Businesses know they want an outstanding end to end customer experience. But if you don't have any form of after-sale customer engagement, your relationship with the customer dies on the purchase vine. That engagement is the connector for the last stages in the sales journey—retention and advocacy. From the unboxing to the enjoyment, to the maintenance of the product, extracting data from those usage points is valuable for the brand. It’s what creates an infinite closed loop with endless, tailored selling and educational opportunities. After-sale customer engagement prioritizes the customer’s experience with the data coming from the product itself.
Recent research shows that 54 percent of US-based consumers say customer experience at most companies needs improvement. While this is no simple fix, making a data-driven connection may be the answer for retailers to build long-term relationships with their customers. Product usage data is the missing link in the current after-sale customer experience. Retailers are missing out on opportunities to increase retention and reduce churn, which ultimately increases the lifetime value of the customer and drives continuous revenue.
At Blustream, we recognize that leading brands are working to address this gap in utilizing product usage data. It’s just been virtually unrealistic to implement. The barriers to entry impede newcomers from feeling capable of building the technology on their own. Whether it’s the expense, lack of ability to enable products to produce the right data, or no way of analyzing the data, brands are left feeling helpless in their efforts to strengthen their customer experience.
The business value of product usage data is exceptional. The IoT trend has ushered in a new age of data and information flow, continually derived from people and their devices. But retailers largely talk of IoT in a technological mindset instead of from a business perspective. Companies should learn to shift their thinking from getting lost in the technology to considering business needs first. Then look at how the technology can fulfill those needs better. The biggest wins come when you can use emerging technology to create a “platform” that enhances your customer experience.
In the coming months, we’ll continue to see advancements in sensors, software, and technology allowing devices to speak to one another. Brands have been looking for ways that IoT can add value to their products and services, but they still haven’t given thought to how IoT will transform the way they engage with their customers.
The implications for brands with product usage data are vast. Retailers can capitalize on this by making good use of the data about your products you have now, and leverage every opportunity to understand your customers’ experiences more deeply. You’ll soon find that when you learn more about their experience with your product, you gain a distinct competitive edge in a world that is increasingly becoming digitally connected in every area.
Why It’s Been Challenging To Implement
With constant reminders to brands about the importance of better customer engagement leading to better customer experiences, we recognize there’s still a hurdle to scale to make use of the technology. Of course, brands want better after-sale customer engagement and experience to drive better customer retention and brand loyalty. The question becomes, how?
IoT technologies providing product usage data are powerful tools because they allow brands to tap into and personalize their relationship with consumers. But it hasn’t always been easy to navigate. Technology isn’t necessarily in every brand’s wheelhouse. It’s not a passion of theirs to implement technology with product usage data. Their passions lie in their craft. They’re the woodworkers, the musicians, and the pet lovers. Often, they don’t have the wherewithal to incorporate this type of technology into their products.
Without that knowledge, it becomes difficult to organize and analyze most of your operational data. Businesses collect data with the best of intentions, but it is often poorly documented. Some organizations can cleanly organize their data, but often they are uncertain how to derive real business value from the data because they lack expertise and easy to use tools. There are concerns for brands about the cost and complexity implications of applying this technology to their business. These growing pains can make it daunting for companies to pick an entry point for applying this technology to their products.
At Blustream, we understand why you haven’t done it yet. We know you want an ongoing relationship with your consumers, but likely it’s not fiscally reasonable to do on your own. That’s why we’re here, to partner as a resource that complements the valuable consumer goods that brands sell. We help by building an infinite closed-loop relationship with consumers to ultimately increase brand loyalty and allow retailers to focus on what they do best: making products that matter.
A Partnership Made In Data Heaven
The tech knowledge and manpower make it difficult for businesses to do on their own. The technology becomes a distraction that takes them away from their core competencies. We want the brands we partner with to continue what they do best and leave us in the weeds of managing their product usage data. That’s why we look at it as a partnership. Blustream has an end to end platform that helps provide product usage data efficiently. The smoother we make it for your consumers to plant your product in their lives, the more your ecosystem will grow.
Businesses can leverage product-owner lifecycle data from purchased products to strengthen their customer relationships and ultimately increase revenue, decrease churn, and deliver better customer experiences. This type of real-world data fuels the customer experience into actionable insights that power digital transformation, ushering brands into the next phase of sustained growth.
Connectivity starts with filling the customer experience gap with product usage data. The ROI for businesses and the added value to consumers is a win-win. Just like the trends of tech-past, the data must remain the backbone of your strategy.