I recently spoke at the ProductGeeks conference organized by NextBigWhat in Bangalore on the 14th of April, 2018. The topic of my talk was on how SaaS startups can use customer development to build their product/growth

1. Using Customer Development to Build
Your SaaS Startup
Arpit Rai, VP Product @ WebEngage

2. About Me
● Career
○ Currently VP, Products at WebEngage
○ 1st product hire at BrowserStack
○ Full-stack programmer by hobby. Only side-project that became popular: ghatiparty.com
○ Mostly SaaS experience. No B2C experience
○ SaaS experience at different stages
■ BrowserStack (3-3-2-2-2)
■ WebEngage (3-3-2-2-2)
● Blog
○ Thoughts on product and growth in SaaS: https://www.medium.com/@arpitrai

3. Agenda
1. What is customer development?
2. Why do you need it? Where can it be used?
3. How do you do it?
*My presentation may not be applicable to B2C. Mostly SaaS

4. What is Customer
Development?

5. What is Customer Development (1 of 2)
❌ It’s not asking customers what they want and building it
❌ It’s not running surveys

6. What is Customer Development (2 of 2)
It’s about speaking to your customers to validate your hypothesis so that you can
figure out the right problem to solve
Solutions are easy. Figuring out the right problem to solve is not. Ideas are NOT
overrated!
Eg. BrowserStack: 0 to <$XX M in 5 years. First 2 weeks only research & talking to people. They didn’t realize it but they were doing customer
development
In SaaS, you’re not always the user of your product as compared to B2C
Eg. WebEngage: I do SaaS but work with companies in B2C space so without customer development I will never develop any empathy

7. Why is it needed & Where
can it be used?

8. Why do you need Customer Development? (1 of 2)
Build something that has a real chance of success
Grow your revenues through new customers and existing customers

9. Why do you need Customer Development? (2 of 2)
Quantitative analysis only indicates where the problem exists. Doesn’t answer
why the problem exists
Use qualitative analysis / customer development to figure out your solution

10. Where can you use Customer Development?
Pre-PMF: What should you even build?
Post-PMF: What do you build? How do you grow? What are the bottlenecks in the
growth funnel?
Conversion
Acquisition
Retention &
Expansion
Post-PMF Growth Funnel

11. My Experiences

12. Experience 1: BrowserStack

13. Increase Conversion
Goal: Increase the visitor to purchase conversion rate at BrowserStack
Quantitative data helped us figure out the bottlenecks in the funnel (3 4, 5 6)
But we could not answer why the problem existed only with quantitative data
Step 1: Visit Website
Step 2: Sign-up
Step 3: Test on 1 to 2 Browsers
Step 4: Real Usage: Features/More Tests
Step 5: Visit Pricing Page
Step 6: Checkout & Purchase

14. Increase Conversion: Approach
1. Segment customers
● Regions: 1, 2 and 3
● Size of Company: Freelancer, Agency, Startup, SME, Enterprise
● Title
● Industry
2. Decided to ask customers why they did not proceed beyond Step 3 and Step 5
3. Create a summary based on the various calls
4. Device the plan of action

15. Increase Conversion: Questions We Asked
Some questions we asked:
● Why did they register on BrowserStack?
● Did they face any problems while testing on BrowserStack?
● Why did they not purchase a subscription?
● What were the alternative they were using?
● What were the problems they faced with the alternatives?

16. Increase Conversion: Call Summary
Customer Segment Testing
Maturity
Testing
Frequency
Testing
Scope
Current
Setup
Pricing
Feedback
Team Size Team
Structure
Customer 1
Customer 2
Customer 3
Customer 4
Customer 5

17. Increase Conversion: Identify Common Patterns
● Persona 1
○ Don’t want to test on mobile emulators
● Persona 2
○ Need to test only occasionally. Multiple free accounts. Trial usage was more than enough for
occasional needs
● Persona 3
○ Pricing was too complicated
● Persona 4
○ Pricing didn’t suit my requirements
● Everyone
○ Testing experience too slow

18. Increase Conversion: Create Solutions
Multiple free accounts
● Limited trial to certain browsers only
Too slow / Emulators / Other technical issues
● Make testing faster
● Real mobile devices
Pricing
● Revamp
Occasional testing
● Make testing continuous / add more value to product / build other products

19. Experience 2: WebEngage

20. WebEngage Evolution
On-site Software
* Notification
* Survey
* Feedback
2015 - 2016
Full Suite B2C Retention Marketing Software
* Analytics
* Segmentation
* Engagement (On-site, Push, In-app, Email …)
* Personalization

21. Why the Evolution
Objectives
● Steady growth → Exponential growth
● Occupy the non-enterprise B2C retention marketing space
What actually happened
● Some growth
● Lots of competition start doing similar things so not so strong differentiation
Needed to speak with customers to figure out our USP

22. Customer Development
● Lots of feature requests
○ Add new channels - Facebook, Google etc.
○ More integrations
○ ….
● But when we asked them about use cases, they were generally too
complicated
● Had to read between the lines to figure out what to do next

23. WebEngage’s Biggest USP: Journey Designer

24. How do you do Customer
Development?

25. Getting Started (1 of 3)
Step 1: Start with a hypothesis you’re trying to validate. Frequency depends
Step 2: Identify your users (segment them - region, industry etc.)
Step 3: Create a list of users to speak with: Existing, Others (LinkedIn, Twitter…)
Step 4: Get on calls. Users (some) love to talk (Heroes, Feel good, Feel important)
Step 5: Take notes, summarize, device plan of action

26. Questions You Can Ask (2 of 3)
● About the company (what it does, industry, number of employees)
● About the person (objectives, responsibilities at work etc.)
● Their single biggest challenge and other problems they face
● The last time they faced the problem(s) and how often do they face it?
● How does this problem impact their business or how much time and money does this problem
cost their company?
● How are they currently solving the problem?
● Problems with their current solution

27. During the Call & After (3 of 3)
Don’t
● Don’t bias your customers with do you think this is good, should we do this, A or B or C etc.
Instead ask only open-ended questions
● No surveys. Surveys only for yes/no validation
Do
● Always take brief notes during calls. Difficult to remember who said what later
● After you’re done with all calls, create summary sheet
● After just 10 to 15 calls, you’ll start seeing patterns in your summary sheet. You can stop when you
start hearing the same things
● Convert patterns into findings, prioritize, execute
● Get a customer advisory board in place

28. Questions?
Twitter: @arpitrai | Medium: @arpitrai | Email: arpitrai@gmail.com