One of the most successful things that we have done culturally at MicroBiz Point of Sale was to focus our employees on responding to customers’ requests as quickly as we can. Because when we do this, we have the best chance of engaging a customer while they are the most focused and passionate on the request at hand.
According to a study published in the Harvard Business Review, more than 30 percent of companies that frequently granted unmanaged discounts reported a decline in average sales price after only three months. Channel sales and strategy veteran Steve Walter knows firsthand the economic impact that ad hoc discounting can have on software vendors – he once worked for a software firm that was providing $15 million annually in extra discount requests granted to channel partners. You can read more about how he led the charge to get discounting under control in the June 2018 issue of Software Executive magazine. In the meantime, Walter explains why this is a problem for software companies in the first place, why discounting conditions your customers to change their buying behavior, and what you can do to solve this.
At PowerInbox we took a different approach — one driven by the belief great products sell themselves. By leveraging technology to work everywhere our customers need us, we’ve been able to forego the overpriced office lease and instead spend that money where it matters most: on R&D. While others were investing in building a heavy infrastructure, we invested in building a product that’s unmatched when it comes to serving our customers’ needs. In hindsight, we were agile before it was the thing to be. Following are a few of the lessons we learned along the way
If you ask two different software leaders to define “customer success,” you’re likely to get two different responses. We sat down with Allison Pickens, Chief Customer Officer at Gainsight, to clarify the converssation and pick her brain on all-things-CS — from pitfalls and best practices to structuring a CS team.
The collaboration tool market is thriving, partly due to a more widespread acceptance of remote working and recognition of the benefits business-to-business collaboration brings. Just like most SaaS, these tools are offered with subscription plans. Some come with long-term contracts while others have recurring deals. Some come with limited number of users or features while others are more generous but pricey. Dead Drop pricing deviates from the norm in three ways.
The same innovation driving Apple’s and Google’s profit is a mousetrap for the average SaaS business. A SaaS CEO shares why he thinks it's risky for software companies to innovate just for the sake of innovation.
Many software companies collect and analyze data points along the customer journey, but too many don’t share that information with the customer support team. Data hoarding restricts the sharing of these vital statistics with other business units, and as a result, customers get frustrated and leave.
It's an exciting time to be working on innovation. Strong public markets, rapidly developing technology, and fierce competition across all sectors are driving massive investment. New products, services, experiences, and processes are top of mind for leaders, getting the attention of C-suites and boards. To compete, companies have no choice but to innovate. Leaders are finding the success of the businesses and their personal trajectories is now closely tied to their ability to quickly translate innovative ideas to operable concepts that deliver transformational outcomes.
While simple in theory, the strategy surrounding customer conversations is dynamic. Today’s consumers' preferences transform quickly. As a result, companies need quality guidance on how to keep up. That is why Helpshift is hosting RESOLVE 18, an event that will be all about the new customer conversation, March 21 at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. Helpshift Chief Marketing Officer Paul Sebastien took time recently to speak with Software Business Growth (formerly ISV Insights) about RESOLVE 18, from why the event is necessary to what Helpshift expects to gain from hosting it.
Before going through all of the effort to recruit, on-board, and train your next employee, make sure you have a clear road map that begins with mission, the role the employee will play in supporting that, and how their individual efforts will help the organization succeed.
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