I was in Silicon Valley recently and I found myself talking about this idea of “Quick Wins” several times within the context of SaaS Customer Success and I wanted to share this idea with you, too.
This idea of “Quick Wins” is really just an evolution of the Common Conversion Activity (CCA) metric, but adapted for use beyond Free Trials and presented in a way that’s more palatable to… just about everyone, really.
Kickstart SaaS Customer Success with Quick Wins
So the “Quick Wins” idea is a simple concept, but like most simple concepts, it isn’t easy to figure out how it – or in many cases even that it – applies to you.
The need for “Quick Wins” is predicated on the idea that you need to get your (prospective) customer to realize value from your SaaS as quickly as possible, whether it’s their post-sales initial use or during the Free Trial.
To do that, think about “Quick Wins” – positive results – that your customers can quickly achieve by using your SaaS.
You’ll probably struggle with the idea of “Quick Wins” at first, as you grapple with just how much your SaaS can do, and how much onboarding, seeding of data, or integration is required for full adoption across the client enterprise.
The first thing to note is that “Quick” is a relative term, so if it normally takes 2-months before your customer gets a “Win” what could you do to get them a “Win” in the relatively “Quick” time of 2-weeks? If it takes 2 days normally, what could they do in 2 hours?
SaaS Customer Success from the Customer POV
So, as you think about how to come up with “Quick Wins” do so from the customer standpoint – not yours or your product’s. Using this perspective, you should be able to come up with a few bite-sized actions your customers can take that will result in a fast, positive outcome for them.
For instance, do you really need end-to-end adoption out of the gate or can you activate usage of just one module and give them immediate value? And think about this even if they bought the whole package; this isn’t about how little you can sell them!
Or, perhaps your SaaS can integrate with and pull data from their on-premises ERP to produce forecasts for the next 7 years. That’s great, and probably what is needed long-term, but could you get an immediately positive result by using a small, user-generated dataset instead?
The Psychology of SaaS Customer Success
To come up with these “Quick Wins,” think about customer segments based on different use cases, buyer personas, or even pricing levels.
Lincoln Murphy and Dr. Robert Cialdini at a Principles of Persuasion Workshop in Arizona (March 2013)
We know all customers aren’t created equal, so the “Quick Wins” for one customer segment might be different than for other segments.
And of course, once they get one win, you move them to another, then another until they’re fully engaged… it’s a process and you should ensure it is fully orchestrated.
There is some real psychology involved with this “Quick Wins” method, including the activation of several of the Principles of Persuasion put forth by Dr. Robert Cialdini: Reciprocity, Liking, and Consistency.
But where Psychology is the reason to employ this “Quick Wins” strategy, the data should be the catalyst, as it generally shows that customers who realize value quickly are the ones that stick around the longest.
