Every decent business resource, whether it is a book, school or magazine teaches the importance of customer service. The problem we have in heeding that advice is that customers have to be receptive, available and listening. In the SaaS world, one thing we get is that our customers login each and every day. Minimally we can agree that when they use the service, they do indeed login.
When a customer logs in you have a great opportunity to communicate with them. One place in particular to convey information should be within your application status page. This page should provide application monitoring information that is specifically suited for end-user consumption. Many SaaS companies think of their application status page, as the trust center. Organizations even have their URL as trust.domainname.com. Why is it that we don’t then take advantage of this, by providing more application monitoring related information to build trust?
Within StatusCast, a platform for providing end-users with real-time application status, the capability exists to report on informational items. You want to make your status page sticky? Then give your customers information that is easily consumable and worthwhile. This type of end-user information is significantly different from the kind of information that would be communicated via an application monitoring solution that focuses on communicating with internal IT staff.
One of those bits of information we like to provide on our end-user application status page is change log information. In case you are more of a marketing focused vs. technical person, a change log is the record of changes that happen between versions of your software. Sometimes change logs might show the actual computer programming functions, but in this case we are primarily discussing change functionality that would be relevant to the user of the system.
Change logs have various formats that they follow, but this isn’t the importance here – the relevant fact is that a customer can go to one place to find out complete status about the application that they depend on. Additionally because StatusCast unifies communication, allowing the SaaS vendor to send out messages to several destinations through one interface – your customer/end-user can receive application status alerts through twitter, SMS and social avenues.
Developing a customer-focused application monitoring page that includes the elements mentioned above will set you apart from the competition and will help you to establish a more trusting, lasting relationship with your clients. Remember, your customers are becoming smarter every day, and many of them need to be reminded why they are with your service vs. a competitor. You have a weapon in your arsenal plain as day; use your trust center to effectively communicate with your customer, and retain that customer for life.
