One of the biggest challenges SaaS companies face is retaining customers. Since these companies have a subscription-based model, growth doesn’t just rely on acquiring new customers but keeping the existing ones loyal and engaged.
Deploying a CRM to cater to those customers brings in more customer loyalty and profitability, supplementing the credibility of the brand in the SaaS industry. CRMs provide plenty of assistive features to businesses, but the SaaS companies can largely benefit from functions like sales automation and analytics.
Let’s learn in more detail as to how the SaaS companies can maximize advantages through the use of a CRM!
CRM for SaaS companies is a system designed to help SaaS businesses manage the entire customer lifecycle: starting from free trial signups to retention, upsells and renewals. An ideal CRM for software businesses would provide tools like sales automation, built-in Artificial Intelligence (AI) insights, and integration with existing tools. From customer support on the company’s website to automating the process of onboarding to timely tracking leads, a CRM solution for SaaS companies encompasses and attends to these critical aspects.
Core Functionalities Of CRM For SaaS Companies
For SaaS companies, you would need more advanced tools, and CRM features which go beyond traditional sales tracking. We have compiled a list of imperative functionalities, suitable for SaaS businesses of all sizes and stages:
Trial And Lead Management
For most of the SaaS setups, customer journey starts with free trials or demos. Using a CRM would centralize customer signups, and track engagement and registration trends. Moreover, it will completely automate follow-ups, which will lead to more frequent conversions into paid accounts. By monitoring activity and assigning lead scores, businesses can prioritize prospective clients who are more likely to subscribe.
Customer Onboarding Automation
An effective CRM would assist by standardizing and automating the lengthy onboarding process. It can help you brand your welcome emails, company overview, product details, and strategize training sequences, without having to manually repeat tasks. This enables a smooth and consistent user experience, at least during the first 30–60 days when churn risk is highest.
Reporting And Churn Analytics
CRMs provide detailed dashboards to monitor churn rate, renewal rate, and customer lifetime value (CLV). This allows the stakeholders to analyze product demand, user trends, and track conversion rates of each campaign. This can also evaluate the viability of different customer success initiatives. With objective data guiding decisions, you can forecast accurately and implement proactive retention strategies.
Usage Analytics And Health Scores
SaaS success depends on how actively customers use the product. Thus, CRMs can give a complete overview and deep insights. It can track login frequency of the user, feature demand and adoption, and support tickets to create health scores. This allows customer success teams to trace and minimize risks and ensure quality customer experiences.
Upsell And Cross-Sell Opportunities
The long-term success of a SaaS company is dependent on the expansion of the existing accounts. CRM would help the companies track and identify the opportunities for upselling to higher plans or cross-selling add-on features, to specific customers. This gives a more strategized selling approach and improves customer satisfaction and retention rates.
Onboarding a CRM to optimize a SaaS company’s operations brings a lot of other advantages. These uplift the entire ecosystem and pave the way for providing more customer-focused experience. Here are some common benefits you can get:
Stronger Customer Retention
Churn is one of the common challenges for SaaS businesses that cuts directly into recurring revenue. A CRM would facilitate more proactive user engagement techniques, track user behavior, ensure feature adoption, and account health. This makes it easier to cater to and address the issue before the customer decides to withdraw their subscription.
Predictability Revenue Growth
Deploying CRM in SaaS allows for more streamlined financial management, as it continuously monitors subscription health and renewals. It also provides a monthly forecast to SaaS leaders by monitoring billing cycles and upgrades automatically. The predictability aspect provides more confidence and stability to the companies and investors alike.
Better Alignment Across Teams
Sales teams, customer success teams, and support teams are intertwined in SaaS companies due to similar and overlapping workflows. A CRM provides a singular dashboard for more cohesive, transparent, and collaborative communication. This further eliminates any room for mismanagement.
Increased Data Security
SaaS businesses are trusted with sensitive and extensive customer information spanning various industries, regions, and geographies. Opting for a CRM ensures that data is encrypted, access-controlled, and compliant with regulations such as GDPR and SOC 2. This helps in maintaining the legal standard and eliminates any security risks.
Establishes Brand Credibility
Customers prefer personalized and consistent communication, even when there is any sort of issue. A CRM, through its centralized communication dashboard, branded templates, and automated workflows, ensures that each customer is aptly and promptly attended to, without any manual input.
Every SaaS company will have varying needs and objectives. Due to these businesses being complex and dynamic, choosing the right platform may come across as a daunting task. We have listed a few pointers that would help you choose the right platform for your SaaS setup.
Consider Size Of Your Company
An enterprise-level SaaS team will have advanced needs and requirements, whereas a small start-up may only need basic tools due to limited customers. The size of your company is determined by the customer it caters to and the extent of operations it has. This will help ensure you have invested in a system that meets your needs.
Define Your Growth Objectives
The industry is entirely competitive and growth dependent in nature. You should mind map some of your immediate and long-term goals by identifying the areas which may need improvement. It could be aspects like removing churn, incorporating marketing tactics or removing onboarding hassles.
Allocate A Specific Budget
CRMs can be costly. However, you can easily tackle this limitation by looking for software in which most of the features are useful for your business, and the price is optimal. Early-stage SaaS setups may only need base or free pricing plans, whereas large-scale ones might also need a heavy commercial investment and advanced AI features.
Check Integration Capabilities
Third-party integration, along with the existing tools, is a crucial aspect to investigate. Check if your shortlisted software integrates with billing systems, analytics platforms, and customer support solutions.
Ensure Scalability
Migrating SaaS data repeatedly is not advisable due to security risks. Hence, you should ensure if your software would facilitate expanding customer bases and product lines, beforehand. This would provide easy operational growth without any disruptions and delays.
CRM for SaaS companies is increasingly integrating with technologies such as AI, Internet of Things (IoT), and augmented reality (AR) which is creating avenues for regulated automation, predictive analytics and more immersive user experience. Moreover, having a CRM as a SaaS company is more of a necessity; as per a report, 94% of tech companies leverage CRM. This highlights its increasing importance and usability in modern business operations.
What Real Users Say About CRM For SaaS Companies?
SaaS leaders and stakeholders have applauded the use of CRM for business growth due to its versatility and scalability. It provides advanced features such as customizable pipelines, AI-powered dashboards, automated complaint management and personalized customer support services. However, due to most platforms being cloud-based, some users find the need for constant updates and changes a bit frustrating.
SaaS companies can highly benefit from a CRM as it provides features like trial management, onboarding automation, and detailed reports and analytics. The entire business model is based on subscription, renewals, and customer retention, and thus it is quite crucial to provide the customers with the best user experience. CRM for SaaS companies enables a more conducive and engaged dynamic with the customer.
Explore top CRM solutions for SaaS companies to get a comprehensive and apt software which aligns with your goals, business size, and workflow requirements.