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Struggling to convert trial users? Watching customer churn eat into your growth?
You're facing a classic engagement problem.
A customer engagement model can turn these fly-by-night users into advocates who happily stick around. PLGs use engagement models to strategically map every customer interaction to build relationships that boost product usage, expansion, and revenue growth.
In this guide, we'll compare five proven customer engagement models with guidance to implement the perfect model for your SaaS business.
A customer engagement model is a structured approach that maps out how a company will interact with customers throughout their journey with your SaaS solution.
Each customer engagement model has distinct touchpoints, communication methods, and relationship-building strategies. When done well, these models create positive customer experiences that naturally fuel business growth.
Many SaaS companies, especially those with PLG models, use customer engagement strategies to:
Let’s learn how effective customer engagement models can plug into a customer’s journey for maximum business results (and happy customers!).
Customer engagement occurs along various stages of a customer's journey. Modern SaaS organizations use these five engagement stages to map corresponding customer engagement strategies:
Understanding each stage helps marketing, product, customer support, and customer success teams create targeted experiences that move customers to the next stage.
First comes Evaluation. Here, potential customers assess your solution against competitors. They visit your site, review pricing, and (possibly) book a demo before officially signing up. To get to the next stage, a customer must subscribe to your SaaS solution.
Activation occurs during the onboarding process of a SaaS product. To complete this stage, a customer must hit their "aha moment," a brief-yet-crucial period when they see the solution’s value and possibilities to make their lives easier and more rewarding.
At the Adoption stage, engagement helps customers build lasting habits with your solution. To be successful here, you’ll have to see new, casual users turn into daily active users.
During Expansion, customers deepen their relationship with your product. They master advanced features and encourage colleagues to join the product, potentially upgrading their plans.
Finally, Advocacy turns satisfied customers into passionate ambassadors who recommend your product to others.
As you’ll soon see, different engagement models focus on distinct stages in a customer’s journey.
If you need a mnemonic device to help you remember these models, think of the number five. We’ve just discussed the five stages of customer engagement with a product. Now, we’ll lay out five customer engagement models that speak to each journey stage.
While all five customer engagement models aim to move a customer to the next stage, the models' methods to encourage advancement differ.
Each model also performs best at particular stages of a customer journey. Although we’ll discuss this in more detail, here’s a highlight reel.
High-touch engagement involves personalized interaction between your customer success managers (CSMs) and your customers throughout their journey. It’s the most "speak with a human" customer engagement model.
This approach works especially well for enterprise SaaS platforms and complex solutions where customers need guidance to fully see a platform’s value.
When it’s used: This model spans all five stages but proves most crucial during the Activation and Adoption phases. During Activation, your CSMs help new customers experience those "aha moments" quickly.
As customers move into Adoption, your CSMs check in regularly to help cement those valuable usage habits and highlight business successes that result from using the solution.
How it works: Customer success managers build relationships through scheduled meetings, personalized support, and customized implementation plans. They anticipate client needs and offer strategic guidance.
Pros: The high-touch approach creates higher customer satisfaction, lifetime value, and product usage while reducing time-to-value.
Cons: It’s tough to scale a high-touch model. Investing in people, time, and training means each CSM can only handle so many accounts effectively. The resources required make this practical only for accounts with sufficient revenue potential.
With low-touch engagement, your product does most of the training and guidance.
This approach uses automation and self-service resources to move customers through the stages in their journey. It complements product-led growth strategies where your product drives customer success.
When it’s used: This model delivers most during Evaluation and Activation. It's particularly effective for products with free trials, intuitive interfaces, and value propositions that users can discover quickly.
How it works: Your customers navigate the various stages of their journey through automated resources like help centers and chatbots, as well as timely in-app tips and email nudges.
Appcues helps B2B SaaS companies run smooth, low-touch customer engagement with no-code workflows incorporating in-app guidance, email messaging, and text notifications. Events in the workflows are triggered either by time passed or a customer behavioral trigger.
Pros: Improved scalability. It reduces operational costs, creates consistent experiences, and lets users progress at their own pace.
In fact, when video marketing platform Wistia began to use an in-app welcome video in their onboarding for new users, they soon saw an increased activation rate of 20%.
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Cons: Without a personal touch, some customers might miss out on discovering your product's full potential. Spotting at-risk customers and avoiding churn becomes trickier without direct human conversations.
The hybrid approach gives you the best of high- and low-touch customer engagement models. SaaS organizations combine personalized human interactions with automated engagement in a hybrid model.
When it’s used: This model works well across the entire customer journey but really shines during the Adoption and Expansion stages. During these moments in their journey with your platform, customers benefit from automated guidance and strategic human touchpoints.
How it works: Day-to-day questions are often served by your knowledge base and chatbots, while feature or product adoption challenges often get a call from a customer success manager. The technology handles the routine while your team focuses on moments that build relationships.
Appcues can automate multi-channel customer engagement so the humans on your team can focus on the high-touch personalization side of the hybrid model.
Email platform Litmus used Appcues to personalize engagement to its customer segments and saw its feature adoption rate increase by 2,100%.
Pros: This approach delivers the personal connection of a high-touch model without large resource requirements. You can scale more effectively while keeping customers happy, and your team spends its time where it creates the most impact.
Cons: Getting the balance right takes work. Too many automated interactions might feel impersonal, while too many human touchpoints defeat the efficiency goal.
This model observes how customers use your product and steps in automatically when warning signs appear. Customers will receive targeted messaging based on their behavioral triggers if a noticeable dip or spike occurs.
When it’s used: This model works best during the Adoption and Expansion stages. Automation activates when usage metrics indicate potential retention risks or, on the flip side, reveal upgrade opportunities.
How it works: The system monitors behavioral signals like login frequency, feature usage, and engagement metrics. The system sends well-timed interventions depending on an uptick or downturn in these trends.
For example, if customers haven't logged in for a week, they might receive an email highlighting unused features. Or, when they hit usage limits, an in-app notification can suggest a plan upgrade.
AI content collaboration tool Writic noticed the inactivity of one of its users and sent a gentle email nudge to return to the platform.
Pros: This scalable model allows for customized engagement across many customers. It identifies at-risk accounts early, providing time to address concerns before customers leave.
Cons: Automated systems occasionally miss customer needs that human representatives would normally detect.
This final model differs the most from the previous four. It rarely engages customers in-app or via email. And instead of engagement being directed by a CSM or SaaS marketer, conversations are often led by the platform’s customers.
When it’s used: This community-led model gets its best results during the Adoption, Expansion, and Advocacy stages. Customers here typically understand the value of your platform and want to become more active with its development.
How it works: In an out-of-app gathering space like a Discord server, Slack or private Facebook group, or Circle community, customers can vote on roadmap priorities, participate in beta testing, or give feedback on wireframes of upcoming features. Customer feedback and customer insights help product direction, influence product messaging, and signal possible retention issues.
In this example, social media management tool Buffer encourages this customer to try its beta features and join its Discord community.
Pros: Customers feel especially valued when asked for their opinions in a closed forum. This exclusive feeling often translates to increased brand loyalty. When product questions are asked here, peer-to-peer assistance reduces support costs.
Health IT services provider PatientSky has used product feedback loops to reduce their support team’s tickets by 30%.
Cons: Building strong communities requires consistent moderation. Discussions can drift off-topic, become dominated by a vocal minority, or turn against your platform.
Which of the five customer engagement models are you tempted to try?
Before you move forward with that model, or even bring it up to a colleague, consider the following questions about your ICP, product, team resources, and growth.
Understanding your customer engagement model is essential for sustainable business growth. The right engagement strategies transform casual users into loyal advocates by creating meaningful interactions at every stage of their journey.
Remember that:
Appcues provides the tools to create seamless in-app experiences that guide users to their "aha moments" and beyond. From onboarding flows to SMS messaging, Appcues helps you deliver the right message to the right user at the right time.
Start your free trial today and see how Appcues can automate your engagement strategy while maintaining that personal touch.
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