Product success is the evolution of customer success. In other words, a solid product that is successful in all aspects will guarantee customer success, since users will make full use of its capabilities. A proper product success strategy can help you create a product with long-term value for customers, which will result in a better customer experience and more loyal customers, i.e., customer success.
From product adoption rate to net promoter score (NPS), you’ll need to figure out which metrics drive your success. Once you understand how to improve product success for your SaaS, you’ll find that having the right set of tools is just as crucial. There’s an ocean of product-focused SaaS out there, so we’ll ease you into the first wave by overviewing the 4 best tools to help collect, monitor, and analyze key metrics to meet your business goals.
This article covers:
- What is Product Success?
- Why is Product Success important?
- How to improve Product Success
- 4 Best Tools for Product Success
What is Product Success?
Product success is a subset of customer success that takes a special interest in how users are experiencing your product and to what extent. This means that everyone in your company, from the sales rep to the product developer n°20, needs to know your product like the back of their hands.
Only then can you start asking questions like, “How often do customers use the product?”, “What are the main benefits that users gain from our product/X feature?”, “Have the most engaged users unlocked the full potential of the product?”.
Developing the right product success strategy will help you create a product with long-term value for customers, ultimately improving customer experience and loyalty.
Why is Product Success important?
Customer success has been the buzzword used in SaaS to refer to the time and money invested by customers in these platforms. The success of subscription-based products has been measured against the level of renewals and loyalty achieved. At the end of the day, this has a direct impact on your revenue.
Now, let’s picture the following: You have a remarkable proactive customer support team, your metrics are the envy of most SaaS businesses, and every single touchpoint is digitally managed by sales. But neither your users nor your team actually understands the product. Well, that’s not good.
From sales to product development, to fully reap the benefits of everyone’s effort, you need a strong foundation: your product. Only then will your customers fully experience your product. Only at this point should you start looking into proactivity, metrics, and digital touchpoints.
How to improve Product Success
To improve product success, you’ll first need to define which metrics to monitor and how to analyze them. If we were to ask “What’s your product adoption rate?” you may not be able to answer straight away. You need data on product use to identify the users who aren’t experiencing your product to the fullest; a low adoption rate is a clear sign you haven’t quite met your product success goals.
Product adoption rate is influenced by the frequency, breadth, and depth of use. This, in turn, affects product value. But it’s not just product value, it’s the whole product experience that determines success. How customers experience your product can be affected by the design of your website to product features.
Customer satisfaction will also be key in meeting your product success goals. Don’t forget that it’s easier now than ever to find an alternative SaaS product. A satisfied customer will not only continue to use your product, but they will refer it to others. The net promoter score (NPS) indicates exactly how likely your customers are to recommend your product to others.
The 4 Best Tools for Product Success
Ok, so you know what product success is, why you need to focus on it, and how to improve it. There’s just one small detail left: you need a platform to bring all this data together so that it makes sense for every department in your business. It’s what we like to call a product success platform.
Product Success Platform: FROGED
Your product team can gain insights into the usability of the product or new features through FROGED Product Flows. These allow you to carry out A/B testing for your product while recording all user interactions. It’s the best way to gather organic and reliable product feedback even before a product is launched. As for an onboarding process, it’s the best way to explain your product to users who may still be unsure about using your software.
Your customer support team can use custom events to segment according to user behavior and actions, address users by their name through personalization features in emails, or record user interactions to analyze open rate and click rate in email campaigns.
To succeed in your NPS metrics, add support widgets such as live chats or floating search engines, so your customers can quickly find what they’re looking for without leaving your site.
You can also create a solid Knowledge Base to further guide users into a more in-depth use of your product.
The FROGED platform is designed for scale and has over 2K integrations – including those listed below. This translates to omnichannel communication not only with your customers but internally too.
Automation tool: Zapier
Zapier is a cloud-based automation tool that connects 5,000+ apps and services. Without having to write a single line of code, anyone in your business can automate repetitive tasks.
These automated workflows are what they refer to as “Zaps”. Each consists of a trigger and one or more actions. Anytime you run a “Zap” it triggers all sequence actions you created. For any business, removing manual work is always an aspiration, but in the context of SaaS, it’s necessary. Streamlining customer data and communication in SaaS will help you focus on what you need to: the product.
Pretty awesome, right? The best thing is you can get started now for free.
Customer Data Platform: Twilio Segment
Twilio Segment is currently a leading Customer Data Platform (CDP). It’s a powerful all-in-one tool that lets you gather data, merge from different sources, and link customer data to any system within your organization.
From product to customer success teams, everyone will access customer data in real-time. If you want to give it a try, you can request a demo.
Software Development Tool: Jira
Although Jira Software was originally designed to track bugs and issues, it has evolved to support all types of teams to manage their tasks.
From use cases to agile software development, your product team can use it to code, collaborate, and launch features at any stage of development. It also offers a great variety of add-ons to test your software throughout the whole development cycle.
You can start for free now.
Must-have integrations for your Product Success Platform
Product success isn’t smooth sailing, you’ll need to dedicate a lot of time and effort to discover exactly what your users need from your product.
That’s why it’s key to have an arsenal of innovative tools that easily complement your product success platform to take it to a new level.
With the 4 tools above, you have a great foundation to gather data on usage, monitor key metrics, and analyze performance to meet your goals.
