[Download the Checklist PDF here]
Are your customers ready for self-service?
Does your organization have the discipline for true self service?
Every B2B SaaS organization can benefit from customer self-service tools.
While true digital self-service (with no human intervention) is best for low-cost, low-complexity, non-mission critical products, offering self serve can increase efficiencies and improve customer satisfaction and gross margin for any SaaS org.
Self-serve isn’t one and done though. It takes an ongoing commitment to evolve self-serve tools as part of the product life cycle, and to build products that are simple and intuitive to use. Before you get started, consider the following questions:
Do prospects inherently understand the value of your product?
Is it clear to them exactly what they are buying?
Is your buying process frictionless?
Is it easy to start using it immediately?
Are customers willing to serve and educate themselves?
How will you ensure ongoing use and satisfaction?
Is your renewal and cancellation process frictionless?
Our checklist covers the basics and the nice-to-have’s across the self-serve prospect to customer journey. By following your own customer’s journey from prospect to renewal, you’ll discover even more places where you can enhance the self-serve experience.
The B2B SaaS Self-Serve Checklist
Product Discovery Do prospects inherently understand the value of your product? What problem or job to be done (JTBD) does your product solve for?
Online product demo
Product documentation and features list
Customer stories, quotes
Buyers also have to believe that you can deliver on what you say. What proof points do you offer? How does your website instill trust in your company? Until a brand is established and is validated by the external world, it is a huge leap of faith to purchase unknown software.
Why us / how we compare guide
Third party validation (industry accreditation, customer testimonials, press releases, partners)
Pricing & Packaging Is it clear exactly what they are buying? Are subscription costs low enough to charge to a credit card?
Secure online purchase functionality with pricing descriptions and package costs
Credit card processing service
Legal definition of deliverables, terms of use, standardized contract / statement of work, privacy policy
Price and feature comparison chart
Monthly, quarterly, annual pricing
Context-based FAQs
Implementation
Is it easy to start using your product immediately?
Even with no-code /low-code, web-based SaaS products, it’s important to have role-based (admin and end-user) documentation
Technical product documentation
Git repository
APIs, SDKs
Getting started guide
App integrations / partner marketplace
Context-based FAQs
Early use case “recipes”
End-User Training Are customers willing to serve and educate themselves? Even if getting started is simple, the tools below create confidence in your product offering:
Written or video instruction on how to accomplish the main use cases for the product
In-app, context-based education
How to guides
FAQs
On-demand webinars / video training
Blog posts
Case studies / customer stories / inspiration guides
Playbooks
Ongoing Education and Use
How will you ensure ongoing use and satisfaction? How are customers informed about updates, product enhancements and outages?
After their first login, what’s driving ongoing product use and engagement?
Customer email marketing cadences
Release notes
Webcasts, tutorials
Beyond FAQs: ability to solve common problems, without having to contact Support or Success teams for help
Knowledge base
Online community
Scheduled outage / API uptime / SLA page
Renewal and Expansion
Is your renewal and cancellation process frictionless?
Product owners change. Credit cards fail. Customers churn. Have you tested where things can go wrong?
Regular audit of renewal and cancellation flow
Fall back process for failed credit cards, missing account owners
How are upgrades or expansions handled?
Without a customer success manager or sales rep, automated email communication prior to renewal becomes even more important to ensure customer retention.
Automated email marketing cadence
Quarterly review of unmanaged customer accounts