Price and Customer Value Management for Customer Success
Rashaqa Rahman is a Principal Consultant at Ibbaka. See her Skill Profile on Ibbaka Talio.
Customer success is one of the most important functions within a subscription business. Customer Success is tasked with communicating the value of the offer to the customer and ensuring the value promised to the customer by sales and marketing is delivered and sustained. Consistent value communication and tracking of value delivered to the customer (value documentation) ensures healthy renewal rates, improved Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) and more success with upsell and cross sell opportunities.
For B2B SaaS offers, it is often challenging to show how much value an offer generates for the customer over the lifecycle of their engagement . Demonstrating quantified value creation and consistent value communication are key to reduce churn, increase renewal rates and defend pricing for upsell/ cross sell. This enables a SaaS business to continue investing into their product innovations . In B2B SaaS, future revenue is dependent on ongoing innovation.
However, demonstrating value to the customer can be particularly challenging when:
There is a disconnect pre and post sales: The strategy at initial sales and the strategy at renewal might be different resulting in pushback from customers. For instance if discounts were offered at the initial sales period, customer success may find it difficult to upsell or charge fair pricing in line with the value created for the customer at the time of renewal.
Proof of value is hard demonstrate - Case studies, customer references, and ROI ROI calculators can be inadequate if the proof of value is not specific to a customer. This may lead to a risk of churn. The customer now has experience with the solution and the evidence must be based on their use.
There is a change in the decision-maker: Different stakeholders can perceive a problem in different ways and their motivations are often different as well. When there is a change in the decision-maker, ongoing engagement can be at risk and it becomes even more important to demonstrate concrete evidence of value created for the customer over time that goes beyond basic ROI calculations.
Ibbaka Valio can empower customer success by making it easier to communicate and document value
Ibbaka Valio mitigates the above risk factors and enables the Customer Success function to be more successful. Ibbaka Valio is a Pricing and Customer Value Management solution that supports both pre and post sales and helps organizations communicate the value of their offers over the lifecycle of the customer journey. It documents the value being delivered to the customer, providing the rationale for ongoing investment.
A key feature of the Ibbaka Valio is the Value Story. The value story takes a value model, customized for a specific customer, and turns it into a presentation that tells the story of how value has been created. It combines the value propositions for the customer with a quantification of that value and does so in a tested and systematic way.
This helps reduce churn, improves customer retention, creates more upsell cross-sell win rates and has an overall positive impact on revenue.
Do you want to align your product, pricing, marketing, sales and customer success teams around value? Then, come check out Ibbaka Valio, our latest innovative pricing tool that communicates value and delivers the outcomes you desire.