SaaS Customer Journey Essentials & 7 Tools for a Seamless Experience
The right strategies, tools, and best practices can significantly enhance your customer lifecycle management processes and positively impact your business. Learn more about customer lifecycle management and SaaS customer journeys in this blog post.
What Is the SaaS Customer Journey?
The simple definition? A SaaS customer journey is the path a certain customer segment takes from the initial discovery of your product to becoming a loyal, paying, and (ideally) promoting user.
For a more fleshed-out answer, a SaaS customer journey is made up of stages and touchpoints:
Stages
Steps in your customer journey defined by what a customer needs to accomplish to move forward. For example, to move past the initial awareness stage, customers need to become aware of your product (obviously).
Touchpoints
Points of contact between you and your customers. For example, a blog post (like this one!) might be the touchpoint that moves a customer past the awareness stage.
By mapping out these stages and touchpoints, the goal is to create a more streamlined journey that gets as many customers as possible from A to B.
6 Benefits of SaaS Customer Journey Mapping
1. Empathy and Retention
Customer journey mapping gives your business and team an empathetic perspective, which focuses on the needs of customers, ultimately leading to higher retention rates.
2. Understanding Customer Wants
The SaaS customer journey map system provides a unified view of customer wants and needs across all platforms, leading to quicker response times and improved customer satisfaction.
3. Identifying Gaps
Mapping the customer journey helps in identifying gaps in the customer experience. For instance, realizing the need for a chatbot on a website can lead to new opportunities and enhance customer success.
4. Enhanced Customer Experience
Customer journey mapping helps in improving customer experience and satisfaction, leading to customer loyalty and growth.
5. Predicting Customer Behavior
Journey mapping provides insights into customer behavior, needs, and potential problems. This data helps in making informed decisions, addressing customer issues, and predicting future problems, resulting in positive business outcomes.
6. Optimized Marketing Strategies
Mapping the customer journey translates into better marketing strategies, improved customer experiences, and increased sales, leading to overall business success.
Maximizing Customer Journey Management with Rengage
We provide a comprehensive solution for managing and enhancing customer journeys, delivering insights and measurable outcomes with no code. We accelerate your customer journey from onboarding, activation to conversion and churn. Enabling customers to unlock revenue from their existing user.
With Rengage, you can get insights into your segments, run campaigns with an intuitive journey manager, and get insights to measure how your journeys impact users conversion through our Journey Moments and Journey Builder features. Journey Moments: insights into your micro-segments, Journey Builder: intuitive multi-channel marketing automation, Insights prediction and attribution.
Book a free demo to learn about how you can transform customer interactions into personalized experiences that drive loyalty and growth.
Related Reading
5 SaaS Customer Journey Stages
1. Awareness
Awareness is the easiest stage to understand. Before the awareness stage, the customer has no idea you exist; after the awareness stage, they do—simple! There are two main routes into the awareness stage:
Intentional Discovery
The customer has a problem and actively seeks a solution.
Unintentional Discovery
The customer is exposed to your product by “accident”— maybe they saw an ad or a friend mentioned it.
Regardless of how the customer entered the awareness stage, your goal is to grab their attention and introduce them to what you’re offering. That means demonstrating your product’s value as a solution to the customer’s problem.
Common SaaS Awareness Touchpoints
- Word-of-Mouth
- Social Media
- Ads (Google Ads, Paid Social)
- Content Marketing (Blogs, Videos, etc.)
2. Consideration
Customers are now aware of your product’s existence but aren’t quite sure whether it’s the right fit for them. This stage varies based on product and industry, but it’ll usually be defined by:
Learning
Customers will probably try to understand the problem your product solves.
Exploration
Customers will usually take a closer look at your product’s features and benefits.
Comparison
Customers will compare your product with other alternatives on the market.
Testing
Customers will usually want some kind of trial or demo before diving in head-first. Making sure you have resources, processes, and people in place for each of these needs (but especially testing) is key.
Common SaaS Consideration Touchpoints
- Webinars
- Product Demos
- Free Trials
- Case Studies
- Questions & Answers (Q&As)
- Sales Staff
3. Purchase (Decision)
At this stage, customers have decided to purchase your product—nice! Your goal in the purchase stage is to make sure they don’t start doubting themselves during the checkout process (i.e., making it as painless as possible).
Common SaaS Purchase Touchpoints
- Checkout Pages
- Product Configuration Pages
- Payment Pages
4. Onboarding/Service
Getting the onboarding stage right is critical for SaaS companies. According to most studies, around 86% of customers would remain loyal if they received onboarding and ongoing education. The onboarding process is usually broken down into two stages:
Initial Onboarding (or Activation)
This includes the initial setup of the product.
Continued Onboarding (or Education)
This is where customers learn to use the product more deeply.
Common SaaS Onboarding Touchpoints
- Product Tours
- Live Chat
- Checklists
- Email Series
- Video Tutorials
- User Guides & Help Centers
5. Renewal (Loyalty)
Renewal is a stage that’s especially important for SaaS companies. It’s usually a side effect of the overall customer journey—meaning that if you do all the other stages right (especially onboarding), the renewal will take care of itself.
You can do a few things to help this stage along, though. One great approach is by asking for customer input through surveys and questionnaires, an important part of the customer feedback loop.
Related Reading
- Digital Customer Journey Mapping
- Customer Journey Analysis
- Ecommerce Customer Journey
- B2B Customer Journey
- Customer Journey Orchestration
- Omnichannel Customer Journey
- Marketing Automation Customer Journey
- Customer Journey Optimization
- Micro Moments Customer Journey
- Customer Journey Research
- Customer Journey Automation
- Customer Journey Insights
- Customer Journey Dashboard
- Customer Journey Personalization
- Customer Journey Metrics
- Customer Journey Best Practices
7 Steps to Create the Perfect SaaS Customer Journey
1. Have a clear purpose
When creating a SaaS customer journey map, it is crucial to identify the main objectives and goals of your mapping process. The goals might shift as your business grows and the customer journey evolves, so it’s important to revisit them periodically. Have clear primary goals for the customer journey, such as streamlining product adoption, creating a seamless onboarding process, or minimizing churn.
2. Define every buyer type
Identify different user personas that interact with your SaaS product. Ensure you have a deep understanding of each potential buyer profile before creating the customer journey map. This process will vary depending on whether you are offering B2B or B2C solutions. Define user personas for both end-users and decision-makers who may purchase the product, considering their unique characteristics and needs.
3. Establish the stages of your customer journey
Understand the key stages that customers go through when interacting with your SaaS product. Typical stages include awareness, consideration, decision, onboarding, support, retention, and advocacy. Pay special attention to the onboarding phase, as it is crucial for recurring revenue in SaaS companies.
4. Identify the customer touchpoints at each stage
Identify major points where users interact with your brand at different stages of the customer journey. These touchpoints can include social media posts, CTAs, sign-up forms, and the product itself. Monitor these interactions to pinpoint areas for improvement and enhance the overall customer experience.
5. Highlight customer milestones
Pay close attention to significant customer milestones, such as conversion events and critical moments that influence customer retention. Focus on key touchpoints like CTAs, product demos, and self-service support to prevent users from becoming frustrated and leaving the platform.
6. Make your map cyclical
Create a cyclical customer journey map that tracks the full customer cycle from purchase to renewal. Focus on post-purchase actions like continuous onboarding, renewals, and upgrades. Ensure users are aware of new features, and make it easy for them to upgrade or renew their subscription.
7. Measure the outcome of the customer journey
Regularly measure the success of your customer journey by analyzing key milestones and touchpoints. Use qualitative and quantitative metrics to evaluate the impact on customers and your business. Collect real customer feedback to understand their experiences and improve touchpoints across the journey.
By following these seven steps and continuously refining your SaaS customer journey map, you can enhance the overall user experience, drive customer retention, and increase brand advocacy.
7 Top Tools to Optimize the SaaS Customer Journey
1. Rengage
Rengage offers a comprehensive solution for managing and enhancing customer journeys, delivering insights and measurable outcomes with no code. The platform accelerates the customer journey from onboarding, activation to conversion, and churn, enabling customers to unlock revenue from their existing user base.
With Rengage, you can gain insights into your segments, run campaigns with an intuitive journey manager, and measure how your journeys impact user conversion through Journey Moments and Journey Builder features.
2. Userpilot
Userpilot is a customer success platform that goes beyond triggering in-app experiences. The tool allows you to create in-app surveys, track user behavior, and access advanced product analytics to nurture product growth effectively.