Jane Price, Vice President of Product Marketing at BluStream, explains how proactive dialogue adds value to the overall customer experience, prevents churn and grows revenue.
When we think of “personalization” we often think of pre-purchase communication that’s tailored to address a customer by name, acknowledge what they’ve been viewing on a website, or apply basic demographic information. That’s great for targeting, but not so great for consumers.
According to a recent McKinsey report, 71% of consumers want personalized outreach with brands AFTER that initial purchase – moreover, doing so can generate up to 40% more revenue. Consumers want brands to recognize them as individuals, know their interests and invest in a relationship, not just a transaction. As such, customer experiences need to evolve in real-time to understand a customers’ preferences, skill level, and actual product usage in order to achieve proactive and personalized engagement throughout the product lifecycle.
In practical terms, this means that consumers want more than a package to arrive on their doorstep. They want experiences that are tailored to their skill level, the product they purchased, and the way they are using it. By understanding the specific needs of each customer and marrying that with the product they purchased, brands can proactively initiate highly engaging and helpful conversations with their customers that deliver on what consumers crave – attention.
For consumer packaged goods, subscription and retail brands, focusing on the ownership phase to build relationships, anticipate and support customers around common challenges, and gain valuable insights is critical. In a world where 50% of customers are never seen again after that first purchase, a laser focus on product ownership experience can be the difference between success and failure. Let’s delve into how brands can make the most of that phase, the actionable information that brands with a 360-degree view of customers will have, and act on and how post-purchase personalization done right prevents churn —the number one issue facing consumer brands today.
Shifting the Focus – From Customer Acquisition to Customer Ownership
Enormous resources and skill are put into acquisition – refining models and flows to build awareness, share knowledge, and engage customers in making that first purchase. The same is true when there’s an issue. When it comes to customer support, companies are ready with everything from basic FAQs and content to well-trained and empowered customer service teams and tools. The challenge is in ownership – when the package arrives at the doorstep or the customer walks out of the store there is a “post-purchase black hole” where brands lose connection to their customers at a crucial point where consumers are looking for guidance and assurance that they made the right choice.
Connection shouldn’t end when a package is on a doorstep. Indeed, that moment of arrival should be the beginning of the relationship. From walking customers through unboxing and any initial set up, to first usage and beyond, product ownership experience should be an extension of the full customer lifecycle, to ensure proof of delight, uncover usage insights, and start to build relationships with customers that keep them coming back.
Driving Real-Time Engagement – The 360 Degree Customer View
Customer experiences that evolve in real-time involve a deep understanding of customers’ product usage and preferences while building proactive and personalized engagement throughout the product lifecycle.
Brands that achieve this will have a 360 degree view of customers and real-time, actionable information, including: the health of their customer base, any challenges customers are having, input into the product roadmap, detailed demographic and skill information, and so much more. Most importantly, brands that know this information can act on it and deliver truly differentiated experiences while retaining valuable customers.
So what does this look like? Businesses have no shortage of tools available to help them acquire new customers and provide support when needed. But, when it comes to the product ownership experience, there are very few tools that collect zero party data to be used in real-time to drive meaningful conversations as part of a personalized product ownership experience. As a result, brands often still rely on dated and asynchronous tools like surveys, focus groups, support tickets, online reviews – all things that cause a brand to be in reactive mode.
The solution is proactive dialogue with customers throughout the product lifecycle. This means being engaged in active, authentic conversations with customers, collecting helpful information and acting on this zero-party data. This requires building a channel of communication between brands and their customers that begins the moment the product arrives on their doorstep. This is different from the demographic targeting data used to build acquisition audiences. Zero-party data tells you each customers’ experience with using your product, it gives you insight into individual skill levels, how likely they are to continue using your product, and so much more.
When businesses fail to gain learn more about individual customers, gather usage-based customer data (on how they are using the product – or not), or listening for any issues and questions customers might have, businesses risk customer churn. Moreover, they also fail to gather data that can feed product innovation, new offerings, and cross-sell/resell opportunities. When done well, gathering product experience data and customer feedback becomes an integrated and directly actionable part of the full customer experience and a value add to both the business and the consumer.
How Post-Purchase Engagement Can Help Prevent Churn
Consumers are most excited at the time of purchase, but shortly thereafter, that excitement can turn to doubt – “did I make the right choice?” “Do I really need this?” That’s why it’s vital for companies to continue the connection with customers. Brands that focus on extending and deepening that connection from the moment of arrival to unboxing to building usage and skill gain a massive opportunity to build loyalty and drive repeat business.
Successful businesses are shifting their focus from problem solving (reactive) to product experience (proactive). With the product and customer at the center, businesses can gather, apply and act on that information in real-time, giving each customer the information, guidance and support they need, and building loyalty and trust along the way. The beauty of this connection is that it drives revenue. Plain and simple, happy customers stay longer and spend more over time. AI can be a helpful tool for meeting customers where they are on their brand journey.
AI – Helping Bring the Product Experience Beyond Personnas
AI can be a game changing tool for brands working to align communications with where consumers are in their individual usage journeys. With traditional martech offerings, teams can optimize and predict outcomes by standardizing around segments of similar personas, but that thinking doesn’t work as well in post-purchase when consumers’ needs. In post-purchase, even customers in the same initial cohort can be vastly different.
When brands put the customer and product at the center, AI can be applied to let the customer journey be defined by the experience, and not the other way around. AI enables brands to time questions based on what that customer is doing – so answering seems relevant, caring, and even helpful to where the customer is at. When married with a solid understanding of product experience best practices, AI makes it more efficient to manage this type of complexity by understanding details about both the product and the customer and then determining what to do next.
The product ownership experience phase is crucial for building relationships, anticipating and supporting customers around common challenges, and gaining valuable insights, even more important, if done right, it adds value to the overall customer experience, prevents churn and grows revenue.
About the Author
Jane Price ia Vice President of Product Marketing at BluStream.
