The customer experience procedure is rapidly changing. For brands, obtaining the customer to return again is not new, whether through incentivisation or easy brand loyalty. But the landscape is being flipped on its head — and it is via these new technology as the Internet of Things (IoT) driving what’s being called the new solutions economy.
Companies are recognising this. Rather than buying standalone products, it is now about buying services. Take Netflix as a prime example of that. But managing the client relationship, handling the customer travel, is taking on a new measurement.
Michael Ni is chief marketing officer at payment solutions provider Avangate. Among the company’s key points is to not only guarantee a steady stream of revenue for businesses through managing the customer travel, but also recovering lost revenue. 47 percent of customers in a recent survey said they have had to replace their credit card in the previous five years.
“In the world of recurring transaction, the entire world of subscriptions, which has become essential to all the kind of companies we’re working with, the capacity to retain their client gets incredibly high,” he informs MarketingTech. “What does this mean? It means you have people who really want to keep their service moving, but don’t keep their service providers upgraded — and what happens is you end up churning those customers out.
“And if you lose a customer, you may lose them for good.”
By utilising this, in addition to intelligent retrying and failover mechanisms, employers’ revenues can increase by at least 10% in the first year. “It’s almost like free money,” comments Ni.
Yet there’s a problem — clients do not like knowing they are being marketed to. The survey data found some interesting stats on customer management; 67% would rather make monthly payments for many recurring subscriptions, 39 percent would rather pay their invoices online, while 29% desire monthly reminders regarding their recurring subscriptions.
Ni uses the illustration of HP, among Avangate’s clients, to describe the flexibility that is required.
“If you examine our clients, both large and small, they’re making a shift to how they need to market,” he clarifies. “They see all their margins coming to the add-on providers, whether it’s storage, or technician support. So we look at the need to have the ability to create modular suites which can be sold with brand new models, whether it’s freemium, trial or usage based, and the way you tie that into some touchpoint.”
All of this goes back to the exact same message — client experiences are getting to be much more personalised, and firms who succeed in the new services economy will need to control the experience across all of the touchpoints of the customer. However, as 2015 progresses, it’ll be the Internet of Things that could drastically alter seller and buyer strategy.
“We are heading past the hype,” Ni explains. “It’s not just devices, a lot of people can construct devices. [Take] Nike. Nike realised it is not about the shoes. . .that’s a one time buy, and maybe hopefully you’ll get them to purchase another one in a year, or two years or so, but they are doing personalised exercise plans [and] training program.
“That is something that’s collecting data, and because of that daily data, that intake, today I can manage a real encounter around you. That is something super tacky,” he adds.
