I recently read an article in Software Executive magazine about customer success. While this information related specifically to the software industry, it could easily be applied to virtually any business. The story talked about going beyond just answering your customers’ questions and focused more on getting the users of your product to use more of the capabilities built into your product.

At Red Wing Software, we have a team that focusses on creating helpful information for using our software. This includes installation instructions, getting started guides, online documents and videos that help our users navigate through the processes of getting information into the software, and running the reports needed to make informed financial decisions for your business.

In addition to these helpful documents, videos, and “How2” instructions, we offer multi-day classroom training, one and two-hour webinars on specific functionality, and on-site professional services. While we try to make it as easy as we can to use the software, we are spending additional resources to help our customers get more out of their software investment.

I challenge everyone to take a look at the product or service they sell and look for ways to help your customers get more out of your offering. You have invested a lot of time, money, and energy to create the products your business offers. Are your customers taking advantage of all the effort you have invested, or are they just using enough to get by?

I also challenge all of our customers to take advantage of what we have created over the last 39 years of software development. Poke around a little in the many reports in the system. You can’t hurt anything in your data by running reports, and you might find some valuable information about your business that you can use to be more profitable.