Business impact
Driving AI innovation with internal hackathons [Webinar]
Learn how to build your AI strategy with hackathons.
Read more
Here’s how private customer hackathons reduce churn and drive revenue growth.
In today’s busy SaaS landscape, reducing churn and driving expansion with customers has the attention of every leadership team. To win in these areas, you need your customers' engineering teams to understand your product's full capability, experiment with new use cases, and provide your product team with actionable feedback.
Customer hackathons allow you to do all three. These events allow you to engage directly with customers and gain valuable insights along the way. Customer hackathons drive innovation and are key to long-term product adoption, improving customer retention, and well-trained customers. Let's dive into what you need to know about these impactful events.
Private customer hackathons are competitions held by companies for a select group of their customers. Just like in a regular hackathon, participants are asked to experiment and build against a deadline. The biggest difference is who can attend, as participants are usually specifically invited and the results are typically not shared publicly.
Customer hackathons allow you to improve product adoption, drive revenue, reduce churn, and gather highly specific insights from your existing customers.
Companies like SAP run customer hackathons as a way to drive customer engagement.
“Hackathons are extremely valuable for understanding the customer challenges in a short time, testing the practicality of the SAP service, and improving the functionalities and user experience,” said Nico Wyss, Solutions Advisor at SAP.
Customer hackathons help customers overcome the hurdle of learning or integrating your product. Read more about the ways these events can help you connect with customers and drive revenue.
You probably already provide training during customer onboarding. Why not make it a memorable experience for customers? Customer hackathons are a fun and effective way to train customers on using your platform. These events help customers learn more about your product, improve their skills, and find new ways to use it effectively.
Through workshops, demos, and hands-on hackathons, customers enhance their skills and learn to use your platform in a way that caters to their needs. This unlocks additional value from your product—and further solidifies its place in their workflows.
One of the best ways to sell your offering is to show your offering. Your prospects and customers are a lot more likely to use your product if they see exactly how it benefits them. While it sounds obvious in theory, actually getting customers to add your product to their workflows is another story—which is where customer hackathons come in.
In private customer hackathons, you can customize demos and use cases to meet their specific needs and pain points. Your customers and prospects will be incentivized to learn or integrate your product, which goes a long way in building a loyal user base that’ll stick around for the long haul.
Churn is the enemy of any subscription-based business. However, ensuring your clients know your product and integrate it into their workflows is the key to reducing churn.
Hosting private customer hackathons reduces churn in a number of ways:
At the end of the day, all these benefits of customer hackathons culminate in one overarching goal: driving revenue growth. Private customer hackathons let you choose participants from your target audience, including potential customers who are evaluating your product. Letting them try your product firsthand can help them make decisions faster than just hearing a sales pitch.
After the hackathon, you can capitalize on the momentum generated during the event and weave it into your follow-up strategy. Whether that’s personalized follow-up emails, targeted content, or offering additional training, use the insights gained from your hackathon to show prospective customers exactly why they should work with you.
Customer hackathons aren’t just about training your customers. They're also about collaboration, ideation, and problem-solving—for customers and your colleagues. Getting your company’s developers and product teams involved in the event gives them a chance to see firsthand how customers interact with the product. Not only can these insights inspire innovation among your team members, but customers who are challenged to use your product in a new way will likely uncover ideas for improvement or new features.
Customer hackathons allow you to break the mold of a traditional sales pitch. Not only do they create a fun experience, but these events provide customers with real value as they learn how to solve their business challenges with your product.
To give your customers the best experience possible, use a hackathon platform to make sure everything runs smoothly. A platform like Devpost for Teams (DFT) streamlines hackathon management for organizers and is easy for participants to use.
Now’s the time to embrace the idea of customer hackathons and create a memorable, valuable experience. Your customers—and your bottom line—will thank you for it.
