Trial conversions - a CS responsibility? Looking for advice

Liam Dunne

Hi all, hope everyone is having a fantastic week!

Some background info:

I was the first CS hire at my company, a fast-growing SaaS startup with 1000+ customers. Before me CS didn't really exist, so I've been building the function from the ground up - it's been an exciting challenge. All of our users have to sign up for a free 30-day trial on the website, they can then upgrade to a paid subscription plan from within the platform. This means they can become trial users, and even customers, without speaking to a human. We have over 1000 trial users per month that are onboarded through native UX design inside the platform, in-app messaging, and automated emails (tech-touch). This obviously means that users are onboarded to our product and have full access before they even become paid customers.

It's my responsibility to create, analyse, and optimise the various journeys that onboard these users. It's a bit different to traditional CS as the goal here is conversion, which I do believe requires a different skillset and approach. I currently manage a project with the aim of increasing conversions; it includes our UX designer, engineers, customer support, marketing, and sales.

I'm also responsible for everything post-revenue such as account management of our tier 1 customers, renewals, expansions, feedback loops, retention, advocacy etc. (all the usual CS stuff)

Has anyone else experienced this and is it normal for CS to be responsible for trial-to-paid conversions? I'm growing the team so would be keen to hear thoughts on the types of skillsets/personas I should be looking for and best practices on scaling a function like this.

Thank you

Rick Emery

Hi, Liam.

I don't find it unusual for CS to own conversions from Free Trial and have always thought of it as simply Customer Training, just before we get paid

It sounds like you have a robust automated experience and a well-rounded team, both of which are nice. Your team does sound like it's on the edge of being too big but the other skillsets I would suggest as you perform your analysis and experiment with changes to the free trial journey include: Data analysis - to be confident that your understanding of your customer journey data is actionable) and actual users - to understand why they go down different branches along their journey.

Whether your free trial is tech touch or top-tier, you need people who are excited about the pressure and reward of the short term win ... which is slightly different from the long-term relationship building that is the more traditional view of Customer Success.

Good luck!