SaaS apps: The apex of customer service

What if you answered the phone one day to a friendly voice offering tech support for some software that had been troubling you? "Not possible," you'd say. We all know the drill with technical difficulties. We call up the software company during business hours and then sit on hold only to get an agent who barely knows the software better than we do. A knowledgeable tech support specialist certainly isn't going to call us at the moment when we're beating our heads against the computer screen. Or will they?

Industry insiders call this "Pinpoint Retention" (PPR) - the ability to detect and resolve customer service issues before they have a chance to become actual problems for the client. The ultimate goal of this specialised retention effort is to prevent customer frustration during the product learning curve that might lead some to cancel membership.

It is a new kind of retention effort that is a by-product of online software applications commonly referred to as "Software as a Service" (SaaS). These suddenly ubiquitous applications include some of the more recognizable names like eBay and Gmail, but there are hundreds of small competing applications out there too, which run the gamut of online services.

SaaS applications differ from client-side software in that there is no CD-ROM installation disk, and user data is stored online rather than on the user's computer. It is this difference that allows these small companies to develop PPR systems aimed squarely at customer satisfaction and retention.

Read the full article here.