The SaaS model is clearly here to stay, and it feels that every day a new offering is born, whether from a brand new start up or from a company with an established history of selling traditional on premise software products. From a customer perspective, the benefits are clear – lower initial upfront costs, higher adoption rates, improved upgrade cycles, and reduced time to see the benefits are just a few. From a vendor perspective, the predictable recurring revenue stream is enough to make any business owner happy on its own.
SaaS providers, however, now need to consider how to handle the increased customer interactions that occur with this model. A traditional cycle may have been to sell the software, implement and train and then transition to support, with invoices going to the customer once a year for the maintenance renewal. SaaS providers however have continuous interactions with their customers. Invoices could be going out monthly or quarterly or for changes in usage over time. Whatever the case may be, the number of “touches” has increased.
From a purely transactional perspective, there are ERP modules to assist in the invoicing process so that the increased paperwork is not a huge issue. The more important thing to consider regarding the increased customer interactions is customer service. Each interaction is an opportunity to serve the customer better. Each interaction is an opportunity to listen to issues, offer services, and simply communicate in general with the customer. Sometimes the effect of a simple “so how are things going?” question is amazing. With a SaaS model, vendors now have many more opportunities to ask their customers how things are going, and to get out in front of issues and be proactive instead of reactive, which is often too late.
The difficult part is how to incorporate that customer service mentality into what has traditionally been just an
Dan Berube is the
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The Impact of the SaaS Model on Customer Service
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