B2B SaaS Features

In B2B SaaS, organizations expect products to match their unique business needs.

Now, allowing customers to mold a product as they wish requires a level of abstraction.

PMs often look towards "Builders" to accomplish this.

Form builders.
Workflow builders.
Page builders.

Features that let you develop components with complete control.

Now, here's where PMs feel that since they've put the power in the hands of the user, they've done their part in enabling them to carve whatever they wish.

Well, not really.

Firstly, "builders" represent a lot of manual work at the customer's end.

Customers want more control but not at the expense of their time.

Secondly, they may not have the expertise to use "builders" effectively. e.g. A page builder allows them to stitch any design but they feel challenged to choose the right fonts, blocks, visuals etc. to "look impressive".

Thus, it's imperative that PMs create a "kickstart layer" on top of a builder that helps users gain momentum.

Examples?

1. Templates e.g. Mailchimp gives you a head start with a variety of use cases.

2. Playbooks e.g. Drift offers ready-made chatbots for common scenarios.

3. Smart defaults e.g. Google Forms auto-sets a suitable question type based on the question text.