Customer Success – A win win story

In our pursuit to help startup and SMEs in their digital transformation journey, we often come across with very generic sales problems, and most of the problems are due to lack of basic understanding of customer engagement and pitching the solution or product poorly. In this post we have listed some of the points which we practice to overcome these problems –

Understanding the customer –

When you try to help the customer even before tagging them as customers, You should really understand them. That means you need to study the their environment and how they operate in their business ecosystem, their geographical situations and their pain points. We had our success rate increased multifold just by practicing this. To understand this better let’s get into what it means on the ground. One of our client who is an independent career counselor, a typical sales package looks like “A Promotional Website, Mobile Application and a lot of social marketing” at first glance. On a careful consideration it was realised that only doing this will not help them instead might increase operational overhead, hear us out how and why –

A Promotional website need to be targeted to audience and the place this client of our operates from, the audience are still not tech savvy which means their reach to technology is limited to Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram at most and not even to twitter, hence a promotional website is going to be a dead investment for a long time. Same time an app may solve a lot of problem but is costly due to the fee they charge to their customers is very nominal and the profit is not enough to cover the investment. People who know about career counseling will agree that this job is difficult to manage remotely and therefor social marketing through electronic media will attract the leads which will be difficult to convert into sales.

Solving the real problem –

Now once we understood the customer portfolio, it is important to solve the real problem and one should identify it before that. The pain point is, it is not going to be obvious and customer wouldn’t be able to tell you the exact problem. If we rely on customer, almost all the time, all the customers have one single generic problem and that is “Sales not happening or Sales is not increasing as expected” that is it. If you take that problem and try to solve it, you will not succeed because that is never ending pursuit, it is a symptom not a problem. The actual problem may be wrong market segment, non-scalable business model, a generic product or non innovative solution, hence it is important to understand client really have sales not happening is a by product symptom of it.

Keeping the business always in context –

You understood your customers, you identified the problem too, you have a solution just right, however have you consider that make sense for business or not? For example there are all the great equipments and machines to do the farming, you get that to the farmers with subsidised rate all set to work and plow the field, but if the most fertile land and farms have water logging problem all your investment will sink into it and for sure that wouldn’t grow into any kind of corps, what could have been a better solution is to create a sustainable ecosystem of animal husbandry keeping livestock such as cattle, poultry and fish will yield better result and can be utilised in the fertile farms to do farming for double profit and that is what it means to keep the business always in context.

Offering real value –

Work towards the common goals and don’t promise unrealistic non-practical benefits. A website in any forms only has certain goals to achieve, it is not a silver bullet and can not make the business succeed overnight. As we always say “Technology is a business enabler” , it can only enable business to grow and sustain, for example, without proper research on main objective and content of a website,  which is to have engaging content and services to offer. it doesn’t make any sense to throw out a lot of add-ons like SEO, SSL mailbox and other because these doesn’t have any individual value of its own. The point is don’t sell technology in the name of solution. Offer them real solution which adds value to their business and let the technology facilitate and help achieving that.

Train them to utilise it for maximum gain –

Offering technology solution is just not enough. It is important to train the customer to use it. Not always your customers are going to be tech savvy and technology might be only solution in such case it is better to teach them how to use it effectivity. For example which phone would you suggest to a 60 + years of indian customer ? The answer is there is no phone which target this segment specially and this segment have their own challenges i.e touch screen phones doesn’t give them taptic feedback out of the box so they don’t know the action they took happened or not, on the other hand phone which gives taptic feedback i.e the phone with keyboards have really small display and due to their poor eyesight that means by the time they realise who is calling the call would be dropped. In this case the only solution is to teach them enabling taptic feedback present in the touchscreen phone with vibration and key tone and help them to adopt it.

5 Important elements of a successful website

“The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.

[State of the Union Address January 11 1962]

John F. Kennedy

 

When it comes to designing or planning for a website it is important to plan it carefully, a poorly planned and designed website doesn’t yields the desired result, despite of being important and crucial it is very simple and quick to start. We will share top 5 of the most common and most important element of a successful websites in this post.

Target Audience –

Do you know who are your target audience, this is the single most important factor and everything revolves around it. The logo, Navigation, Color and Shape, The content of your website and everything else depends on the target audience.  Always remember “You can’t please everyone”. It is better to focus only on whom you care most i.e your target audience and your market segment at large.

The Logo –

Logo is the second most important aspect of your website, we can not advocate enough of the importance of it. Just a google search of “Most costly logos” is enough to reveal the worth of these little colorful piece of art. This is created to create unforgettable, lasting impression on your target audience’s mind. It is about what story you want the audience to pursue  without event telling a single word about it. The logo is identity of the brand and if you are the brand of your business, which is in some cases i.e a lawyer or a freelancer e.t.c It is your identity too, so better craft and design a right identity because most of the time “First Impression is the last”.

Navigation –

A directionless navigation is nothing less then a nightmare. Bad navigation design confuses your audience and leave them frustrated to never return back. On the other hand a properly designed navigation is like flight navigation system, which is accurate and guides the user to exact coordinates where he want to land by conscious choice to takes an action which generate lead for business and start an engagement with the user to make him come back for more business every single time.

Colors and Shapes –

The colors used in the website plays a crucial role in the user engagement, use a lot of bright and shiny color and that will reduce the audience’s attention span significantly and make the user leave your website as quickly as possible on the other hand excessive use of dark color and serious tone will leave the user depressed and make your website look dull and boring. It is also important to consider the age group and other UX Design factors before making a choice of colors.

The shapes used in your website also engage the user’s subconscious mind, every shape has a different story and triggers a different sense, which influences the decision making power of the user i.e an oval or circle gives the user an impression that you are smooth and balanced in your approach but may be a bit less on the stability front at the same time square shape tells the user that you are balanced straightforward and sharp at times in your approach. So it is very important to use shapes in website wisely or be ready for otherwise consequences.

Content –

Last but not the least content is the hero of whole story, it posses the power to engage the user in your website and keep them coming back for more and also to drive them away. As discussed in previous point the content has to be very user focused and targeted. Stop writing generic content and wasting time to please everyone and just to be with the tide, i.e if you search for AI and Machine learning or Deep learning you will find tons of useless blogs and post written by so called wannabe data scientists, who fail to address one single point that Machine Learning and Deep Learning are subset of umbrella topic of Artificial Intelligence.

A World with Chatbots and AI

With recent technological advancements in chatbots and artificial intelligence (AI), neuro-linguistic programming, machine learning, internet of things (IoT) and web speech APIs, it is now possible to streamline interactions between computer and human languages more effectively. Everyday practically we see a Google Home or Alexa add on social media and on television, and this widens our vision about its application. So let’s have a glimpse on it.

A brief about chatbots

A chatbot is a service that people interact with via a chat interface. You can ask questions using your voice or by typing in the same way you would ask a person. The chatbot will usually respond in a conversational style, and it may carry out actions in response to your conversation (for example, order something for you). It often runs inside a popular messaging application, such as Facebook Messenger, Slack, or SMS. It answers your question, rather than directing you to a website.

Can the applications be replaced with Chatbots ?

To the end user, it may appear that systems of Chatbots like Alexa have replaced software applications (apps) when we ask them to book meetings in our calendars and purchase train tickets for us. In reality, they will encapsulate the apps and sit on top of them. While we may see fewer app icons on our smartphones, we will still need apps in the background for fulfilment and as data repositories.

Why should we discuss about chatbots ?

Eventually, the goal of a futuristic chatbot is to be able to interact with users as a human does. As the saying goes, “the best interface is no interface.” Voice chat is trending with the introduction of smart speakers like Amazon Echo, Google Home, Apple HomePod, etc.

How chatbots can help Small/Medium businesses ?

Bots are a glimpse into the future of business, and they have powerful implications on the business ecosystem. They have several advantages:

  1. 24×7 availability – A bot exists digitally unlike a human being, and can thus be pressed into service continuously without any interference.
  2. Highly Customisable – Bots are capable of carrying out a wide array of tasks because of their inherent flexibility.
  3. Affordable and Powerful – In the current scenario, chatbots can be developed for a small amount. Many options already exist, with the most popular being Facebook’s Messenger bot.
  4. Saves Resources – Employing a chatbot to handle basic customer interactions can free up valuable human resources without a decline in productivity.

Types of Chatbots –

  1. One operates based on a set of rules. It can only respond to very specific commands. If you, as the user don’t use the right command or words, the chatbot doesn’t know what you mean.
  2. On the other hand the other type uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to provide the best response. We’ll call these AI-powered chatbots.The AI aspect in a chatbot is based on machine learning. It is known as Natural Language Processing; it has the proficiency to understand a conversation and mimic human speech. An artificial intelligence (AI) agent in a chatbot achieves the goal through the ‘sense-think-act’ cycle.

How Chatbots can Revitalize Customer Engagement for SME’s?

Broadly Chatbots powered with AI can be used for two purposes:

  • For Enterprise – Today’s chatbots are powerful personal assistants. They can call an Cab, place a lunch order, make a hotel reservation, order office supplies when you get low and even help manage your calendar. Let’s face it, just scheduling a single meeting can take 15 minutes or more and when you add up how many meetings you schedule, it’s a significant time commitment for a small business.
  • For Consumers – Chatbots provide better service to users. Mainly in these following ways:
    • Quick Response time – Compared to a human being, a smart computer program will answer queries much quicker. This, coupled with an AI chatbot’s machine learning and multi-tasking abilities make it a highly efficient virtual assistant that can revolutionise customer interaction metrics.
    • Improved Conversions – Chatbots can study past search data and offer more personalised shopping options via retargeting. The AI is constantly learning, and it can pull up multiple options that will be more appealing to the user based on their search history and captured data points. This can lead to increased conversions for you in the long term.

How does Chatbots improve ROI?

Some instance where bots have worked out really well and undoubtedly have cleared the points regarding ROI as they turned out to be a boon in the industry.

  • Chatbots in Finance Industry- Chatbots found their way into the Finance industry as a virtual assistant within Mobile Banking Apps. Bots act as a platform were customers can make the payment of Bills, and transfer and deposit funds. According to a survey done by Abi AI, one of the top most IT firm could save 360,000 hours of manpower by deploying bots which helped them analyse complex legal contracts faster than a human could do.
  • Chatbots in Restaurants and Retail Industry- The idea of introducing chatbots in restaurant and the retail industry proved to be a smart one, as it has been helping famous food chains in reducing the order time of the customers considerably. Bots also help in saving several employees working hours as well, which in turn made them more efficient.