You know what? They expect too little. Far too little.
Growth at the expense of the customer
One of the biggest problems with the enterprise SaaS market is that it is an area of heavy growth. The growth isn’t the problem, it’s that the SaaS companies tend to focus on just growth. At the expense of a group of people: their customers.
Whenever these companies make an acquisition, they do it to grow. They want to earn their investment back. The shareholders and investors in the SaaS company want to earn their money back. That’s why they’re in it.
Whenever there is heavy growth, there are logistical problems. Hiring new people, building out new processes. Things inevitable go wrong – for the customer. Also, there is an increasing focus on pushing out new features that sell.
Stagnating platforms
The result is that acquisitions are not developed, but merely kept running. There is virtually no effort made towards fixing annoyances, bugs and community-requested features. Meanwhile, those who were fans of an acquired platform before it was taken over lament how their favorite tool has stagnated at the expense of corporate growth.
Several big SaaS companies, that became big because they challenged the conventional software market back in the day, now operate exactly like those companies they disliked so much. They have aggressive sales teams. They like to lock you into multiple-year contracts. And if you want help or support? Well, then you get a software partner!
The big SaaS companies have focused completely on selling licenses. Sure, some of them have a services department – but most rely heavily on their ecosystem of partners, that will do the heavy lifting when it comes to supporting customers.
Users expect too little!
Therefore, users are expecting too little support from their vendors. They’ve grown accustomed to a model where a major SaaS player won’t even offer support anymore. Like it’s the most normal thing in the world that a company won’t support their own product!
“Here’s your support documentation” and off you go. During the sales process, many people don’t realize that enterprise software is almost always complicated. They don’t realize that they will need help from the vendor. Because the sales demo is always easy to follow, but your implementation will absolutely not be as easy – it never is.
What should you expect, then?
So, what should enterprise SaaS customers expect from customer service?
That the phone is answered, whenever you call. That a ticket is responded to the next day with an actually useful answer. That you can book a call with your customer success rep whenever you need anything (with access to their calendar!).
That customer service not only helps you with problems, but also helps you use the software better, so that you’ll be happy with it and will continue to get actual value from it.
That’s how we roll at Net-Results Marketing Automation. And we’re proud of it.
