The future of customer experience lies in intelligent adaptive messaging

What’s the future of customer experience? 

The experience the customer has with the product. That means a personalised, dynamic, and adaptive experience for every customer, specific to their unique ownership journey with a product. Instead of engaging customers with brand-centric content, promoting an upcoming sale, or reacting to customer complaints, the future of CX lies in product-centric approaches. 

Also known as Product Ownership Experiences, this product-centric approach is the key to achieving success in a crowded marketplace where the cost of acquiring a new customer is skyrocketing, and businesses must take innovative approaches to retain their customers. 

A change in attitude

Historically, the conversations brands most often engaged in were centred on brand promotion and product promotion, like sales or announcing new products. 

For example, when a customer orders their new product, they would receive tracking information and eventually receive their order. Perhaps a week or so after purchase, a request for an online review would be sent or a coupon to use for a future sale. 

But this kind of promo-centered style creates an after-sale experience for customers that offers little to no engagement or support. 

The customer is on their own to make the most of a purchase. 

If a customer has a problematic experience with their new product or simply needs more clarity and help on how to use their product, everything falls on the customer to deal with the issue. The customer must seek out help on their own and spend their valuable time calling customer service or watching videos on product usage. In other words, the customer is on their own to make the most of a purchase. 

This post-sale conversation style also hurts businesses. Customers unhappy or confused with their product are more likely to leave negative online reviews and seek out a competitor for their next purchase.  

That’s why savvy brands have realised that to help their customers succeed with their products, the conversation after the sale needs to focus on a customer's experience with the product, not mere promotion.

This product-centric approach is best achieved through after-sale experiences that offer a personalised approach to each and every customer, achieved by intelligent, adaptive messaging.

Intelligent adaptive messaging is the perfect way to improve a customer’s experience with a product post-sale. Personalised messaging, based on a specific product purchase, ensures customers have timely assistance (i.e. a “need to know how to set up your aquarium?” text sent right after the sale), learn customised tips and tricks for a particular product, and gain useful, targeted suggestions based on the unique needs of the customer and where they are in their product experience. 

While a personalised, product-centric approach to CX improves the customer’s experience, it also offers brands a competitive advantage. The product-centric approach delivers invaluable customer insights into specific products that can ultimately lead to better marketing and better products. Not to mention personalised after-sale messaging also helps to increase retention and LTV, as customers can best understand how to use a product successfully.

Embracing the shift

If you’re ready to make the leap to a personalised, product-centric customer experience, you need one critical ingredient: data. 

Historically, zero and first-party data have been difficult to obtain, and third-party data is either too expensive to capture, non-existent, or just plain useless. This means that customer data must be gathered and harnessed along with the Product Ownership experience. 

The easiest, best way to do this? The deployment of purpose-built platforms that automate product ownership experiences to create meaningful relationships with customers through intelligent, adaptive messaging that also captures data along the way.

Not only do technologies and platforms that engage with consumers in a product-centric way deliver personalised experiences, but these platforms also create a more delightful experience after-sale by delivering useful information, recommendations, and suggestions to consumers at exactly the right time. 

For example, helping a customer new to your dog food transition their dog and making sure that they stay on it as a retained customer. 

It’s this kind of personalisation that leads to trial buyers becoming regular customers and regular customers into product champions. Over time, this kind of useful, adaptive messaging and CX that both engages and assists the customer post-sale also builds long-term brand loyalty and earns increased LTV and revenue. 

Another benefit of capturing customer data from the get-go is the ability to cross-market to new micro-segments and create audiences based on how customers use your products, not how often they purchase them. This is also hugely beneficial for future product development.

One more major benefit of deploying purpose-built technologies for the post-sale owner's journey is that Product Ownership Experiences are a natural evolution. Data can easily be transferred between systems (think: e-commerce platforms) to better maximise existing investments on both sides of the customer purchase. 

The ability to build a lifelong relationship with a customer is no longer a nicety; it’s a necessity to thrive. 

By understanding the unique needs of a customer and addressing those needs through personalised, after-sale experiences like a tailored SMS messaging campaign, your brand has the chance to boost customer satisfaction and create a lifelong fan. And for businesses today, the ability to build a lifelong relationship with a customer is no longer a nicety; it’s a necessity to thrive. 

The future of CX

In order to build happy, lifelong customers, you must create product experiences that ensure customers are successful. 

This requires intelligent, adaptive messaging that can deliver real-time adjustments to messaging, depending on where a consumer is in their journey with a product. 

By personalising experiences around product ownership through intelligent messaging, brands can deliver a win-win for both their own business objectives and for the customer. With a personalised, product-centric approach forged by data, every owner can become their own segment for the brand to cull insights from. These insights will not only improve your products but also improve marketing, sales, and future consumer engagement and connection.

For the customer, a personalised, product-centric approach will improve their overall experience of a product by providing the most timely, useful, and relevant information to boost relevance and usefulness.

The bottom line? If you want to deliver an exemplary customer experience today, it’s time to focus on the customer ownership experience.