The 7 Biggest and Baddest Customer Research Blunders SaaS Companies Make
(And How to Fix Them)
Is there anyone in SaaS not talking about customer research? We see it everywhere.
On paper, it looks like it should be easy. But so is eating spaghetti when you’re wearing white.
The thing is, the better your customer research strategy, the better your chances of making them happy. But to get things right, you need to know what things are wrong.
So grab a beverage of your choice and buckle up while we explore the seven most common Get To Know Your Customer strategy mistakes that even the best SaaS companies make.
1. Playing ‘Guess Who?’ with Customers
You know what happens when we assume.
But some companies are still assuming everything about their customer base. They forget that things and people change fast (are ANY of us the same people we were before 2020?).
Shooting in the dark leads to ineffective marketing strategies, missed opportunities, and a whole lot of wasted time and resources. At best you don’t reach your customers. At worst, you make them flee in the opposite direction.
The Fix: Use a combination of data-driven insights and direct feedback from conversations to understand who your customers really are. Create dynamic personas that evolve through time.
Bluefort is here to revolutionize your business with our cutting-edge subscription management platform, providing the tools and insights needed to avoid common pitfalls and create a personalized, data-driven approach.
2. Betting All the Chips on the Number
Like hips, numbers don’t lie. But they also don’t tell the whole story because people are complex.
Many SaaS companies become obsessed with metrics and KPIs, overlooking all the juiciness of that sweet, sweet qualitative data. Quantitative data is great for learning what people do, but qualitative data can show you why they do it.
The Fix: Just keep it balanced. Qualitative data, from things like customer interviews, open-ended surveys, and engagement responses from social media shows you emotions, unseen pain points, motivations, context, etc.
3. Going Old School
Some SaaS companies love their old customer research strategies so much they should just marry them.
It’s okay to be Old School in your style, or politeness, or taste in hip-hop, but it’s got no place customer research. SaaS is one of the most leading-edge, innovative industries. Markets evolve. Customer preferences alter. Tech advances.
The Fix: Regularly review and update your customer research strategy. Stay flexible and open to new tools, techniques, and data sources. Be nosy and check out what your more successful competitors are doing.
4. Not Getting Personal
In the digital age, personalization is everything to customers. But some companies (who shall remain nameless because this is not the occasion to get personal!) treat their customers with the same level of personalization as a Big Mac.
This one-size-fits-all approach can leave customers feeling overlooked. Why wouldn’t they go to a competitor that makes them feel valued?
The Fix: Get as personalized as possible using your customers’ preferences and behaviors. Tailor your communication, offers, and services to create a ‘made for me’ experience for your customers. It’s what they expect.
Our end-to-end platform goes beyond subscription management; it delves deep into understanding your customers and provides the essential tools and insights to steer clear of errors while enabling a personalized, data-driven approach to customer research.
5. Not Digging in the Social Media Goldmine
Social media isn’t just for sharing videos of cats startled by cucumbers. It’s one of the best natural resources for customer insights. But many SaaS companies don’t mine social media analytics so they miss out on a wealth of information about their customers.
The Fix: Leverage social media analytics and do some social media snooping on industry pages and message boards. What are customers saying? What do they like and hate? All the information you need is there, for free. Keep digging.
6. Keeping Customer Research in the ‘Marketing Only’ Family
In every family, there’s usually only one person who changes the toilet paper rolls. You know who they are – their eye’s mad twitchy and they’re THIS CLOSE to losing it.
That’s what happens when you leave the customer research to the marketing team. Everyone in a SaaS company benefits from customer research – that’s why it needs to be a group effort to nail it down.
Sales knows what customers like and need. R&D knows what’s in store for customers in the future. Finance is well aware of what customers will and won’t spend their money on. The list goes on.
The Fix: Knock down silos and encourage collaboration. Involve everyone in your strategies- you never know what kind of insight or ideas someone will have. The more perspectives, the better.
7. Overcomplicating the Whole Thing
Some SaaS businesses have customer research processes more difficult than solving a Rubik’s Cube in the dark. Overly complex customer research procedures, designed to learn as much as possible, can frustrate customers and backfire.
You know how exhausting it can be keeping in touch with all the people you love. So imagine how hard it is for customers to keep in touch with people they barely know. They won’t appreciate it if you make things hard or complex for them. No one’s got time for it.
The Fix: Simplify your customer research process to make it as easy as possible. Less is often more. Focus on getting the best info and present it in a user-friendly way.There you go – the 7 biggest, baddest mistakes SaaS companies make with their Get To Know Your Customer strategies.
Like with everything else, we learn from our mistakes and the mistakes of others. But now that you’ve got how to fix each problem, you can transform your customer research strategy that will work for you.
Ready to Revolutionize Your Customer Research Strategy?
Customer research is the lifeblood of SaaS success, but it’s easy to stumble into common pitfalls. Bluefort is here to help you navigate these challenges and supercharge your customer research strategy.
Our cutting-edge subscription management platform isn’t just about managing subscriptions; it’s about understanding your customers inside and out. We offer the tools and insights you need to avoid these mistakes and create a personalized, data-driven approach to customer research.
86% of consumers will leave a brand they trusted after two bad customer experiences.
– Emplifi
So if you’re looking to give your subscribers the best possible experience (and reduce churn!), make sure personalization is at the top of your priority list—it could be the difference between success and failure.
And if you give these SaaS customer personalization tips a try, you’ll be on track to providing them an unforgettable experience that keeps them coming back for more.
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