The Best Ways to Communicate with your Users

SaaS long term success depends on engaging users so that they keep coming back to your product. We can all agree on that, but the big question is how to do it? One of the first steps to ensure engaged users is a transparent and fluent communication. Here is our take on the best ways to keep your customers engaged, and some of customer communication tools that we like.One of the most nerve racking and frustrating parts of launching a SaaS product is waiting for users to interact with it and integrate it into their daily processes. Putting your budget into getting new traffic is only worth it if users actually stick around. The unfortunate news is that 85% of your users will leave you in the first week. That’s the average for the business and productivity mobile apps as of 2020.This means how you nurture that user relationship with your product is vital for your growth and success. Users have so many options available to them, if your product or website seems stagnant, their attention will be drawn elsewhere. Unless you continually communicate well with your users and give them reasons to return, you are likely to lose interest.

These are the best ways to communicate with your users effectively to keep user retention high and spark exponential growth:

An in-app chat for instant support.

Providing instant customer service and support is almost a rule for SaaS products nowadays. Users expect you to be available to reply to their questions right away.An in-app chat can be a great resource to acquire new users and clarify questions about your product or implementation.Think of yourself as a user: isn't it great to have a quick reply to your question? If the product is actually what you're looking for, you're most likely to sign up and test it. And if it's not, you would be grateful for saving time and research resources.Customer service and support is another aspect you can improve with an in-app chat. Users know where they can reach you out, while you have a centralized backup of all your communication with them that you can check anytime.

A changelog for product updates, new features, and news.

Once you acquire a user, the job goes on. You need to focus on customer retention to make sure your users keep coming and don't feel your product is stagnant or outdated. The SaaS industry is more and more competitive, and you need to show you're always ahead.Announcing new features in an engaging and actionable way is key to keep users interested in your product. An excellent way to communicate product updates and new features to your SaaS users is through a changelog. Beamer is an in-app changelog and release notes tool that allows you to reach your users in a simple and effective way right within your user interface. You can create visual updates for users in one central place using GIFs, videos, and screenshots to increase engagement and get users familiar with your product.Your users can leave their reactions and comments so you have instant data on how they are liking your new features and updates. It’s a great way to keep up a two-way conversation with your users and show how your product is growing and changing.

Make sure your most important announcements don't get unnoticed.

Let's say you have one of those BIG announcements that cannot just get unnoticed: it can be an exciting new feature, a separate product or even an offer you don't want users to miss. You cannot just rely on the ordinary communications channels, but you really need to make an impact on your users.You have two easy ways and best tools to communicate your most important announcements to your customers and users:

• Push Notifications:  Your users will get a pop-up notification in their browser calling their attention right away. The biggest advantage of this type of notifications is that your users don't even need to be online or in your website to get notified. It's a quick and engaging way of bringing them back. However, you need to have their previous consent and they need to have subscribed to these updates to get them
• In-app notifications: It's the easiest way to get your users' attention while they are in your site or product. There are different types of in-app notifications, such as pop-ups, top bar, snippets and tooltips to fit different businesses needs.

Save email for once-a-month newsletters.

Email has become a more formal method of communication and not on top of our list of best customer communication tools. Users get annoyed quickly if you send them several “important” emails a week. Most emails go ignored. To put it numbers, a 20% open rate is pretty good. That's why you should keep email for a once a month newsletter with a summary of your latest developments or upcoming changes.It's also a good practice to use emails for very important, urgent announcements, in parallel with in-app notifications.  For example, if you have an upcoming maintenance when your platform will be unavailable.Other than this, most of your emails to users are likely to go ignored.

Be responsive on social media to communicate better with your user.

Social media is one of the most important customer communication tools nowadays. There is an expectation for companies to be responsive through all channels, especially publicly on social media. Twitter has become a place where users actually go to look for direct responses from companies in the face of either technical problems, new announcements, and even controversy. It’s important to have a presence on social media to look active and responsive as a company. Users expect that you will post updates on what’s going on, inform them of technical problems, and take their questions when they directly tweet or message your company. They are more likely to jump to Twitter or Facebook than your website for urgent information. Facebook will actually show users on your page how long you take to respond. Though it’s a small detail, it’s a demonstration of how responsive and on it your team is. Your team should keep it a priority to respond to Twitter and Facebook messages in a helpful and timely manner. How you come across on all platforms molds users’ sentiment.

Make customer feedback a part of your communication strategy.

Your users don’t want to just talk to you to talk; they want their comments and (God forbid) complaints taken seriously. There are always other alternatives. Your user loyalty will be valuable in the long run so never miss an opportunity to win it. In all methods of communication, give your users an opportunity to share their feedback with you. It will make you look better and also give you important insight to guide better overall strategic decisions. Don’t just wait for an angry email to you support account about a broken feature or a public tweet. You can collect instant feedback through your customer communication tool, like in-app chat and regular feedback with NPS. NPS or Net Promoter Score measures how much your users would recommend your product, and thus, how satisfied and loyal they are.

A consistent communication strategy between your team and your users will not only benefit your users but it will also help you know which direction to move as a company to make your users happy and inspire organic growth. For an easy way to communicate with your users and drive engagement try Beamer today.Read "11 Reasons for Keeping a Changelog" to learn about the importance of keeping your customer updated and engaged where they are - in your product.