Many have written great posts about Customer Lifecycle, few of them stand apart like this one,
http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/sales-funnel/ by David Skok theRanjikanth of SaaS metrics — my guru(I never met him though). I always wanted to automate the stuff he mentioned and we have started CustomerLabs — AWS for digital marketers.
If you are into SaaS business and not following him, stop reading right now, follow him before reading any further.
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dskok
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BostonVC
Customer Lifecycle Vs Customer Journey
Customer Lifecycle
Customer lifecycle is a holistic picture of the beautiful relationship between your business and the customer. Starts at the customer finding about your business, understanding it, making the emotional connect, the sign up, the Aha moment, creating it as a habit and finally earning his loyalty.
KISSFLOW — Case Study
Let’s take KISSFLOW — Workflow Automation Software based out of Mountain View and Chennai, India.
I decided to use this opportunity to explore their product and explain how I move through their Customer Lifecycle.
Let’s go ahead.
I googled “Automation tool BPM Workflow”, and found the topSEO result as KISSFlow. When I moved ahead into their site, I noticed a blog article stating — Top 10 Features every workflow management system should have.
STEP 2 : My relationship with KISSFlow now — Web visitor
KISSFlow and I don’t know each other, sort of bumped into Kissflow.com clicking on the article.
STEP 2.1:
After reading an article and going around their website I’m convinced KISSFlow fits, into my budget as well as my needs. I decided to signup with them in this call to action which is right below the blog content. Must say, quite clever with that call to action button. I also received an email stating to confirm my email address which I ignored, but they let me into their product straight away.
STEP 3: My relationship with KISSFlow — Trial user
I’ve got a few days to test the waters during the trial period and at the same time KISSFLOW should push me into feel my Aha moment. I’ve started using the product straight away without too many forms or any other blocks and I stopped there.
Now, it is important for KISSFlow to guide me to feel my Aha moment or I’ll never become their paid customer — Agreed?
Now KISSFLOW’s, marketing team should lay out a plan for my Aha moment, they kickstart with an In-app message and try to improve our relationship.
Here comes the Customer Journey:
Customer Journey is a subset of actions which a user takes to reach a stage in Customer Lifecycle.
With my understanding of KISSFLOW, the first step is to invite my team members and the next is to configure a workflow for a specific task to reach Aha Moment.
Sample customer journeys owned by Customer On-boarding team:
KISSFlow can have multiple customer journeys to create the Aha moment. The marketing campaign should optimise the customer journey based on the user interactions and which stage (Trial user have Logged in but not launched the app or Launched the app but not invited the team) the user is in.
Assuming the user has already launched an app, which is my case; they should focus on sending emails or re-targeting to invite my team as well as creating a workflow, which might create an Aha moment for me. Like below,
Now, the target for marketing team or on-boarding team is to create content/Emails/Retargeting ads which will create an Aha moment for me.
Step 4: Aha Moment
In this step, the communication should be focused on pushing me to become a paid user. Communications should draw me in and create a hook so that I’ll be an active user. after that, they can kick-start campaigns to make me a paid user.
Step 5: My Relationship with KISSFlow: Paid user
To make the most out of it, they should now focus on me creating as many workflows as possible in many aspects of my business. For eg: Marketing, Sales Invoices, Newsletter etc..
Step 6&7: My Relationship with KISSFlow: Recurring and Loyal Customer
Now that I’ve become a Loyal customer they should now focus on creating referrals. Create a journey where I can be benefitted from referring my friends.
IMPORTANT: DROP OFF — Optimise at every stage to have higher revenue at the end.
It’s also important to note that we, creating different journeys for customers dropping off at every single point, — starting from Prospecting to Loyal customers. Emotional connect and the needs of the customers at various stages are different, so creating a drop off journey’s at various stages are equally important to keep your churn intact at every lifecycle stage.
For eg: If a user drops off at a trial stage, may be the extension of the trial can be given. I feel till we see an Aha moment the trial should be extended.
Summary:
Customer Lifecycle is like nurturing a child, it is a beautiful relationship that has a lot of conversations and angles to it. Repeating the same message, without emotions and different modulations; without connecting with the user, will only push you as a stalker (Spammer). Understanding how strong the relationship is between the customer and you (which stage he is and how have been the interactions), nurturing him with promises you’d be delivering — will make the user stick to you. It is not easy as it may sound, well you all know if you are in a relationship.
CustomerLabs — AWS for digital marketers, the single suite of integrated tools to manage your customer lifecycle. Do give a spin.
Having an Ecommerce Store? Don’t be worried — In the following post, I’ll try to explore about E-commerce Customer Lifecycle. If you want me to explore your Ecommerce store as a case study do leave a tweet, will follow up with you.
