How does customer support impact retention? We've got the data to answer that plus tactics to help you improve customer satisfaction. 

We've also got data from our B2B SaaS index + why you need to market like a media company. 

Listen wherever you get podcasts:

Customer support + retention 

We’re getting straight to business. We’re talking how strong customer support positively impacts retention. And today, retention is more important than ever before.

Customer support is a critical determiner of customer satisfaction, which is a driver of retention. If a customer is unhappy, they’ll churn. 

We’ve got the data from more than 600,000 consumers and 5,000 companies to prove this. 

First, I’ll share how good support drives willingness to pay and leads to higher net promoter scores. Then we’ll go through metrics to track the success of your customer support. And I’ll leave you with how you can improve your customer support—all with the goal of bolstering retention. 

The data: 

Good support drives higher willingness to pay:

• • Customers who perceived a company's support positively had between a 12-36% higher willingness to pay than the median.

  • Customers who perceiveda company's support negatively had an 8-16% lower willingness to pay. 

Our data suggests that support isn't as much of a value detractor as it is a value driver. This means bad support doesn't take away from willingness to pay as much as good support drives higher willingness to pay.

Net retention relative to support perception: 

• • Companies with positive support perceptions have anywhere from 15-30% higher net retention on an absolute basis than companies with negative support perceptions. 

  • Customers who perceive support positively have 6-15% better net retention.

  • Customers with poor perception of support see 8-11% worse retention. 

Metrics to track customer support success: 

1. Response and resolution time. When people have problems, they want help instantly. 

2. Number of tickets. If you have a high number of support requests, then something's not right. Perhaps there's a recurring issue with your product or your onboarding needs to be more thorough. 

3. Customer satisfaction. This comes directly from feedback.

4. Net promoter score. This will tell you how likely customers are to recommend the product to a friend. 

Tips to improve customer satisfaction:

1. Build a knowledge base filled with FAQs, tutorials, and any additional info about the product.

2. Personalize customer communication. Remember—we are communicating with humans.

3. Make support available across multiple channels—email, text, live chat, social media...you name it. 

4. Automate the support process.

5. Get acquainted with a customer relation management platform.

Takeaways

Today was a long story short explanation on retention and customer support. But, it’s important to understand that customer support is crucial right now. Customers want to know you have their backs. And if they do, they’ll stay with you. Not focusing on retention could be detrimental. It’s hard to acquire new customers during these turbulent times, which puts a deeper focus on retaining the ones you do have. 

Here are the main takeaways from today: 

1. Data shows good support drives higher willingness to pay and makes customers more likely to recommend your product to a friend. 

2. Metrics to track customer success:  response and resolution time, number of tickets, customer satisfaction, and net promoter scores. 

3. And finally—improve customer support by building a knowledge base, personalizing communication, automating the process and using a CRM platform. 

A shameless plug here—we just rolled out SMS Churn Recovery for Retain—now allowing you to text your customers for a more personalized and frictionless experience. Customers can update their credit card or account information right from the text message. 

Start texting your customers → get SMS Churn Recovery 

Learn more about customer support + retention → visit our blog here

How is the B2B SaaS market trending?

How are churn and new revenue trending over time?

MRR GAIN -0.04%

MRR LOSS +0.3%

Your B2B SaaS Index is creeping up. It's valued at 1,681 points today, with overall growth going up 0.95% over the last week.

Now let’s talk about upgrades, new revenue, and churn.

MRR gain is taking a slight hit today. Upgrades and new revenue are down 0.04% over the last 24 hours. As for MRR loss, nothing crazy to report here. It’s improved 0.3% over the last 24 hours. 

Be sure to check your subscriber newsletter for regular updates to your index. 

You can also share the data with friends and fellow industry players that could use it right now. Send me their email address to grace.g@profitwell.com and I’ll get their name on the list. Or they can subscribe directly at index.profitwell.com.

Tips + tricks to manage remotely 

With remote work being the new norm, HubSpot released a helpful guide on managing remote teams…And with Zoom fatigue now also being a thing, it provides some good food for thought on meetings. 

You should have regular meetings with your team to regroup—these could be weekly or monthly so you’re aware of what everyone is doing. As you're scheduling these meetings though, make sure you’re evaluating effectiveness. Consider—could this meeting achieve the same goals by just communicating over Slack? Or, are the right people in this meeting? 

Additionally, be mindful of timezones and employee boundaries. Implement a team calendar and have employees mark working and non-working hours. Respecting those boundaries is key in keeping employees from burnout. 

To read HubSpot's full guide on working remotely → click here 

You should market like a media company

In content news… our own Patrick Campbell has some data for you. 

Here at ProfitWell—over the past three years we’ve changed our go-to-market strategy to be more like one of a media company. 

And we’ve seen a lot of success with this strategy. Here are some stats that let you know why you need a podcast or media series, too.

• • CAC is up across the board. 

  • CAC of podcast and video channels is lower overall. 

  • WTP for customers who’ve engaged with podcast or media content is higher. 

Read the full data points on Twitter → click here 

Want to find revenue insights like these for your business? Learn more about subscription media reporting.

Today’s featured user is Prowly, a public relations software. 

How does Prowly work? Let me explain. 

With Prowly—you connect all your PR activities in one place. 

It helps you find the right media contacts for a story, keeps those contacts under control, personalizes emails at scale, and prepares journalist-friendly press releases. 

You work to make your company and product great—you deserve some visibility. 

Get covered with Prowly here. 

That is a wrap on this week’s B2B SaaS happenings. Catch you back here next time with more news and more data. Make sure you're subscribed at recurnow.com or wherever you listen to podcasts.

If you have news to spread or resources to share with our audience, you can always connect with me at grace.g@profitwell.com to get the good word out there.