As much as product builders want to be self-serve and low-touch, there will always be limitations and improvements to make. Sometimes a customer won’t understand how to use the product. Sometimes a customer will make a mistake. Sometimes a customer won’t be able to translate their problem into a solution.
This is why customer success is critical for self-serve products. They can help guide the user through onboarding, implementation, and workaround rough edges as the product improves. Even better, they can improve feedback from customers to engineers.
Maybe this means that self-serve products aren’t really self-serve after all. The alternative is customers giving up or getting frustrated while you figure out how to build a perfect product.
See also:
- Customer success first then sales
- Similarly for sales, there are only certain segments of customers that will self-serve, enterprise businesses expect a consultative sales experience
- There are many forms “customer success” can take such as documentation, support, and an account manager
- From an except in The Great CEO Within
Links to this note
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What Does Customer Success Do at a Startup?
At an early-stage B2B SaaS startup, customer success has one responsibility: make sure customers don’t churn. The causes of churn are bad onboarding (users fail to find value quickly enough) and not making contact frequently. Both should be addressed by customer success.
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How to Set up an Inbound Sales Motion
It should be repeatable, measurable, and profitable. Every product and business is different. This will focus on a B2B SaaS product.