How to Discover and Close Customer Success Gaps

Do you know what comes to mind when your customers think of the word success? If not, you may be missing out on a significant opportunity to build trust with your audience and grow your business.

Success gaps occur when a consumer buys a product but cannot harness the full value of their purchase. This situation can cause friction between businesses and consumers. When someone invests time and money into a brand, they expect that the company will meet and possibly exceed their expectations.

There are plenty of reasons why success gaps can occur, and in some cases, it’s not the fault of your business. However, there are plenty of success-based elements that you can control and should actively improve.

Today, we will go over several tips you can use to discover and close customer success gaps. If implemented properly, the strategies we discuss will help you build stronger connections with your customers, which can lead to more sales, engagement, and brand advocates.

Ready? Let’s dive in!

Check Your Google Analytics Account

Your Google Analytics account can provide you with a wealth of information about your audience’s goals and pain points. These factors all contribute to customer success.

For example, if you have an email marketing firm, and over half of your visitors search for “help building my first email list,” you can safely assume that lead generation is a primary concern for most visitors.

It’s also possible to close success gaps by looking at the pages where visitors often exit. So, if one of your old blog posts has a bounce rate of 80%, it may be time to refresh the content on that page to match more closely with the needs of visitors clicking through to your site.

Once you know why someone wants your product, you can take steps to close the various success gaps experienced by your users. You can either check your Google Analytics account manually or simply add Google Analytics to your website for real-time updates.

Reach Out Through Social Media

Next, let’s talk about how you can discover success gaps on social media. Over 3 billion people use social media, with Facebook alone seeing a whopping 2.74 billion monthly users. Odds are, your target audience is spending time on these social sites engaging with other people and brands.

You can learn more about your audience’s goals and what kind of pain points they are running into both in the industry as a whole and with your product. We like periodically creating surveys and sharing them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. These sites are jam-packed with people who are more than happy to tell us how to provide them with a top-notch experience.

The questions you include in your survey will vary dramatically depending on your industry, product selection, and goals. If you’ve already examined your Google Analytics data, you can use what you learned there to influence your questions.

It’s also possible to close success gaps by practicing social listening. You could join relevant groups in your industry and see what other people are saying about your products and industry goals. Use this information to shape your content, products, and UX to match what visitors expect.

Make it Easy for Customers to Ask Questions

Have you ever had a question before or after purchasing a product, only to discover that the site in question had a very poor customer service system? We’ve all experienced this before, and it’s not a good feeling. The next tip can help you prevent this situation on your site while discovering and closing success gaps.

Customers who struggle to reach your brand will likely feel like your product won’t meet their needs. This situation can also make them feel like you won’t be there if they buy your product and need help.

We suggest investing in a robust customer support channel that has both live agents and chatbots. You want to have as many options for your visitors as possible, so don’t forget to add a simple contact form so old-school customers can send you an email.

Train your support team to keep an eye out for success gaps. For instance, if they get 10 chat sessions every day asking about one specific feature, you can assume that this is a significant gap in the community.

In this sense, you’re learning about the barriers customers are running into with your product or website. If you’ve already resolved some of these issues, your team can close the gap by providing the appropriate resource. In the example mentioned above, the support team could send a document that explains how to use the feature in question.

Publish Relevant, High-Quality Content

Now, let’s talk about how you can effectively close gaps with content. Your blog is the best tool you have for helping customers achieve success with your product or service. Over 47% of online shoppers read 3-5 posts before committing to a brand. When you publish high-quality, actionable content, customers are more likely to see the value in your product.

Once you gather enough discovery data, look over what your visitors had to say and cross-reference common concerns with your blog content. There will likely be plenty of opportunities for you to produce new content that helps close these success gaps.

If you notice people asking about topics you already covered on your blog, this could be a sign that you need to feature it more in your email, social media, and website. It’s easy to see that blogging is essential to meeting your customers’ needs, but you also get the added benefit of increasing your traffic by as much as 2,000%!

Create an Engaging Onboarding Program

Finally, we want to talk about your onboarding program. Many business owners make the mistake of assuming their audience will know how to use their products. While it’s true that some people may be able to find success with a detailed tutorial, many of your users will need this information to succeed.

Onboarding is extremely common in the SaaS world. Business owners and marketing teams create online courses that act as the onboarding program. Instead of blindly fumbling through your software, new customers can see exactly what they need to do to find success with your brand.

We suggest creating multiple courses for varying skill levels. You want to offer plenty of information and resources that visitors can use once they’re done watching your onboarding lessons. We like linking back to relevant blog posts so users can read more about specific topics if they have additional questions.

Final Thoughts

Brand owners and marketing teams across all industries struggle with success gaps. If you’re looking for a way to build rapport with your audience and show them what they can achieve with your product or service, the tips above will help you get started. Assess your discoveries over time and find new gaps to close, and you’re much more likely to see consistent growth.