How-to videos at every stage of the SaaS Customer Lifecycle

As a SaaS company, you’re probably focused on providing customers with a great experience that keeps them coming back. One way to achieve this is by using how-to videos at every stage of the customer lifecycle. Videos can help improve the customer experience, increase customer retention, and ultimately, drive more revenue for your business.

Skip to section:

• Why videos are important for SaaS companies
• Video Ideas for Each Stage of the SaaS Customer Lifecycle
  • Onboarding Stage
  • Engagement Stage
  • Renewal and Expansion Stage
• How Videate improves your SaaS customer lifecycle
  
  

Why Videos are Important for SaaS Companies

Videos are a powerful tool for SaaS companies for several reasons:

1. Visual learning: Many people learn better through visual cues rather than text or audio alone. Videos can provide a more engaging and effective way for customers to learn how to use your software.
   
2. Convenience: Videos can be accessed at any time, from anywhere. Customers can watch them on their own timeline, getting the information they need at the moment they need it without waiting for an email or a call back.
3. Consistency: Videos provide a consistent way to train customers on how to use your software. This ensures that everyone receives the same training and has the same understanding of how to use your product.
4. Scale: A full video library can address, at scale, the most commonly used features, training use cases, and challenges. Users can self-serve on their own timeline and will be less likely to submit support tickets if the issue is covered by video. You can support these customers without adding headcount, which frees up your team to focus on critical accounts instead.
   

Video Ideas for Each Stage of the SaaS Customer Lifecycle

From onboarding to retention, videos enhance the customer experience and increase the user’s ability to learn and self-service on their own timeline. 

Here are some ways that videos can be used at each stage of the SaaS customer lifecycle:

Onboarding Stage

The SaaS onboarding stage is crucial for setting the tone for the rest of the customer's journey. How-to videos can help ensure that customers start off on the right foot and have a positive first impression of your software. This not only saves time for your customer support team but also helps to reduce the likelihood of frustration or confusion for new users.

When customers encounter issues or have questions about your product, videos can provide quick and easy answers. Support teams can use videos to create a library of tutorials that customers can access at any time, reducing the need for one-on-one support and allowing your team to focus on more complex issues.

Onboarding video examples

• Software overview: Set the stage by providing a high-level overview of your software and its key features.
  
  
• Account setup: Walk customers through the account setup process and any initial configuration steps.
  
  
• Getting started: Create a series of short videos that cover common tasks and basic features needed for a user to start getting value out of your software ASAP.
  
  
• Troubleshooting common problems: Analyze your most common support tickets and turn the answers into videos. Customers will be able to self-serve and your support team won’t have to deal with as many of these easily-solved tickets.
  

Engagement Stage

Once a customer is onboarded, the next step is to keep them engaged with your product. Engaged customers are more likely to renew their subscription and refer your product to others, making engagement a crucial part of the customer lifecycle.

Once customers have gotten past the initial learning curve, they will start using your software regularly. Now your job is to ensure they’re fully utilizing your product’s capabilities. Customers may need additional training or guidance to do so, and that’s where the videos come in. 

How-to videos can provide step-by-step instructions on how to use additional features, go deeper on the ones they’re already using, or highlight how upgrades can help. Use videos to turn your customers into power users more quickly and improve their overall experience with your product.

Engagement video examples

• Feature updates and new releases: Show customers how new features work and how they can benefit from them.
  
  
• Best practices: Share best practices and tips for using your product effectively.
  
  
• Advanced features: Demonstrate how to use more advanced features in your software that customers may not be aware of.
  
  
• Tips and tricks: Create short videos that provide tips and tricks for using your software more efficiently. Think shortcuts, key bindings, customizations– the types of things that really streamline a user’s workflow.
  
  
• Use cases: Show how other customers are using your software to solve real-world problems. Users will be able to see the value other customers are getting and may also discover a new way of doing things for themselves.

Renewal and Expansion Stage

As a customer's subscription renewal date approaches, videos can help reinforce the value of your product and increase the likelihood of renewal. By showcasing new features or updates, and highlighting the benefits of continued use, you can remind customers why they chose your product in the first place and why it's worth continuing to invest in.

Ideally, they’ll want to expand their usage or upgrade to a higher tier. And, of course, we want to do everything we possibly can to facilitate that! 

How-to videos can help educate them on the benefits of these options.

• New feature releases: Highlight new features, updates, or upcoming release and how customers can take advantage of them immediately.
  
  
• Upgrades: Highlight the additional features or functionality gained by upgrading.
  
  
• Integration with other tools: Show off how your software integrates with other tools and what value this can provide, as well as how to set it up.

• Personalized videos: Create a personalized video for a target customer showing how they, specifically, could benefit from additional features. Use your knowledge of their company to address specific questions or issues they’ve raised. Tailor what features and upgrades would apply and exactly what value they can expect.

How Videate improves your SaaS customer lifecycle

Videos are a powerful tool throughout the entire SaaS customer lifecycle. From onboarding to advocacy, how-to videos educate, engage, and motivate customers to stay invested in your product.

Videos are a way to scale your team’s capabilities without scaling your headcount. But, as a SaaS company, you probably have constant software updates. Each update can render your videos obsolete, which negatively impacts your customers.

That’s why we created Videate. Videate automatically generates videos from your software, complete with AI voiceover, in minutes. Your customers will always have the most up-to-date information.

Work smarter, not harder– with Videate!