Self-Serve SaaS — How to run your SaaS product on auto-pilot?
In the initial stages of your SaaS, you will have fewer customers using your product, fewer customers will require less human support to guide them through problems and your team will be able to solve their queries. But, what happens when you scale and acquire more customers? More customers would face more problems and you will have to scale your business and support teams to assist them. This is time-consuming and manual work.
SaaS is primarily built to scale, and while building a product your goal should be to use automated instructions and interactions to enable users to use the product without any hand-holding. In this article, I will show you how to put your SaaS product on auto-pilot.
What is Self-Serve SaaS?
Have you ever been to a buffet dinner? Where delicious items are lined up and you can grab your favourite dishes according to your need to enjoy your meal. This is self-serve in simple terms.
Self-Serve SaaS can be defined as a product that successfully onboards new customers and explains how to use the features without any hand-holding. It enables users to troubleshoot problems by themselves by referring to the resources available. In addition to this, your product can also invite new users and create awareness in the market.
A self-service solution doesn’t mean you don’t offer customer service. On the contrary, self-service is a way to enhance.
— Shep Hyken, Customer Service and Experience Expert
The Self-Serve SaaS Formula
Using these modules in your digital product will help you to reduce support queries and create a better experience for your customers. Below I have explained each module in detail and I have also added examples for your reference.
1. Freemium / Free Trial
Freemium is a combination of two words “FREE” and “PREMIUM”. This model attracts a large audience because it doesn’t require users to pay upfront. Users can get acquainted with the product by using the free features and when they require premium features you can ask them to pay.
How can you set up a freemium model on your product?
- Use the Pareto Principle (80–20 rule)
Provide users 20% features for free and the rest 80% as paid features. Let’s assume your product has 10 features so give 2 features as free and keep 8 as premium features. This differs from product to product. - Which features should be free?
The main purpose of free features is to attract new users to use your product. Choosing the right features is essential to compel your target audience to use your product. You should also consider what your competitors are offering for free. - Maintain the right balance
If your product is driving traffic but not generating revenue, it means people are using your product for free and you are offering too much value for free. It’s time to cut back.
Some examples of good freemium models
Slack
A popular messaging tool for businesses, you can set up a Slack workspace and start chatting with your team in minutes. It doesn’t even ask for your credit card details while signing up. Once you’ve hit the 10,000 message limit they’re going to upsell their premium plan.
Spotify
A music streaming app that gives you access to over 50 million songs without paying a dollar. Then why do people subscribe to Spotify? Because nobody likes being interrupted by ads while they’re listening to their favourite songs. Plus you get high-quality personalised music and you can download music for offline play.
2. Good Onboarding
Once you’ve convinced users to sign up for your product it's time to onboard them. The main objective here is to introduce your product or service and explain how to use it efficiently.
Tips to create a successful onboarding process:
- Keep it short and sweet
Nobody likes long onboarding flows, so don’t try to explain all the features you offer. - Try to create an ‘Aha!’ moment for your user
This ‘Aha!’ moment becomes the hook of your product and it kickstarts motivation to continue using your product.
Read more about successful onboarding flows here.
Some examples of good onboarding flow
Duolingo
Duolingo has an excellent onboarding process in which they introduce the product to visitors and show them how easy it is to learn a new language. After a quick round of questions and answers, the visitor is rewarded for his score and prompted to sign up and claim the reward. (This is a long onboarding flow but it’s very interactive and users enjoy it)
Canva
Canva is a free design platform that can be used by everyone for any design project. During the onboarding process, the visitors are asked how they plan to use the platform. Users are taken through a step by step tutorial based on their selection.
3. Product tour
The product tour or product walkthrough introduces users to all your features. This enables users to take meaningful actions that get them closer to their Aha moment which increases product activation, adoption and retention rates. To create a successful product tour you must choose the right UI pattern for your product.
The most widely used UI patterns are:
- Tooltips
- Modal windows
- Hotspots
4. Help & Info
Help and info buttons are often neglected in a product’s interface. They are either not present, located far away from relevant fields or fail to provide precise information. When users get stuck they turn to these help and info indicators as an instruction manual to the product.
How to use help & info buttons?
- Analyse where your users might need help and check where major support queries arise from.
- Ask existing users, what problems they are facing while using your product.
- Place help and info icons near relevant fields to avoid confusion
- Use simple language, precise and clear messaging to provide users with instructions
Here is a heatmap that indicates where a majority of users will look for help options on an input form. This test was conducted by Tania Lang in Brisbane, Australia.
5. FAQs
The Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) section is a database of the most common and repeatedly asked questions users have while using the product or service. New users can refer to the answers here if they have a question.
Here are some companies using a good FAQs section
Airbnb
Their FAQ page is a perfect example, they have a search bar so users can type in the query followed by suggestions based on the searched query. They also have articles that explain how to get started with the product. This is super helpful to users.
Headspace
This is another good example of how the FAQs section can be. This page gives you a sense of zen when you arrive. It doesn’t over-explain and has categories that lead you to more self-discovery.
6. Forum
A forum is an online discussion board where people can ask questions, share their experiences and discuss topics of mutual interest. This can help new users to get guidance from existing users or super users. Superusers can discuss and share their learnings with others.
Some Product Forums
Webflow
Webflow forum brings web designers on one page where they can ask their doubts, learn new techniques, share their work and help each other.
Asana
Asana forums include different sections like Announcements, Forum Leader tips, use cases, etc. This categorisation helps users find what they’re looking for.
7. Chat Support
Live chat support provides users with a way to get help through instant messaging. It happens on a personal level via the company’s website or within the product. There are so many live chat modules that you can integrate with your product, the most widely used are:
Intercom
Intercom is probably the best live chat software for SaaS products. In addition to live chat, it also provides extra features like a chatbot, product tours, app integrations, etc.
8. Email Support
Along with all the automation, it is necessary to have the traditional methods of communication too. If customers aren’t able to find a solution to their problem they will connect with your support team over email. Because of good onboarding, product tour and faqs the email support queries should drastically decrease.
9. Referrals
Your product and services are great, and your customers love buying from you. But are they telling their friends, family and colleagues about it? A good referral strategy can do wonders for your digital product. Every product is unique and there is no one size fits all option here. You will have to test and try different strategies based on your target audience. Here are some top referral programs that companies have used to double, triple and quadruple their user count.
Dropbox
The online file storage launched their referral program that rewards customers with more cloud storage space instead of monetary benefits. Dropbox offers 500 MB of free storage to customers who make a referral and to the newly-referred users. Using this strategy the membership grew by 3900%.
Uber
This ride-sharing application introduced referrals into their product. When an existing user refers a new customer using the referral code both the users get a free Uber ride.
Advantages of Self-Serve SaaS -
- Huge Sales Funnel: By allowing customers to use the product for free you widen the first phase of the sale funnel. Since customers are acquainted with your product they are likely to choose your product over your competitors.
- Rapid Sales Cycles: With the freemium model you can get more customers to use your product. This helps in creating value & attachment in the users’ minds. Once the user requires premium features, more space, no ads, etc you can ask them to upgrade in no time.
- Higher Revenue Per Employee: Using this model you will be able to serve more customers with fewer people on your team. An added benefit of lesser support requests, less hand-holding and less headache for both customers and your team.
Who can use Self-Serve models in their SaaS?
Building a self-serve model can be costly, it needs high-quality design and engineering. If you are at a stage where you’ve found a product-market fit and your customer base is expanding in all directions, then it is a good time for you to implement this model in your product. It is beneficial for both B2B and B2C SaaS products.
If you use the techniques mentioned above you will be able to build a digital product that onboard users, tells them how to use the product and even invite more users to your product. You may have to tweak the strategies according to your product because all companies are different and what worked for someone else, might now work for you. If you are one of these unique startups, we can help you to create a product with automated workflows. Feel free to contact us and we would be glad to assist you.
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Author: Akshay Salekar, Design Director, MAGNET Design
