Is a Drop in Satisfaction Among SaaS Users a Concern?

Jan 26, 2007 by Sinclair Schuller

I bumped into an article at Computer World titled Survey: SAAS satisfaction dropping as customer interest expands. The article highlights a report by the Cutter Consortium and Jeffrey Kaplan of THINKstrategies. In summary, the report discusses an interesting trend in a drop in customer satisfaction among SaaS users despite the fact that interest in the delivery model continues to grow as does the user base. Kaplan “hit the nail on the head” so to speak when it comes to the why; user expectation in a growing market doesn’t synch up with what is provided, hence the drop in satisfaction. As Kaplan noted, this is a side effect of a growing market but did offer a cautious warning to both users and vendors when it comes to expectation. This notion of expectation vs. deliverable is something I wrote about earlier (in a sense). If you look at the diagram, you’ll notice a center piece that defines value. That can be drastically skewed and misinterpreted based on expectation and perception, that’s the SaaS ‘minefield’. I think there is more to this reduced satisfaction, however, than just gaps in deliverables and expectations.

Part of it is because of the changing end user demographic. This is best explained using the classic technology adoption life cycle curve (borrowed from Visio, of course):

(bigger)

The curve, aside from defining relative market size, also highlights demographic and psychographic changes. One of the psychographic components deals with acceptance of a new technology. Although I won’t make a claim to where SaaS is on the curve, what I will note is those that are to the left end of the curve tend to be more forgiving of technology flaws and hiccups (if you’re an innovator, you’re the guy/gal who buys the buggy “would be beta” products without documentation simply because of cool factor, and think it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread even when it crashes and erase your life’s work). As we progress to the right, the market becomes less forgiving; they expect quality, zero bugs (yeah, right), and documentation. As the market of SaaS end users grows, it only grows to the right. Any new end users will find themselves less satisfied than expected (particularly those reaching over the chasm to hoist a SaaS provider over) because they are further right than their predecessors. As a result of this, you’ll see a drop in overall satisfaction. Now, this drop should bottom out overtime, and potentially start to increase again. The real warning is if it doesn’t bottom out (this tends to be the fault of providers), but SaaS isn’t going there.

As I said, I won’t make an attempt to position SaaS adoption on the curve (a different article), but I’m pretty confident we’re still far left. Market growth coupled with changing psychographics is the primary culprit here as each new end user comes to SaaS with stricter requirements. I wouldn’t get worried about this trend at this point, and in fact, 80% satisfaction is still pretty dang good.