SaaS customer success: Strategies for driving growth

High customer success metrics are now a top factor responsible for recurring revenue in SaaS companies. This shift highlights the growing importance of developing a complete customer success strategy for SaaS companies to drive sustainable growth.

Our guide shows the customer success strategy SaaS teams use to cut churn, lift renewals, and fuel expansion. You’ll get clear definitions, SaaS customer success metrics, and practical moves you can run this quarter.

What is SaaS customer success?

SaaS customer success helps users reach specific outcomes with your product. You guide customers to value, remove friction, and build loyalty that shows up in renewals and expansion. 

Treat it like a partnership: Your growth follows your customer’s results. B2B SaaS customer success adds higher stakes, more stakeholders, and heavier onboarding because you sell to businesses. That’s why clarity and proactive communication matter even more.

Customer success vs. Customer support

Customer support reacts to problems and resolves tickets. Customer success works upstream. Teams anticipate roadblocks, coach customers toward goals, and drive adoption from day one.

Strong programs lean on personalized onboarding, proactive engagement, and continuous education instead of a rigid framework. They’re a living program that evolves with your customers.

Note: We’ll further explain the elements that make up a successful customer success strategy in a later section. 

Why customer success matters in SaaS

In SaaS, it's not enough to just make a sale. You need to keep those customers coming back month after month, year after year. That's where a strong customer success strategy comes in. Here's why having one is so important, particularly for B2B SaaS customer success:

• Reduce churn and lift renewals: You prevent avoidable churn by coaching toward outcomes, closing value gaps early, and nudging adoption before usage drops.
• Increase customer lifetime value (CLV): You lengthen the relationship and earn upgrades by pairing regular check-ins with targeted enablement and clear next steps.
• Build advocacy that drives referrals: You create fans when you align with customer goals and spotlight wins. Advocates write reviews, join webinars, and bring peers.
• Unlock upsell and cross-sell: You spot needs through usage data and conversations, then recommend add-ons that map to active initiatives, especially with SaaS clients that scale.

How to measure customer success with the right metrics

Here are some key metrics to keep an eye on:

• Customer lifetime value (CLV): This is the total revenue you expect to earn from a single customer throughout their entire relationship with your company. A high CLV indicates strong customer loyalty and a successful customer success strategy.
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• Churn rate: Churn rate measures the percentage of customers who stop using your product over a specific period. Keeping churn low is crucial for sustainable SaaS growth.
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• Net promoter score (NPS): NPS gauges customer loyalty and satisfaction. How? By asking how likely they are to recommend your product to others. It's a good indicator of overall customer sentiment.
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• Monthly recurring revenue (MRR) and annual recurring revenue (ARR): These metrics track your predictable revenue generated from subscriptions. They're essential for understanding your company's financial health and growth trajectory.
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• Time to value (TTV): The TTV metric measures how long it takes for a new customer to experience their first "win" with your product. A shorter TTV often correlates with higher customer satisfaction.
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• Customer engagement score: This score combines various user actions. Think about feature usage, login frequency, and support interactions. These metrics help assess how actively engaged customers are with your product.
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• Customer health score: A customer health score provides a holistic view of a customer's relationship with your company. It considers factors like product usage, engagement, and support tickets to predict churn risk.
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• Expansion revenue: This metric tracks extra revenue from existing customers, such as upgrades or add-ons. It's a sign of customer satisfaction and growth potential within your existing user base.
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• Support ticket trends: Analyzing the volume and nature of support tickets is key. It can reveal common customer pain points or areas for product improvement.
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• Renewal rate: Your renewal rate shows the percentage of customers who choose to renew their subscriptions. A high renewal rate is a strong indicator of customer satisfaction and the perceived value of your product.

Note: Understanding retention metrics is crucial for customer success. Learn more about the differences between net revenue retention (NRR) and gross revenue retention (GRR), and dive deeper into gross revenue retention strategies to improve your metrics.

Key elements of a successful SaaS customer success strategy

SaaS customer success is a continuous journey, not a one-time event. It requires a proactive and multifaceted approach to truly drive growth. Here are some key elements to consider.

Key element 1: Onboarding excellence

Guide new users with checklists, in-app walkthroughs, and short trainings that hit the first outcome quickly. Offer real-time help during the first weeks to reduce uncertainty and speed adoption.

Provide extensive training resources, including documentation, knowledge bases, and webinars. SaaS customer success teams should make sure new customers understand how to use core features effectively.

Key element 2: Proactive engagement

Set a regular cadence. Use health scores to flag risk early, then reach out with a plan. Bring industry context, playbooks, and relevant resources.

Use customer health scores, which aggregate data from various touchpoints, to spot any potential risks early on and mitigate them. 

These health scores can consider several factors. Some of them are usage, engagement, and support interactions. They provide a holistic view of user health. 

Remember: Proactive engagement shows your commitment to customer success and fosters collaborative relationships.

Key element 3: Tailored customer success plans

Co-create goals, milestones, and owners with each account. Track progress, adapt the plan, and keep communication channels clear.

Collaborate with users. You want to align expectations, set clear communication channels, and track progress toward their goals. Regularly review and update these success plans to make sure they remain relevant and adapt to the customer's evolving needs. 

Key element 4: Data-driven insights

Watch feature adoption, depth of use, and value moments. Personalize coaching and surface expansion opportunities based on real behavior.

Use data to pinpoint upselling and cross-selling opportunities. Data can help you understand customer preferences and predict future needs much better. 

Remember: Data-driven insights help SaaS customer success teams make informed decisions. They also help optimize their efforts for maximum impact and show a commitment to continuous improvement.

Key element 5: Continuous feedback loops

Collect in-app feedback, run interviews, and publish what you changed. Close the loop so customers see their input in the product.

Use this feedback to refine your product features, improve your support, and elevate the overall experience. Actively listen to your customers and incorporate their suggestions. This way, you show your commitment to their delight and foster a culture of ongoing improvement.

Strategies for driving growth with customer success

SaaS customer success is a powerful engine for growth. By prioritizing user needs and fostering relationships, you can unlock new chances for expansion. Here are some strategies to consider.

1. Build a customer-centric culture

Make customer success a core value within your company. Embed it into your company's DNA. Make sure that every team, from sales to product development, prioritizes user satisfaction. 

Align all departments around shared customer success goals. This way, you foster collaboration and a unified focus on delivering unique customer experiences.

Here are some ways to foster a customer-centric culture:

• Regularly share customer success stories and positive feedback across different departments.
• Encourage cross-functional training to promote a deeper understanding of customer needs and challenges.
• Implement a company-wide recognition program. You want to reward employees who go above and beyond to champion customer success.

2. Turn customers into advocates

Satisfied customers are your best marketers. Leverage their positive experiences to generate referrals, reviews, and testimonials. 

Encourage them to share their success stories and actively take part in case studies or webinars. Implement a formal advocacy program with incentives and rewards to motivate customer participation.

Here are some ideas for a formal advocacy program:

• Create a tiered system with exclusive benefits and rewards for different levels of advocacy.
• Offer early access to new features or beta programs to your most engaged advocates.
• Host exclusive events or webinars to recognize and appreciate your advocates.

3. Expand value through upselling and cross-selling

Find opportunities to expand customer value through upselling and cross-selling. Analyze customer usage patterns and engagement data to specify potential needs for upgrades or add-ons.

Empower your customer success managers (CSMs) to recommend relevant solutions. By offering valuable solutions, you can increase customer lifetime value and keep revenue growing.

4. Offer flexible pricing and packaging

Tailor your subscription plans to meet the evolving needs of your customers. Offer a range of pricing models to accommodate different budgets and usage patterns. 

Provide scalable solutions that can grow with your customers' demands. Make sure they have the flexibility to adapt their subscriptions as their businesses evolve. 

Remember: Flexible pricing and packaging options contribute to higher customer satisfaction. They also help reduce churn by providing options that align with their needs.

Note: To maximize your customer success initiatives, explore our guide on SaaS revenue management for useful strategies that complement your customer success efforts. You can also benchmark your performance against industry standards with our SaaS benchmarks guide.

Overcoming challenges in SaaS customer success

While SaaS customer success offers tremendous potential for growth, it also comes with its own set of challenges. Let's explore some common hurdles.

Managing churn risks

Common drivers include unclear value, slow onboarding, weak engagement, and inconsistent support. Fix these with tighter messaging, faster first value, and reliable touchpoints. To mitigate churn, implement proactive retention strategies:

• Outreach: Run health-triggered check-ins and quarterly reviews.
• Value content: Ship targeted tutorials, office hours, and role-based guides.
• Win-back: Ask churned users why they left, fix the root cause, and offer a path back.

Scaling customer success efforts

As your customer base grows, scaling your SaaS customer success efforts can be hard. Automate repetitive steps (welcome series, nudges, QBR prep), publish self-serve resources, and use tools that handle growing data and workflows.

Aligning internal teams

Collaboration between teams is vital for a solid SaaS customer success strategy. Share dashboards across CS, product, sales, and finance. Meet regularly, swap feedback, and run cross-training so everyone knows their role in the journey.

Note: When dealing with churn and customer transitions, having a solid customer migration strategy is essential. This ensures smooth transitions that maintain customer satisfaction even during platform changes.

Tips to boost customer success for enterprise clients

Enterprise clients often have unique needs and expectations that differ from those of smaller ones. To ensure their success and maximize the value they derive from your SaaS product, consider these targeted strategies:

Overcoming enterprise-level challenges 

Enterprise onboarding and engagement can be more complex than those for smaller businesses due to many factors. 

Enterprise clients often have larger, distributed teams spread across various locations and departments. Each has varying levels of technical expertise and diverse use cases for your product.

Potential solutions

To address this complexity, it's key to provide tailored onboarding experiences. These should cater to the specific needs and roles within the enterprise. Consider offering dedicated onboarding specialists who can guide clients through the implementation process.

These specialists can provide custom support and address the unique challenges faced by teams within the firm.

In addition to personalized onboarding, develop complete documentation and knowledge bases. These should cater to different user roles and needs within the enterprise. This knowledge could include role-based training materials, interactive tutorials, and FAQs. 

Make these resources easily accessible through a dedicated customer portal or knowledge base.

Dedicated customer success teams

For high-value enterprise SaaS clients, consider assigning dedicated customer success teams. These specialized teams can provide personalized support, proactive guidance, and consultations. They help enterprise clients achieve their goals using your SaaS product.

Dedicated CSMs can build strong relationships with key stakeholders within the enterprise. They can understand their specific goals and develop success plans to guide them toward their desired results. 

They can also act as internal advocates for enterprise clients, making sure client needs are prioritized across departments within your organization.

The role of business reviews and executive sponsorship

Regular business reviews and executive sponsorship programs are key. They can further strengthen the relationship and show commitment to the success of your enterprise clients. 

These reviews provide a platform to discuss progress, address challenges, and align on strategic goals. Executive sponsorship programs can foster deeper relationships between key decision-makers in both organizations. 

Orb’s flexible billing platform can support your customer success strategy

We've explained what SaaS customer success is and why it's crucial for driving growth in SaaS. A key aspect of customer success is guaranteeing customers understand the value they're getting. 

This is where having a billing platform that can help you bill users accurately and transparently becomes vital. 

Orb is a done-for-you billing platform. It provides companies with the tools and insights to improve revenue and customer relationships. Here's how Orb helps:

• Raw event architecture: Orb ingests raw events for accurate and transparent invoices. Customers see exactly what they used, which reduces disputes and builds trust.
• Facilitate value-based conversations: Orb's reports provide key insights into customer behavior and usage. This data equips your CSMs to have more informed conversations with customers and offer tailored solutions. 
• Get flexible pricing for customer success: Orb's plan versioning features allow you to create many pricing models and easily manage them without messy spreadsheets. Orb also lets you tailor pricing to diverse customer needs and usage patterns without engineering.
• Dig into the data: Query usage, revenue, and account attributes in one place. Build custom health scores, spot risk, and prep QBRs without stitching data.
• Test with Orb Simulations: Test pricing changes before rollout. Run Orb Simulations on historical data to preview revenue and usage outcomes before launch.
• Integrate your data: Connect your warehouse and accounting tools so that data flows cleanly across teams and scales with you.
  

Ready to use Orb to support your customer success initiatives? Consult our flexible pricing options to find a plan that works for your business.