5 Ways Strong SaaS Stories Reduce Churn

Crafting the perfect narrative for your software brand requires taking a deep look into your company’s strengths as they relate to your customer’s needs and motivations. Falling short in understanding these motivations on a deep level leads to bad news for your brand. That’s right—we’re talking churn.

The word “churn” is not exactly music to a SaaS company’s ears as they focus on building a community of loyal users—and maybe even seek funding to help them scale big. Luckily, there are ways to help prevent those pesky high churn rates. Our favorite? Firmly rooting your brand in a strategic narrative strong enough to weather changes that may arise in the market or the world’s context at large (psst: read how to get started here).

Nailing that strategic story is challenging...but it’s also fun. By delivering product information in engaging story form, you unlock the capacity of humans to have a deeper understanding about the company strategy and why it’s important. Here are 5 ways that this translates into a lower churn rate: 

1. Aligning your internal teams

It's a tale as old as time: a software product so complex and technical that every employee explains its value proposition differently. It's easy to see why this happens—your software product can remedy various business needs, and that's a big reason why it's got growth potential. But getting clear alignment on who exactly your brand is going to be and positioning from there will set the company down a realistic path to turning that vision into a reality. Because at the end of the day, a clear vision is a prerequisite to company growth.

2. Raising the bar of customer service

Your strategic narrative should extend beyond creative into every corner of your brand—including customer service. Consider how the hero of your story, your brand, would approach customer service. With teams aligned around a core vision and a strong storyline permeating every customer touchpoint, your audience will feel as though they know your brand on a more personal level. And that's going to make communicating with them easier and more effective.

3. Creating trust that becomes loyalty

What does easy communication, a clear vision, and effective customer service build? Yep. The million-dollar word: trust. Getting that story straight and communicating it consistently across all channels and touchpoints builds trust between you and your audience which will fight churn directly.

4. Identifying the sneaky culprit

If you're struggling with churn, you might be assuming it means there is a problem with your product. But...let's not go there quite yet. Your problem could be as simple as a shaky brand narrative. Nailing that narrative and executing a winning storytelling strategy will help you rule out potential culprits to your high churn rate and get to the root of your problems faster.

5. Providing a long-term strategy

Finally (and most importantly), a well-developed brand narrative isn’t just a fleeting story to fulfill a short-term need. It’s the groundwork of a sustainable strategy to help your SaaS company scale and grow—making sure that your messaging can keep up. The bottom line? An investment in your story is an investment in your company’s future.

As you get started, here are 4 questions to keep in mind for a deeper SaaS story. And head over here for the inside scoop on our work with Slack, Hootsuite, Campaign Monitor, and more.