Customer Experience: The Path To Thrive In The Subscription-Based Mobile App Market
Every product or service offered to a client must be based on his experience while dealing with the product or service provider. The Customer Experience (CX) involves their cognitive, emotional, sensory, and behavioral response during all the journey map of interactions with your business, including before the purchase, through purchase, to post-purchase stages.
As the Customer Experience embraces all the stages of consumption, it is known as an umbrella term. In mobile apps, besides the User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX), the CX also includes the Marketing Strategy and Customer Service, for instance.
For a company to thrive, it is essential to keep the customers satisfied, as a happy customer is a loyal customer. In a competitive world, full of more and more demanding customers, Customer Experience is a major factor that will differentiate businesses. An improved CX will reflect these positive impressions: better branding; higher customer satisfaction; customer loyalty; enhanced business ratings, recommendations, and reviews; and brand awareness.
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE IN SUBSCRIPTION-BASED MOBILE APPS
The app industry continues to grow. Advances in technology, economic pressures, and shifting cultural norms, however, mean new models of ownership are gaining attention in many industries. People are increasingly interested in consuming and paying for temporary or limited access to mobile apps, rather than purchasing them outright.
Subscription-based models in which companies offer ongoing access to a mobile application for a periodic fee; or that give consumers temporary use of a product or service; are among the preferred options.
Royal Mail reports that the subscription box market is forecast to grow from £583 million to £1 billion by 2022. This means that there will be an increase in delivery numbers from 40.1 million to 65.3 million. Their 2018 research of 2,000 shoppers reported that 27.4% of UK consumers are already signed up to a service, rising to 52.1% among 25–34-year-olds.
From a business perspective, this represents a huge opportunity. Six in ten companies reported that they want to invest in new or existing subscription services in the next year. This growing demand and increase in competition indicate that the onboarding process for any new subscribers must be as slick as possible.
Besides boosting the chance that any new subscribers will stay with you (increasing your customer retention rates), creating and planning an on-boarding workflow for new members can quickly familiarize subscribers with your brand; encourage engagement, and drive traffic to your website and social media pages; and most importantly, improve conversion rates.
The fact is that subscriptions enable consumers to obtain a wide variety of products and services, from streaming video to boxes of fashion items, in a convenient way. Providing a good customer experience and evolving with customer needs is vital to ongoing success in selling via subscriptions.
Subscription businesses are far from new but how technology is utilized to improve Customer Experience (CX) is and is making all the difference (especially in utilizing data about customers’ needs and preferences). And companies are investing heavily in customer experience: a recent Gartner study shows that more than 50 percent of companies are redirecting investments toward customer experience innovations, which translates into its growing importance in the overall business strategy.
4 SIMPLE STEPS TO IMPROVE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE IN OUR SUBSCRIPTION-BASED MODEL
Step 1: Welcome Them (Customer Journey)
We’ve got a new subscriber. They’ve been persuaded by the style and content of your sign-up messaging, and finally made the jump. They don’t know much about us — yet — but are eager to find out more.
So, we can be very straightforward and welcome them right away, as the app is open before them, and we’ve got their attention. With an immediate email, we will keep the conversation going, moving them through the customer journey with a friendly hello and more information.
Now, they’ll know that they’ve signed up successfully and that we already value them. Encouraged by the warmth of your welcome, they’ll be more likely to open your second and third emails.
Step 2: Give Them Value (Customer Service Experience)
After signing up, consumers expect something in return for their valuable data. Beyond an excellent customer service experience, which isn’t something that can or should be invoiced separately, you need to offer them something in exchange.
Start to fulfill your sign-up promise straightaway. Let’s not make them wait for the juicy stuff. They won’t be impressed and could forget about our brand altogether. Combining our welcome email with a value-added message and the member experience will already be off to a flying start.
Step 3: Impress Them (User Experience [UX])
An ordinary mistake can make a subscriber quickly regret ever signing up for a service. For instance, a mobile application with a non-friendly design or faulty functionality can jeopardize that all-important first impression.
Therefore, we must have a clear understanding of our subscriber’s needs and priorities. A quick, yet detailed, survey of our users will allow us to make good decisions about Every aspect of the UX. By uniting UX and CX, a company can create a feedback loop that balances clients’ and business’ needs.
Step 4: Keep Them Happy (Customer Success)
The next challenge is to retain your subscribers by keeping them happy and loyal. The aim here is to minimize unsubscribes. Remember: the value of developing solid customer relationships can’t be understated. Studies show that a 5% increase in customer retention results in a profit increase of up to 95%, depending on the market and business model.
But to maintain a perpetually appealing service, you need to keep your offer fresh:
- Introducing new features regularly to spark excitement and boost sales.
- Offer a gift at sign-up anniversaries to thank them for their loyalty.
- Offer flexibility with payment methods.
An evolving relationship with new subscribers is a delicate one. If we get it right, we’ll have loyal customers who love our apps and want to shout out about them.
