The customer lifecycle in XaaS (Everything as a Service) looks similar to typical business: the initial steps are lead generation and conversion, then the critical phases of onboarding, product adoption, support, and, ultimately, contract renewal.
Understanding this end-to-end journey is crucial for XaaS companies. Why? This is their way to build lasting customer relationships, drive retention, and secure long-term revenue growth in an ever-evolving business landscape.
Six stages of customer lifecycle in XaaS companies
The customer lifecycle in XaaS follows a dynamic path, from initial engagement to ongoing relationships. It includes several stages, starting from:
Awareness
The first questions that come to mind when starting any customer journey are: What is the problem? Where to find help? How to tackle the issue? As a result, customers search for a brand which can help them solve the problem. Resources like online blog articles, videos, or social media content guide them to the brand and solution.
Conversion
At this stage, the customers take action: download an ebook, take part in a webinar, or subscribe to a free trial or a free version of a product. The main goal is to push them closer to the purchase.
Purchase
Purchasing does not mean that customers will stay with you forever. You have to take care of them. Provide them with an excellent onboarding experience, help with any current issues, and collect feedback to personalize the services.
Activation
The next step is to nurture the customers, to make them weekly or daily active users. So that they have regular contact with your brand. XaaS must address their concerns, provide outreach and resources, including educational stuff, so that the churn rate is at a minimal level. Simple put: The customers need to be happy with the services on a daily basis.
Renewal
In fact, renewal is a core business of cloud-based services. That is why it is crucial to have efficient and regular communication with customers. XaaS must address customer concerns and continuously strive to improve their experience. Reward customers for their trust and make them loyal.
Referral
Word-of-mouth is powerful, and transforming customers into brand advocates is one of the best ways to boost sales. Gather opinions, ask for recommendations, and present case studies on your website or in the promotional materials. Referrals are more persuasive than any form of advertisement. And repeat customers are less expensive than acquiring new ones.
XaaS companies need to understand and manage the customer lifecycle to make sure customers are happy and build long-term relationships.
All buying stages require numerous tools. The robust software facilitates XaaS with the ability to personalize, automate actions, or streamline processes.
What are the key features of Salesforce customer lifecycle management?
A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solution is the foundation of sales. This solution makes it easy for sales teams to access information across devices, locations, and time frames. It gathers all data in one place and builds a one source of truth for everybody involved in the sales process.
Salesforce offers a suite of tools to manage the customer journey from the initial contact to the contract renewal. Here are some key features of Salesforce’s customer lifecycle management:
- 360-Degree Customer View: Salesforce provides a unified and comprehensive view of each customer, consolidating data from various touchpoints, including sales, marketing, customer support, and more. This holistic view helps businesses better define their customer lifecycle analytics and tailor their interactions.
- Lead Management: Salesforce allows for efficient lead capturing, tracking, and scoring. Sales teams can prioritize leads and nurture them into potential customers.
- Opportunity Management: This feature assists in tracking and optimizing the conversion process, ensuring potential customers move smoothly through the lifecycle.
- Marketing Automation: Salesforce offers powerful marketing automation tools, allowing businesses to engage with customers at scale. It includes email marketing, campaign management, and lead nurturing, which help maintain customer relationships.
- Customer Support and Service: Salesforce Service Cloud provides tools for managing customer support, cases, and service requests. It ensures that customer inquiries and issues are resolved promptly, which is crucial for maintaining customer satisfaction.
- Sales Collaboration: Salesforce facilitates collaboration among sales teams, allowing them to work together efficiently and share insights about customer interactions.
- Analytics and Reporting: Salesforce robust analytics and reporting capabilities provide insights into customer behavior and sales performance. This facilitates data-driven decisions and precise forecasts for future actions.
- Customer Engagement: Salesforce platform supports multichannel customer engagement, including email, social media, chat, and phone. This ensures that customers can interact with businesses through their preferred channels.
- Integration: Salesforce integrates seamlessly with various third-party applications and data sources, enabling businesses to consolidate their customer data and streamline operations.
Salesforce empowers businesses to acquire, nurture, and retain customers through a unified and data-driven approach, ultimately fostering strong and enduring customer relationships.
What are the benefits of using customer lifecycle management in Salesforce?
Tracking and analyzing each stage of the customer journey improves customer experience and increases customer loyalty. But there are more are some more benefits of using customer lifecycle management (CLM) in Salesforce:
- Increased revenue by providing personalized follow-ups, presenting special offers and loyalty programs, and strengthening relationships through direct communication and reliable data, businesses can increase customer lifetime value and revenue.
- Better insights for sales and support teams that illuminate opportunities for improving the customer experience.
- Improved cross-functional collaboration, well-defined business objectives, and a clear understanding of the customer.
- Scalability and integration to meet the growing needs of businesses. It also integrates seamlessly with other applications and data sources, allowing for efficient management of customer data.
- Utilizing customer lifecycle management in Salesforce helps businesses to build stronger, more enduring customer relationships. The result is enhanced customer satisfaction, improved revenue generation, and a more competitive position in the market.
Maximizing XaaS growth through customer lifecycle management
It is less expensive to maintain customers than to attract new ones. Xaas companies are aware of this rule. Since their unique asset lies in offering “service as an advantage”, they have to perform excellently to keep customers and make them renew the service.
Research done by Frederick Reichheld shows that increasing customer retention rates by just 5% can increase profits by 25% to 95%, not to mention that it’s estimated that acquiring a new customer can cost as much as 10x more than retaining an existing one.
Source: Thriving in the Experience Economy, Salesforce, 2022
XaaS companies can optimize their processes, enhance customer experiences, and ultimately drive sustainable growth in a highly competitive market with data-driven insights and tailored strategies. From lead generation to contract renewal, the entire customer lifecycle determines their victory or loss.
