Customer Success for Project-Based Software Companies
I am a learner by nature and often have questions. Much of the times when I see a gap, I try to fill it using the experiences and learnings I accumulated over the years and often I wish I had more. I try and reach out to people seeking advice and perspective and I realize I can do the same here as well.
The Gap
I have gained most of my experience in a SaaS company and have witnessed the shift to Agile and Customer Success methodologies and their impacts. Frankly speaking, we wanted to be agile from a long time and most of the time it was all random. In short, it is agile when I say it is and vice-versa, creating some clusters of people with powers instead of creating a system or culture that can empower everyone.
Things started to get better with the implementation of customer success methodologies because it kept power at customer’s end and everyone had one singular goal of making sure that the customer is happy and giving us a better LTV instead of churning. Now when the end goal is singular, creation of Agile methodologies around it and hence a culture was relatively much simpler as long as the communication is good.
Now I see the same gap for Project-Based software companies and same difficulty of implementation of agility/culture ( I really find culture a better term ). And as usual, before coming to anything that can be done within a company for implementation of anything at all, I want to address the customer first.
The Challenge
As you can see, SaaS companies are able to get usage data to help them pitch the right value to the right customer to upsell or educate client by better engaging them with relevent content. Also, because of a service based model customer success really turns out to be the value you add in the markets you serve, measured as ROI by your customers.
However, the game changes for a Non-SaaS model or a Project-Based software company making SaaS/Non-SaaS solutions for other businesses.
For example: There can be multiple buyers of one car with different reasons. Someone just want a four wheeler because of peer pressure and someone is need driven and wants safe and personal transport for a baby soon to be born. A good agent knows how to sell different values of the same product.
Now let’s make that example relative with our Non-SaaS or Project-Based model in our heads and we can see that no matter how shiny we make our proposals, they usually just end up in the “Acquire” section of the diagram and never any further (atleast as a process).
My first thought to answer the problem was to make sure there is a Customer success manager with multiple Project Managers but I can’t think of a framework because not every client is going to give you a consent to look at their data. Sometimes out of fear, lack of trust or compliance restrictions.
Note: My intentions are not to really generating a recurring revenue from the client but making sure he is getting the value out of the solution made for him.
I’d love your thoughts, feedback, suggestions and stories of what you’ve seen succeed and fail. I really appreciate it, so please keep it coming.
