaS businesses might run into when trying to implement a customer success strategy.
Overcoming Resource Limitations
Smaller non-SaaS companies often run into budget and resource challenges when trying to implement a customer success strategy. But even with limited resources, there are still ways to make customer success a priority. Here’s how:
Outsource customer support: During peak times or busy periods, outsourcing customer support can help you manage demand without overstretching your team.
Leverage existing tools: You don’t need to invest in expensive software right away. Tools like HubSpot offer free or low-cost CRM options that can help you manage customer data and track success metrics.
Focus on high-impact activities: Concentrate on things that will make the biggest difference, like setting up a smooth onboarding process or reaching out proactively to check in with customers.
Dealing with Diverse Customer Needs
In non-SaaS companies, customers often have a wide range of needs, depending on what products or services you offer. This diversity can make it tricky to provide a truly personalized customer success experience. But there are ways to manage this and still deliver great results:
Segment customers: Break down your customer base by behavior, needs, or demographics. This allows you to tailor your success efforts to specific groups, making your approach more focused and effective.
Offer self-service options: Create resources like knowledge bases or FAQs to address common customer questions. This not only empowers your customers to find answers on their own, but it also reduces the pressure on your support teams.
Avoiding Customer Success Pitfalls
Rolling out a customer success program can be tricky, and it’s easy to make a few mistakes along the way. Here are a couple of common pitfalls to watch out for:
Underestimating the importance of onboarding: If you don’t have a clear and effective onboarding process, customers might struggle to understand the value of your product or service. This can lead to frustration and early churn.
Not measuring the right metrics: If you’re not tracking the right KPIs, you won’t know if your customer success efforts are making a difference. You’ll miss out on opportunities to improve and optimize your strategy.
Measuring Customer Success
Measuring customer success isn’t just about tracking customer satisfaction – it’s about looking at the bigger picture. Here’s how non-SaaS companies can get a true sense of success:
Customer Success Metrics: Keep an eye on important metrics like retention rate, NPS (Net Promoter Score), and CLV (Customer Lifetime Value). These give you a clear picture of long-term success and how well you're retaining and engaging customers.
Customer Feedback: Regular surveys and follow-up interactions are a goldmine for understanding how well you’re meeting your customers’ needs. They also help you gauge how likely customers are to keep doing business with you.
Conclusion
In today’s competitive business environment, customer success is more important than ever for non-SaaS companies. It’s not just about delivering a product or service—it’s about creating long-lasting relationships that drive retention, loyalty, and ultimately, revenue growth.
The key to success lies in building a customer-centric culture. By developing a clear customer success strategy, involving the right teams, and leveraging technology, non-SaaS businesses can ensure customers are getting the most value from their products or services.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
1. What is customer success for non-SaaS companies?
Customer success for non-SaaS companies is about ensuring customers achieve their goals with your products or services. It goes beyond just providing support—it's about building trust, fostering long-term relationships, and proactively helping customers see value in their purchase. When done right, it boosts satisfaction, loyalty, and repeat business, creating a win-win for both your customers and your business.
2. How does customer success differ in non-SaaS businesses compared to SaaS businesses?
In SaaS, customer success focuses on helping users navigate software and achieve results. For non-SaaS, it’s about ensuring satisfaction with products or services, offering personalized support, and delivering ongoing value post-purchase.
3. Why is customer success important for non-SaaS companies?
Customer success is key for non-SaaS businesses because it boosts retention, satisfaction, and loyalty. When customers truly benefit from your product or service, they’re more likely to come back, recommend your brand to others, and stick around—driving steady, long-term growth.
4. What are some common customer success metrics for non-SaaS businesses?
When it comes to measuring customer success for non-SaaS businesses, here are the key metrics I focus on:
Customer Retention Rate: This tells me what percentage of customers stick around and keep buying from me.
Net Promoter Score (NPS): I use this to gauge loyalty by simply asking customers how likely they are to recommend my business to others.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): This helps me understand the total revenue I can expect from a single customer over our entire relationship.
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): A quick way to track how happy my customers are with what I’m offering.
5. What are the key components of a customer success strategy for non-SaaS companies?
Here’s how I approach a customer success strategy for my non-SaaS business:
Build a dedicated team: Having a team that focuses solely on nurturing customer relationships makes all the difference.
Understand customer needs: I rely on feedback and surveys to get a clear picture of what my customers want and where I can improve.
Personalized onboarding: Helping customers get started with my product or service in a way that’s tailored to their needs sets the tone for a great experience.
Proactive engagement: I check in regularly to make sure customers are happy and address any potential issues before they turn into problems.
Measure success: Tracking key metrics like retention and satisfaction helps me know what’s working and where I can step up my game.
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