On the focus on Quiet customers in the QCP model – you seem to have honed in on the same idea as Jim about attrition. Those folks are definitely the ones at risk. You also raised the specter of past challenges for me with your comment about “not be seen solving a critical problem any more.” I was an employee for an enterprise software (and custom software development services) company for many years. We had clients that after using our products (and paying maintenance fees) for several years, who felt exactly that way. Actually, the “great big problem” we solved for them was solved so well that it lost visibility as a “great big problem” to be replaced by the cost of our solution as the “currently biggest problem.” Ah, memories.

When you mention clients with constrained budgets – are you saying “QCP customers who might not increase the footprint, but will continue to be customers?” If so – I completely agree.

Thinking about QCP “ratios” is an interesting one – I should scan in one of the pages from my idea notebook :) with a handy graph. This also ties in to some of the measurement ideas that Dan Olsen (@danolsen) addresses in his Product Management by Numbers: Using Metrics to Optimize Your Product slideshare presentation.

Also – I think your ideas on actively engaging the Quiet customers is pretty important. On the drive home today, I was trying to visualize the argument for making an investment in “marketing” to your existing customers. Something along the ‘permission marketing’ lines, combined with ‘conversation marketing.’

When you mentioned “hosted and on-demand” – did you mean “on-premise?” I hope so, or I have some more jargon-absorption to do. :)

You make a great point about traditional sales models encouraging your employees to “move on” to the next not-yet-a-customer, leaving the already-a-customer people at risk of neglect. You’ve also opened an interesting thread – it isn’t just about acquisition of customers, there’s a very real barrier to “first use” that gets between “sign up” and the QCP model. Maybe the comments will head in that direction – definitely an interesting topic – where do brand-new users live in the model? I’ll have to think about that some.

Also – great to capture the notion of “replacing a customer” – good visceral embodiment of the “loss of a customer” which doesn’t seem to affect people (at least me) emotionally, as much. I’m going to steal that – thanks!

Yes, they are good users of the system and paying the bills on time. But, they are also generally the source of attrition, as they tend to get neglected by virtue of their limited level of engagement. As a result, you may not be engaged with them during critical times in their business cycle (perhaps during budgeting for the next year) or you might not be seen as solving a critical business problem anymore.

Even for clients with constrained budgets, it’s important to stay on their radar, understand their needs, and position ways you can help them solve their problems within their budgetary constraints. Ensure they see the value of your solution every month.

I’d argue that every SaaS should do a regular assessment of clients as to where they fall on the QCP scale. If you have a few too many in the “Quiet” column, it’s time to send some emails, make some calls, or do an onsite meeting or two. Not every client will be in the Promoting category, and many might just be scraping in to the Conversing group – but better there than the Quiet masses who suddenly terminate service.

The “long-term relationship” as you stated is critical, especially in SaaS. The breakdown often starts when traditional sales models immediately impact new customers by leaving them without a person who “manages the account” or the organization has an ineffective “customer support” team, process or mentality and not a real customer relationship. While SaaS may offload the infrastructure and applications hosting aspects and costs, it doesn’t eliminate the real implementation issues that impact customers. Customization, implementation and methods have to be in place to make it successful. Most SaaS organizations fail to initially use professional services and rely on sales engineers, customer support, product management and even development to “get the customer” enabled.

This leads to your comment about inactivity and activity with customers. “You either forgot to think about your customers, or you thought about them as active or inactive.” In the SaaS world, they’re either active, engaged and receiving value or their history. The causal effect of replacing any customer always cost “X %” more than keeping one. Organizations contemplating a new SaaS-based offering or migrating to the model have to thoroughly analyze the current business systems and ask themselves if they can really afford to make the transition.