One of my favorite doughnut shop proverbs is “as you go through life brother, whatever be your goal, keep your eye on the doughnut and not on the hole.” However for enterprise SaaS tech companies, I beg to differ (a little).
For complex SaaS offerings, one of the root causes of customer angst is often what I refer to as the ‘doughnut hole’ in the customer journey. This is the step on the post-sale path where the vendor wants to declare that the system is implemented, but the customer may not have quite launched all of the processes and features they imagined when they made their purchase decision. It is also the time when the customer team may not be quite stable enough to be self-sufficient. From the vendor’s perspective, this point in the journey is often when the relationship is handed off from the implementation team to the customer success team and the customer support team. On the customer side, they frequently have team members coming and going as the implementation winds down. All of the new people show up with new requirements and lots of questions about past decisions. Unfortunately, the new people are joining right when all of the vendor resources are also in flux, and the launch can fall into the doughnut hole.
The transition from implementation to operation is like a child learning to ride a bike. Implementation is when the bike has training wheels and it is hard to fall off. Once the implementation phase is “over,” it is like taking the training wheels off and letting go to send the customer peddling on their own. Some children instantly get it and take off, while others fall and want to put back the training wheels, or quit and never ride again. Similarly, some customers “get it” and are immediately self-sufficient, while others panic and become dissatisfied. The transition from implementation to operation is a very shaky and stressful time in the customer journey, and it is certainly not a time to let the customers fall into the doughnut hole.
A contributing factor to the doughnut hole is similar to a concept from a seminal tech business book by Geoff Moore called “Crossing the Chasm.” Moore suggests that early buyers are often visionaries with a grand vision of what they want, and no matter how clearly a vendor describes what they actually have to offer, the visionary imagines that the vendor has exactly what they want. Moore says it can be nearly impossible to make a visionary happy. The chasm is the gap between these visionary early buyers and the bigger mainstream market. You need the visionaries to stick with you and be references so you can grow your offering and cross the chasm to sell to mainstream customers, but first you need to find a way to make them happy. If you don't cross the chasm, you are stuck on the wrong side with unhappy visionary customers.
From a little less macro view, think of the visionary as the senior buyer at your customer, and think of the people who actually have to implement and deploy the system as the mainstream. The buyer had a vision and made a lot of assumptions about the system the vendor was selling. However, decisions were made all along the implementation journey that may not quite align with the initial vision. Each deviation may have seemed small at the time, but each step off of the visionary’s path is like a grain of sand in the machinery. Eventually, the grit adds up and the machine grinds to a halt with a very unhappy customer. Commitments and promises the visionary made to upper management are missed, and the customer is left trying to figure out what to do - get back on the bike or run away.
This is the worst possible time for a SaaS vendor to miss commitments or promises, or to be slow to respond when the customer is in a panic. Unfortunately, this moment in too many journeys aligns with the handoff doughnut hole in our support model. This moment is when the trajectory of the relationship with the customer hangs in the balance - will they pull through and become delighted, or will they be soured and look for an exit at the earliest opportunity? Being truly customer-centric means anticipating the issues and adjusting processes to avoid the problems. ‘Keep your eye on the hole,’ and keep the customer on track for success.