Mike shares three ways to automate renewals for SaaS businesses: monitor customer health with usage and support data, start renewal conversations 9 to 12 months early using Opportunity records, and let customers renew themselves through automated emails and in-app prompts.
Hey everyone. How's it going? I'm Mike. Today I'm here to talk to you about renewals. Specifically, we'll discuss how to create a renewals process for your customers that is data driven, well timed and highly personalized. I'll even share examples of how we do it here at Salesforce using our own technology. Sound good? Let's go. Welcome to Salesforce on Salesforce an inside look at our sales, service, marketing and IT businesses with helpful how to tips you can use for your business. For customer success leaders, we'll share tips on how to efficiently onboard your customers, how to successfully implement new Salesforce technology, and so much more. As always, you can learn more on Trailhead Salesforce online learning platform for more information on this topic and many others you might find useful for your business. If you're a SaaS business or subscription based company, the renewals process is make or break for your company's success. That's why you need a seamless customer centric renewals process and and rock solid forecasting tools. So what are renewals and how do they generate and sustain revenue? When a customer's contract for a subscription based product or service expires and they decide to continue using that service by signing a new contract, that's a renewal. This subscription model sets a foundation for recurring revenue and ideally sustained growth. Creating a renewals experience for your customers that is simple and intuitive doesn't happen overnight, but with the right approach and technology it is possible to create an efficient and cost effective renewals journey while offering your customers the perfect mix of automated service and hands on attention. So let me share three pro tips for improving your renewals process. Tip Number one Monitor Customer Health Understanding your customer's business and how they engage with your products and services is key to understanding their willingness to renew. That's why we recommend creating a system that monitors customer health. At Salesforce, we actively monitor customer usage of different features and functions. We gauge customer health on a rating system that allows us to identify and engage customers who need assistance. Right now we also have an early warning system that flags our most at risk customers. We can measure every customer interaction because it's built on our fully integrated system giving us a 360 degree view of the customer across every touch point. One indicator we look at is org maturity. How many products is our customer using? How long has a customer had a contract with us? We also look at customer support and program engagement. What does a customer case volume look like? How complex are the issues and what is their CSAT score? After contacting us for support? Are they accessing our learning materials like Trailhead or attending any of our events like product webinars or expert coaching sessions? All of these combined factors determine the health in the account and the likelihood of their renewal. We build these systems using reports and dashboards in the Account Contact and Opportunity Objects. These are all examples of existing Salesforce technology. You can start leveraging today in your renewals Forecasting okay, with solid forecasting in place, that brings us to another very relevant tip. Tip number two Timing is everything. With renewals, timing is your best friend and having a system in place to measure customer health means we can bring the history of each customer Salesforce usage into well timed conversations about the renewal. The approach of a renewal date is a great time to review customer health, evaluate which products are up for renewal, and identify opportunities for add ons or swaps. But this isn't just about upselling. We want to make sure each customer is enjoying efficient growth. That means we take a data driven approach that tells us whether a customer is taking advantage of their investment in Salesforce or if they're not using the products as much. Because that's a key indicator of attrition. At Salesforce, we typically start reviewing accounts 12 to nine months away from renewal. Review involves ongoing check ins to the last few weeks before the renewal date and conversations with an account manager. And don't forget, if you're using Salesforce for your own renewals processes, you can also track and automate the process through a standard Salesforce feature, the Opportunity. All renewal changes automatically update the opportunity stage in Salesforce. These in turn can be surfaced to leadership via auto updated dashboards, easily identifying accounts that need extra support right when they need it. This allows our renewals team to be more productive and focus their attention on the accounts that are most at risk at any given time. We love meeting our customers where they're at. Some customers like to have a lot of interaction with us. Some customers thrive in set it and forget it mode. And that brings us to our final tip. Tip number three Include a self service option. At Salesforce, we've developed a self service program that allows customers to renew their existing contract without having to go through our full renewal process with the renewal manager. How did we do this? As you heard in tip two, timing is everything. In talk about well timed, so are automated emails. At Salesforce, we send emails to the customer's contract owner 90, 60 and 45 days before the renewal deadline to let them know that it's time to renew their contract. We share all of the same great information that our renewals team would person to person, but in email format. This process, which used to be entirely manual, reduces cost and frees up a ton of time for our renewals team to focus on higher priority tasks. From either their email or a linked landing page, customers can easily and quickly self renew. The landing page built on Marketing Cloud provides custom account information that the customers can review and gives them the opportunity to modify and renew their existing contract. In addition to automated email sends, we alert customers about their upcoming renewal dates through the use of in app prompts. In the Salesforce instance they use every day, we ensure these in app prompts only show up for the contract owner. Remember we with Salesforce Customer 360, you always have a single shared view of your customers. That means account and success managers working in Sales Cloud always have eyes on what's happening with your renewal campaigns within Marketing Cloud, allowing them to be more productive by getting involved only when they're needed. Following these updates, We've seen a 52% year over year increase in self service renewals and we're seeing 70% of our renewals pipeline exclusively leveraging the self service option. There you have it. Forecasting timing self service Putting these concepts into practice ensures that our renewals revenue is on track and that every customer is enjoying personalized proactive support. All the while, we're helping our customers maximize their investment in Salesforce. We bring our best business ideas to life on the Salesforce platform and so can you. Check out the other resources provided to learn more about how we manage renewals here at Salesforce using our own technology. And be sure to check out the Salesforce 360 blog, trailhead and the other episodes in this series to learn how we use Salesforce products to deliver amazing customer experiences. We'll see you next time.
