Customer Engagement Models: Choosing the Right Approach for Your SaaS
Any business knows the importance of customer engagement. Competition is increasing, and it's all too easy for customers to jump to another product if yours doesn't meet their needs. Cultivating loyal customers means continually engaging them, connecting them to the value of your product, and hearing their feedback.
Yet managing all these interactions isn't easy. Research shows that while most business executives say customer engagement significantly impacts their bottom line, only about a third feel their engagement is actually good.
With customer expectations rising and brand allegiance declining, it's crucial to get engagement right. And it all starts with choosing the right customer engagement model.
This guide runs through the ins and outs of each approach and helps you decide which strategy is best for your business.
What Is a Customer Engagement Model?
A customer engagement model is a strategy for managing the post-purchase relationship with customers. It describes how a business interacts with existing customers to improve product adoption and drive retention and success.
There are two main approaches to customer engagement.
Low-touch is a one-to-many approach that's self-service oriented. Customer interactions are largely automated using product tools, making it a less customized experience but one that's highly efficient and scalable.
High-touch is a one-to-one approach. The customer is guided throughout their lifecycle, usually by a dedicated customer success manager. This approach is highly personalized but less efficient and not easily scalable.
These models can be applied to both phases of the post-sale relationship: onboarding (helping new customers set up and begin using your product) and customer success (helping customers get the most value long-term).
What do these models look like in practice? Let's explore.
Low-Touch Onboarding
Low-touch onboarding uses automated tools to help customers get started with your product. This approach works well when your product is easy to implement and digital support is enough to get customers up and running. It's cost-effective and highly scalable, making it ideal for onboarding large numbers of new customers.
Strategies
Create onboarding materials like documents, videos, and checklists to guide customers as they begin using your product. Send drip emails to walk customers through different features over a specific timeframe. Use automated product tours and feature callouts to familiarize customers with your product's capabilities.
Build a customer community to onboard customers, teach them about your product, and connect them to self-service tools. The community becomes a resource that scales without requiring proportional staff investment.
Offer a support line where customers can ask for help from a front-line rep when self-service isn't enough.
When It Works
Low-touch onboarding is ideal when your product has a relatively simple learning curve, when you're onboarding high volumes of customers, and when your price point doesn't support dedicated CSM attention for every account.
High-Touch Onboarding
High-touch onboarding guides customers one-on-one as they integrate your product into their workflow. This approach is best for helping customers implement products with complex features or complicated setup processes.
Although costlier and less scalable than low-touch, high-touch onboarding is crucial for high-value customers who expect dedicated service.
Strategies
Assign each customer a dedicated customer success manager to walk them through product setup and answer questions. Customize onboarding materials to fit each customer's specific needs and use cases.
Offer agent-led feature walkthroughs or product demos to show customers your product in action, highlighting features most relevant for them.
When It Works
High-touch onboarding makes sense when your product requires significant configuration, when implementation involves complex strategizing, and when the customer's contract value justifies dedicated attention.
Low-Touch Customer Success
Low-touch customer success involves continually supporting customers with digital tools as they engage with your brand and product. Some customers simply don't need the individualized experience of a high-touch approach, and a low-touch model lets you offer support to a mass user base efficiently.
Strategies
Build an extensive knowledge base—articles, checklists, FAQs, troubleshooting tips—that customers can reference when they experience roadblocks. Create video courses and tutorials to train customers on new features. Host webinars to teach customers about new product offers or industry best practices.
Send automated product emails and updates to keep customers informed and engaged. Establish a customer community to provide ongoing access to self-service support and connection with peers.
When It Works
Low-touch customer success works when customers can largely self-serve their needs, when your product doesn't require ongoing strategic guidance, and when you need to support many customers without proportionally scaling your team.
High-Touch Customer Success
High-touch customer success involves one-on-one, long-term relationships with your customers. This method is best when using your product involves complex strategizing and goal-monitoring. It's also important for ensuring that high-revenue customers are happy and receiving the service level they expect.
Strategies
Host online or in-person strategy sessions to help customers succeed with your product. Initiate milestone meetings at regular intervals to check on goal progress and address hurdles.
Offer expert consultation as needed to answer questions and provide solutions. Provide personalized training to teach customers the value of newly-released features relevant to their use cases.
When It Works
High-touch customer success is appropriate for enterprise accounts, when your product requires ongoing strategic support to maximize value, and when customer lifetime value justifies the investment in dedicated resources.
The Hybrid Model
While high-touch and low-touch are distinct strategies, you don't have to pick one or the other. Most businesses use a hybrid approach, especially if they have multiple products or pricing tiers marketed differently.
Hybrid models are particularly popular for SaaS businesses with different product tiers at varying price points. These companies often design different customer experiences depending on the complexity and value of what was purchased.
Basic packages tend to be simple to set up with features easy to navigate, so they do well with low-touch strategies. Lower-tier customers bring in less revenue, making dedicated CSM investment less cost-effective.
Higher-level packages require high-touch strategies to help customers properly implement the product, understand feature depth, and get maximum value. These plans bring in more revenue, justifying the higher expense of personalized attention.
Choosing Your Engagement Model
Several factors should inform your choice of engagement model.
Your Revenue Model
Does your revenue support a high-touch model, or do you need to start with low-touch? Your choice should help support revenue growth, not undermine it.
Your Internal Resources
High-touch models require customer success managers with extensive relationship management expertise. If you don't have these resources, high-touch might not work initially.
Low-touch models are more efficient for reaching large numbers of customers with fewer team members. However, setting up the automation and self-service infrastructure requires its own expertise.
Your Customers
High-paying customers expect more dedicated support. Enterprise customers are used to high-touch models and expect CSM support. If these expectations aren't met, it leads to dissatisfaction and churn.
Also consider customer preferences. Younger customers often prefer resolving issues on demand rather than reaching out for assistance, making them well-suited to low-touch models. Research shows significant portions of Millennials and Gen Z prefer self-service tools over speaking with customer service agents.
If you don't have a firm understanding of your customers' needs, you might start with a high-touch model to learn their behavior and trouble points, then evolve toward low-touch as you understand what can be automated.
Product Complexity
If your product is highly technical, low-touch might not cut it. Complicated processes lead to customer frustration, especially among less tech-savvy users. High-touch approaches are necessary to get customers started with complex products.
Churn Risk
Some customers are on the edge of leaving if their needs aren't met. These at-risk customers need immediate attention and personalized care—something low-touch can't provide. High-touch strategies are vital for identifying and resolving issues for customers showing signs of churn.
Building Your Engagement Infrastructure
Whichever model you choose, you're not leaving customers on their own. Low-touch models use product tools to power customer interactions, while high-touch models use dedicated support agents. What's most important is that your strategy aligns with both your organization's resources and your customers' needs.
Community platforms play a valuable role in both models. For low-touch engagement, community provides scalable self-service support and peer connection. For high-touch engagement, community extends the relationship beyond CSM interactions and creates space for customers to learn from each other.
Bettermode offers the infrastructure for both approaches—knowledge bases and Q&A spaces for self-service, discussion forums for peer learning, and the ability to create exclusive spaces for high-touch accounts that warrant additional attention.
Ready to build your engagement model? Talk to sales for a demo.
FAQs
Can we change our engagement model over time?
Yes, and most companies do. Many start with high-touch to learn customer needs, then evolve toward low-touch as they understand what can be automated. Others start low-touch and add high-touch elements for enterprise customers as they move upmarket.
How do we know if our engagement model is working?
Track retention rates, product adoption metrics, customer satisfaction scores, and support ticket volume. Compare these across customer segments to see whether your model is serving different customer types effectively.
What if we can't afford high-touch for any customers?
Focus on building excellent low-touch infrastructure: comprehensive knowledge base, active community, clear onboarding flows, and proactive communication. Many successful SaaS companies serve customers entirely through low-touch models. The key is making self-service genuinely helpful, not just cheaper.
How do we transition customers between models?
Be intentional about the handoff. If a customer upgrades and qualifies for high-touch, introduce their CSM personally. If a customer downgrades to low-touch, ensure they know how to access self-service resources and community support. The transition shouldn't feel like abandonment.
