Altnets are hitting our streets, but are they here to stay?
With vast investments currently being made by altnets on Fibre rollout, Peer Hackman, Managing Director, Telecommunication, Media & Technology at Webhelp looks at why CX differentiation will be key in the competitive UK “Gigabit” market
Waking up to the sound of loud drilling and excavators digging up the street is rarely a pleasant experience, but when this happened to me last week, I was happy to learn that the crew from G.Network had arrived to bring full-fibre broadband to the area.
Considering I live a stone’s throw from Google’s new King’s Cross head office and trendy Coal Drops Yard, it is somewhat disconcerting that we’ve been making do with copper delivering about 6 Mbps for the last 15 years. In fact, just one week before G.Network’s arrival, I’d switched to Virgin, hoping to prevent yet another video conferencing disaster.
Having worked in the telecommunications industry for years, I’m thrilled to see that the altnet boom is happening on our doorsteps. Still, is this a short-lived scramble for market share or a disruptive force that will push incumbent providers to compete on a new level? And what can altnets do to extend their longevity in the market?
The altnet push for market share
As they compete directly with only two incumbents, BT Openreach and Virgin Media, alternative networks (altnets) are spending vast amounts of money to claim their slice of the UK’s increasingly competitive “Gigabit” broadband connectivity market.
Whilst relative minnows compared to established players, alternative operators are fuelling growth and account for 57% of homes passed on a Europe-wide basis. UK FTTx altnets are also projected to reach almost 30 million UK homes by 2025, according to the sector’s trade body INCA.
Fibre rollout is accelerating fast, with investment from Openreach, Virgin, altnet providers, and their financial backers likely to exceed £30 billion by 2025. Still, there are significant challenges for independent network operators in their roles as network builders, wholesale vendors, and ISPs.
Challenges for altnets
New entrants to the UK broadband market have to deal with multiple hurdles like future market consolidation and price erosion, overbuild by incumbents, limited access to skilled labour, and the acquisition of land access rights. However, perhaps the biggest obstacle to their commercial success is creating awareness, generating high user satisfaction, and providing positive, differentiating customer experiences for their services.
OFCOM’s 2021 survey of UK broadband ISPs found that consumer broadband satisfaction rates have dropped by as much as 11% for some of the leading providers over the last five years. The COVID-19 challenge was a significant driver of these results. As such, altnet providers can pick up churn from Openreach, its partner ISPs, and Virgin, but “new” customer acquisition will be difficult.
Other issues altnet providers will face include service installation logistics, sourcing and set up for CPE (Customer Premises Equipment, such as routers), customer onboarding, high support requirements through surveying, frequently rescheduled installation appointments, and support over live and assisted channels.
All these factors—combined with Openreach and Virgin’s potentially aggressive wholesale pricing—negatively impact the business case and OPEX profile for altnets whilst affecting new ISPs’ and resale partners’ ability to provide superior customer experiences as competitive differentiators.
Strategies for tackling CX challenges
Assuming that altnet providers can overcome some of the supply-side and demand generation issues, here at Webhelp, we see three areas in particular in need of attention to ensure a best-in-class customer experience.
- Ensuring reliable, consistent and resilient network QoS (Quality of Service) and QoE (Quality of Experience) after COVID-19 bottlenecks.
- Better designed services, customer/employee journeys, and touchpoints to provide understanding, confidence, trust, and the ability (by the customer or the provider) to rapidly solve issues across the customer lifecycle.
- Orchestration of support and engagement to deliver simple, straightforward, and easy-to-find omnichannel customer engagement pathways with first-touchpoint resolution and elimination of multiple handovers.
Let’s add some context to each of these areas and explore them in more detail.
Quality of Experience
With demand levels higher and reliance on TMT services increasing after COVID-19, broadband quality and consistency are top-of-mind when customers make their purchase decisions.
Additionally, as more digital and smart-home services that require resilient connectivity gain traction, providers must track both QoS and QoE and address them on a per-customer, per-service level. This approach can help altnets avoid costly customer service calls and truck rolls or prevent angry customer tweets, which can damage net promoter score (NPS) and word-of-mouth reputation.
To monetise the customer experience, avoid churn, and grow Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), altnet providers must focus on CX metrics, engagement tracking, as well as network KPIs whilst detecting and proactively addressing disconnections, slow response times, frame freezing, and similar issues. Analytics, AI, and customer education can help locate and predict poor QoE, whilst root cause analysis and rectification tracing can help address complaints related to network issues in the home (which is by far the majority).
Backup connectivity options are a positive interim step and may accelerate the growth of 5G FWA as the primary broadband household connection in the future. Still, it could threaten the profitability of fixed infrastructure investments unless providers can clearly articulate related use cases.
Customer journey/experience design and implementation
Once altnet providers have created demand amongst future paying customers—or RGUs as they’re known in the industry—it is crucial to design and implement customer journeys that enhance the frontend, omnichannel experience whilst seamlessly integrating with backend systems, including all relevant OSS & BSS business processes and components.
It is essential to involve customers at the beginning of this design process and throughout, as their input enables providers to improve complex processes, find new value streams, and enhance customer experience and product use.
Initiatives like customer-centric journey analysis, design and re-engineering, test and learn, and best-practice implementation frameworks (e.g. TMForum) can help take the sting out of service launches whilst enabling customers to become more capable of interacting digitally with websites and apps, setting up services, and solving issues themselves, ultimately keeping them happy and profitable.
Orchestrate digital and assisted customer support
Whilst most operators have been pushing for a digital-first approach to customer engagement, around 50% of consumers in all categories still state that “telephoning the call centre is the preferred contact method, regardless of query type”, according to a survey from EY.
The dichotomy here is that several customer segments would happily interact with apps or chatbots as long as a live advisor is available when required. However, voice support is up to 30 times more expensive than digital channels, so altnet providers must find the right balance between channel interactions to acquire, retain, and grow their customer base to more profitable levels.
To achieve better commercial and customer engagement outcomes at lower costs, operators must implement a flexible, scalable, and holistic support ecosystem that delivers exceptional experiences through all preferred customer interaction channels. However, getting there requires an understanding of the business’s current digital maturity and its prospective and existing customers.
Wrapping Up
Altnet providers have introduced momentum into a market that had been relatively static in the past. With government support through Project Gigabit injecting an additional £5 billion to support operators as they roll out across the final 20% of rural premises, growth of the sector is all but assured. However, competition will be tough for altnets, and consolidation is inevitable.
By offering “brilliant basics” that are easy to communicate and simple for customers to understand, along with resilient service performance, and straightforward sales, onboarding, and support journeys, altnet providers can almost certainly find success in the UK market.
Once my current contract has expired in 2023, I, for one, am eagerly looking forward to trying a new Gigabit, 100% full-fibre broadband service provider, having hopefully helped some of them to deliver outstanding customer experience and to grow successfully.
[Fashion] - 4 tips to make payments easier and more secure in Europe and the US
For fashion brands, the European and United States markets are strategically very important. But there are some risks when it comes to payments, especially with department stores and e-commerce sites. Anke Glaser, General Manager of Webhelp Payment Services for Central Europe, offers some advice.
1. Fashion brands should make the most of the momentum driven by departments stores and e-commerce sites
Over the last 2 or 3 years – and especially since the health crisis – online sales have really flourished in the fashion industry, both in Europe and in the United States. This growth is mainly due to department stores, which already have a digital strategy, and e-commerce platforms.
This trend is explained by companies investing more and more in digital technology generally – in England, spending on websites and online sales platforms went up by 30% in one year. In the United States, department stores can account for up to 70% of suppliers’ turnover. We can also see this trend in Spain where the leading Spanish department store has made its digital development a major focus in its development strategy.
We therefore recommend taking full advantage of this momentum, driven by departments stores and e-commerce sites, because we think it’s one that is going to last!
However, while digital strategies are undeniably seeing a surge, we remain convinced that the physical component is still vital, and that the crisis will lead to an offering that combines human and digital solutions.
2. Protect yourself against the problem of deductions
Brands have to comply with the conditions imposed by department stores and e-commerce platforms, which generally have very strict rules, at the risk of having to deal with chargebacks. In practice, whichever country you’re in, department stores and platforms rarely make a payment for just one invoice. Usually, they send us a payment advice: a document summarising all the invoices to be paid. Added to these are debit notes or chargebacks that are deducted from the payments. For a brand, it is important to be aware that these practices, which can be for many different reasons, are widespread.
Webhelp Payment Services manages debit notes directly for department stores and platforms. We check them, as agreed with the brand, and if the deductions are not totally justified, we dispute them with the department store or the platform. Our regular contact with the stores and platforms means that we can speed up the processes and so resolve any disputes faster.
Every year, this work by our experts, dedicated exclusively to managing these key accounts, helps our clients’ brands recover substantial amounts of money, as well as giving them a clear overview of the buyer’s current situation.
The benefit: if the Order to Cash process is under control, those involved in distribution generally pay on time.
3. Know how to manage the complexity of accounting documents for department stores and e-commerce platforms and avoid mistakes
Each season, brands receive documents with a lot of items to reconcile, from department stores and platforms. This involves a considerable amount of work for their accountants!
We have developed a specific reconciliation and comparison tool for documents that come from department stores and platforms. It makes the accounts much easier to understand, and means we can analyse the source of chargebacks.
Our dedicated customer platform allows clients to find all the information and all the payments in one place. It is here, for example, that any deductions will be clearly shown. This document provides a good basis for the interaction between us, the brand, and the department store or e-commerce platform.
4. Digitise your data exchanges
The relationship between department stores, platforms, and sellers is also going digital. Implementing this digital process is really useful when it comes to optimising your cash flow with these different stakeholders. Indeed, in addition to the speed of transmission via EDI, it also means that you can check to make sure that invoices have been received, and act promptly if the invoice is rejected or incomplete. This means we can reduce delays to invoice payments, but also lots of chargebacks that might not be due.
We are currently working on setting up EDI with the many department stores and e-platforms so that we can offer our clients simple, unique access, whilst also relieving them of the technical work specific to each buyer. Why not take advantage of it?
With 35 years of experience in fashion and luxury, Webhelp Payment Services can be both a personal advisor and a facilitator, not only for department stores and e-commerce platforms, but also for retail distribution. We are currently working with 400 ready-to-wear brands with a network of 35,000 stores in Europe and the United States.
To find out more about this topic
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5 Mistakes start-ups should avoid when building their B2B sales engine
When creating a B2B startup, a solid sales strategy is obviously a critical success factor.
Rushing to build your B2B sales strategy or missing some key processes in your sales team training or target identification processes could undermine your initial efforts to build your product and promote it.
Whether you’re looking to acquire your first customers or to improve your sales operations in a period of strong growth, here are some mistakes to avoid when establishing your B2B sales engine, picked by our expert Julie Cadalen
Discover the 7th edition of our OneShot magazine on Technology
Our 7th edition of the OneShot is here!
“Let’s talk about the well-being of your customers and employees. Because well-being has become a central challenge for brands.
At Webhelp, we believe digital technology must be oriented around this axis. Technology can really make life easier, to the benefit of both women and men.
As you will discover in these pages, today there is a lot of evidence of its effectiveness – and not only in the context of the «maintaining of bonds» that we are going through.
There are also new avenues that deserve to be actively explored, And this is what we are doing, with and for you, as part of numerous experiments.
What is the goal of our Technology department? To make technology an ally, entirely to benefit the well-being of your customers and employees.
An exciting project!”
Discover through this 7th edition technological innovations that humanize customer relations, facilitating the work of our advisors, and always to the benefit of final customers.
You will also find testimonies and advice from experts: Massimo Dutti, Vattenfall, Samsung…
What are the latest technological trends that are worth a look?
What are the conditions for successful technology integration?
And let’s not forget Webhelp’s vision and ambition: transparency, security, data and, of course, the human touch.
Summary
- A word – SXO
- A number – Zero
- Three opinions – Technologies that humanize the customer experience (Yan Noblot, Massimo Dutti, Vattenfall)
- Some info – How Toyota operates predictive customization ?
- A demo – Home: a place to live, a place to sell
- A B-case – How Webhelp proposed and deployed an intelligent tool… to facilitate the work of Samsung Electronics advisors
- A hashtag – #VideoChat
- An offer – Telecats, the voice of the customer as a path to action
- A meeting – the WorldSummit AI
- A conversation – A weapon of seduction to re-enchant commerce in the city
- A story – Lego : in what world are you playing?
- A perspective – For efficient and benevolent technologies
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Helping Yodel to build a market-leading customer experience journey
As one of the UK’s leading parcel carriers, Yodel wanted to build a robust customer journey that matched up to their customers’ specific needs and expectations, delivering a truly transformative customer experience.
Webhelp’s partnership with Yodel began in 2015, focusing on their goal of improving their client and customer relationships, with a particular aim to create additional value within their CX function with multiple milestones passed along the way.
2021 in particular has been an incredibly successful year, working with the team at Yodel to achieve:
- An increase from a team of 50 at launch, to well over 300 in 2021, across diverse sites in South Africa and India.
- A score of 4.6% on Trustpilot, up from 2.8 in 2018.
- 40% savings across existing customer journeys, which have been reinvested into Yodel’s people, and more efficient tech solutions.
- Recognition at the 2021 CCA Global Excellence awards in the Best CX Transformation – Inhouse Technology Solution category
You can read our Yodel client story for more details of the journey so far, and what the future has in store.
Webhelp named a global CX leader by Everest Group
Webhelp Recognized as a Global Leader in Customer Experience by Analyst Everest Group for a Third Consecutive Year
Paris – 29th July, 2021
Webhelp, a leading global provider of customer experience (CX) and business solutions, has been recognized again as a Leader in Everest Group’s 2021 Customer Experience Management (CXM) PEAK Matrix® Assessment. The organization ranked strongly in terms of completeness of vision and capability, making significant progress in market impact.
“Webhelp is a global leading CXM provider with particular strength in Europe, which has recently been bolstered by acquisitions in Latin America,” said David Rickard, Vice President Everest Group. “Webhelp has also continued recent strong growth by investing in its Webhelp Anywhere platform and methodology to support virtual operations and provide tools for talent and workforce management, as well as enhanced security capabilities such as biometric recognition. Through its stand-alone global consulting business, Gobeyond Partners, it also supports clients through the entire customer journey from strategy, journey orchestration, and AI-led text analytics, which are all areas of high demand from enterprises looking to deliver digital CX transformation.”
Webhelp scored top marks from Everest Group for value delivered and vision and strategy. Client interview feedback also cited Webhelp’s adaptability, proactivity, employee orientation, ease-of-doing-business and cultural alignment as a few of its key strengths.
The report validates the significant growth Webhelp has made during the past year by focusing on developing its digital transformation capabilities and CX consulting to create value-driven end-to-end customer journeys.
Following the acquisition of Dynamicall and the more recently announced intent to acquire OneLink, the company has significantly expanded operations to support clients in particularly the United States and Latin America, and European markets, further strengthening its geographical footprint and technology capabilities.
Everest Group notes Webhelp’s proprietary methodology and platform, Webhelp Anywhere, which combines best-shoring with remote, hybrid, onsite operations, and tech-enabled capabilities to deliver flexible and tailored solutions.
Also highlighted was Webhelp’s designated program to support customer experience for start-ups and scale-ups, The Nest by Webhelp.
Everest Group notes Webhelp’s continued success after three consecutive years ranking as a Leader in its PEAK Matrix® Assessment, as well as a Leader in its CXM in EMEA Services PEAK Matrix®.
Everest Group’s CXM Services PEAK Matrix® is an annual report combining an assessment of the changing global CX landscape with evaluations of leading CX organizations. It selected 39 organizations to evaluate and compare in this year’s report based on the service provider’s market success, vision and strategy, service focus and capabilities, digital and technological solutions, domain investments, and client feedback.
Olivier Duha, CEO and Co-Founder of Webhelp, said:
“As a global company committed to delivering game-changing customer journeys for our clients, we’re very proud to receive this recognition from Everest Group. We’ve focused heavily on supporting our clients, their customers, and our own people through this challenging period, and I am delighted that this commitment has delivered growth. As we invest further in regions like the U.S., Central and Latin America, and Asia Pacific, as well as capabilities like digital transformation and consulting, we are well positioned to deliver increasing value to the market.”
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Missing the customer: why human-centred design is key in delivering regulatory outcomes
Yee-Ping Pang, Head of Design and Development, and Faye Sadler-Clark, Head of Risk, Compliance & Innovation, explain the benefits of placing the customer experience at the centre of your regulatory outcomes
In every industry, it’s a certainty that one regulatory body will supervise the market – the FCA for financial services firms and financial markets, Ofcom for communications, and Ofgem for Gas and Electricity, to name a few. Independent regulatory bodies supervise the specific industry which they regulate and protect the consumer whilst ensuring that the market is operating fairly. The FCA for example, summarises that:
“Financial markets need to be honest, fair and effective so that consumers get a fair deal.”
The regulatory outcomes sought naturally differ across regulators, driven by the maturity of the industry and specific areas that need additional focus. However, there are similarities across some key topics such as protecting vulnerable customers, operational resilience of firms (the ability to continue to provide important business services throughout shocks or disruptions) and making switching easier for customers. The customer is very clearly at the centre of each of these areas of common regulatory concern.
As consumer consumption patterns change and industries evolve, the regulators continue to develop new and make changes to existing regulation in order to stay ahead of any changes in the industry alongside addressing the key risks in each sector. An example of new regulation is the much debated proposed Online Safety Bill, which is centred on protecting children and vulnerable individuals and applies to organisations that either host user-generated content or allow people to interact online. The landmark regulation seeks to protect users from ‘online harms’ in response to the ever-growing use of online platforms in generating and consuming content, which has increased rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic.
An example of regulatory change came during the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, where the FCA confirmed an increase in contactless payment thresholds from £45 to £100, increasing the convenience for consumers to buy goods safely. Sheldon Mills, Executive Director, Consumers and Competition at the FCA said: ‘During the pandemic more people have been using contactless payments. We are changing our rules to help the industry continue to respond to the changing ways in which people prefer to pay.’ This showcases both how regulators adapt to changing trends, and the role that regulation can play in enhancing customer experience to have the best outcomes for customers.
What is human-centred design, and how is it currently being used?
Human-centred design is a common technique used by designers across all industries. At the crux of it is a focus on the people who will be using the product or service. These may be external or internal customers (colleagues) who are using services such as the IT Service desk.
Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods, the primary objective is to build understanding and deep empathy for the people for whom the product or service is being designed. Understanding customers’ thoughts, emotions, and behaviours, and defining the key themes from triangulation of all the research, is the foundation required to understand both what products and services to build, and how to build them. Pairing this with agile ways of working and iterative designs and feedback, we can see how powerful this is in adapting to constantly changing customer behaviours.
The benefits of design are compelling, with data from McKinsey showing that organisations regularly applying design thinking saw a third higher revenues and 56% higher shareholder returns than those who didn’t over a five-year period.
Human-centred design shifts the focus from designing solutions to solving problems and instils the mantra that the “customer is king”.
Adding value by focusing on the customer for regulatory outcomes
So, what’s the common intersect between regulatory outcomes and human-centred design? Regulators are focused on protecting consumers and ensuring they get fair value, and human-centred design is entirely focused on designing for consumers. The consumer is at the heart of both.
For firms to stay ahead and really claim to be customer-first, they need to employ design approaches for their actual customer needs and circumstances, while ensuring that regulatory demands are still met.
Often, businesses view adhering to regulatory outcomes as something that must be done something that has a financial impact on their bottom line – and not as a value creator. Risk professionals need to help change the conversation from ‘what do we need to do to comply, and how much investment do we need for implementation?’ to ‘what is the intended regulatory outcome and what benefits could it bring us as a business?’ This change in mindset and conversation will put the focus on understanding why the market is shifting, which consumer problems need to be solved, and on the benefits that are often supportive in meeting strategic objectives on acquiring, retaining, and growing customer loyalty.
Focus on your customer needs to thrive
With COVID-19 recovery continuing to be the core focus for most businesses, strengthening capabilities in human-centred design, design thinking and user experience will be a key driver for growth, meeting customer needs and meeting regulatory outcomes.
In order to add real value, it’s important that risk and compliance teams continue to be inquisitive and understand the drivers behind regulatory change, and the movements within different markets and industries. Whilst organisations don’t have a choice about whether or not to comply with regulation using human centred design in responding to regulatory developments and changes can drive a competitive edge.
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Fashion Tech – Reshaping customer experience for your start up
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How videos are used by remote sellers to accelerate business growth
Never before in the history of B2B selling has buyer behavior been more in sync with remote selling motions. To sell and attract new businesses or take buyers through the sales funnel, remote sellers must include the use of synchronous and asynchronous video.
This has created the perfect alignment between buyer behavior and remote sales motions. Subsequently, the implementation of video in all its formats is key to keeping the sales pipeline full and ensuring a Return on Investment (ROI).
Asynchronous videos do not occur in real-time and subsequently, will incur some delay. An email or recorded video, video voicemail, video messages, screen shares, etc, all fall within this category. They’re easier to consume, can be rewatched, shared far and wide, allow for better quality viewing and offer more control. In short, asynchronous sales messaging enables sales people to reach more prospects and start more sales conversations.
On the flip-side, creating videos does take time and a salesperson has to wait for response, once the video has been shared.
Synchronous videos occur at exactly the same time. This form of communication includes video conference calls, phone calls, face-to-face conversations, etc. However, this can cause fatigue, be contingent on bandwidth/internet connections, or result in reduced audio or visual quality.
Use of video to create empathy and trust
Video messaging enables a member of your sales team to show compassion and cut through the noise of today’s selling environment to build trust. Video messages or live video calls, can occur via zoom, FaceTime, or Twitter spaces, to name a few, in conjunction with other modes of communication, such as the mobile, chat or email.
The omnichannel remote selling experience is the now the hallmark of modern-selling and part and parcel ofB2B sales.
For example, a channel sales person can send a video reminder for an upcoming meeting and then a video follow-up after the meeting, to connect at a much deeper level. Alternatively, a prospect can start a conversation over chat and receive a follow-up email with an embedded video specifically addressing a prospect’s pain points or purchasing needs.
Personalized sales video messaging delivered through email can be tracked and measured, allowing a sales person to more effectively plan the next stage of the buyer journey. Consequently, including a video in sales emails outreach can improve click rates by a staggering 96%.
In some instances, a client or prospect may prefer to deactivate their camera, but are perfectly comfortable with speaking to sales team member if they are out and about. This connection fosters increased engagement and trust, as the prospect doesn’t have to wait until they arrive at work or reach home for a response.
Videos can increase a salesperson’s productivity
In today’s world, time zones and schedules matter. People in your team may find it difficult to attend video calls at a fixed time. They might be receiving calls at the expense of their productivity.
On the flip side, recorded videos allow plenty of flexibility. Your team can watch (at whatever speed they like – they can speed the video up, too) when it’s suitable for them, and even re-watch if required.
Feedback videos
When you’re not in the office, a salesperson can substitute a feedback loop with a quick video, when they cannot meet a sales colleague in person. This is better than sending multiple texts or emails which not only take time to review, but may not convey what they’re trying to say due to lack of vocal expression.
Product demonstrations via video increase conversions
Recorded and live product demonstration can supplement showrooms by augmenting the user experience from anywhere in the world.
In the B2B world, this means that sales are able to provide additional personalization within all their interactions, thereby allowing prospects to take the lead to explore and shape their own experience for the most value.
- 90% of customers state that product videos help them when making purchasing decisions.
- 64% of customers are more likely to buy a product after watching a video.
- Importantly, recorded product videos can be repurposed on a company website, social channels or personal live call, thereby decreasing the cost of sales and maximising reach.
Video content is easy to consume and allows a prospect to retain more information. A salesperson can convey tone and expression effortlessly to reinforce the intuitu personae so crucial to establish with a client.
Video streaming services are leading to success
There are many steaming platforms used to showcase a product or service: from social media platforms to Microsoft applications, virtual event apps or Zoom. Therefore, using the right streaming service to deliver a successful campaign is vital.
Most people are visual learners. Therefore, if a prospect can see your sales person whilst speaking about your product or service, how it works, and how it could benefit them, they are more likely to engage with your sales person in a conversation. Importantly, executives are more likely to take action via a video. A Forbes report: Video in the C-Suite indicates that 65% of senior executives have visited a vendor’s website after watching a video and that 59% of decision makers prefer to watch a video rather than reading an article. It is also easier to retain information, thereby increasing sales conversion.
Prospecting via video enables a sales person to stand out from the crowd and capture their attention. In this instance, the seller can introduce themselves, provide their value proposition and have a call to action. “These are methods we use for our own prospecting. In a daily life made of multiple solicitations, a video message is much more memorable than lines of text: the pitch is fluid, the seller’s intention is clearly conveyed, intimacy is created,” observes Alexandre Barthel, Global Head of Demand at Webhelp.
Another popular personalization method is to include a screenshot of the prospect’s LinkedIn profile or website within a video. This highlights the effort a sales person took to research the prospect on LinkedIn and learn more about them.
Harnessing videos in proposals
Remote sellers can go beyond sending an email with an attached proposal and actually record a video outlining each point of the proposal and the next steps. It can even be useful when going over any legal issues and contract details.
Finally, the seller can create a video thanking the client for their time and handing over the client to the Customer Success manager or other members of the business.
Video as a training and equipping vehicle
Should you need to guide your team on how to use a particular type of software, or if you need to provide step-by-step instructions on a task, how-to videos are ideal. These types of videos are great for knowledge sharing and are also perfect for reaching out to the B2B audience.
Video streaming services are leading to success
Although we can’t choose the video steaming platform for you, we can tell you what has worked for our clients to build successful relationships, engagement, and revenue growth.
Using channels such as video, social and digital marketing to drive sales, meet targets, ramp up new service offerings, track and measure video engagement with prospects, is fuelling the B2B sales pipeline.
Furthermore, joint content creation between talented, multilingual teams, using video streaming, enables a collaborative and flexible approach leading to new and recurrent sales.
Video plays a significant role with driving sales through engaging social channels and digital marketing platforms, when displaying service offerings, thereby providing the quintessential omnichannel selling.
Video enables businesses to be innovative and to differentiate themselves amongst their competitors. We believe that understanding the power of technology and a human mindset approach, connects you with your customers to achieve the most value. With video becoming a strong contender due to growing audience popularity within the digital space, we believe it has untold power to deliver a game-changing experience.
Get in touch with an expert
Get in touch to find out how you can optimize video success in your business strategy.
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Benefits of integrated Content Management for Retail
Fierce competition, fostered by the necessity for shoppers to go online during the consecutive lockdowns across the globe, calls for key differentiators and operational excellence for ecommerce, marketplace, and classified ads platforms.
These now well-established players, ruffled by constant newcomers, aim to provide the lowest prices to their customers, but low profit margins do not allow them to always reach a lower selling price than their neighbors. Another key pillar for them to stand out is offering an even smoother online user experience. But how is it possible for the users to live an experience that is comparable to an in-store purchase, once they have been attracted to their website?
At first, Content Management seems to be a relatively simple concept, especially when applied to retail: it is important to have consistent information on products shown to the clients, in the right place at the right moment. If a customer is not able to find it on one marketplace or ecommerce platform (this can also happen to classified ads, to a lesser extent), but they are able to find it on a different one selling it for a similar price, they would not bother returning to the original website to make that purchase. Therefore, it’s important to retrieve all product information from different sources by skilled and industry-specialized content managers who are also able to run promotions or discounts, update prices, and take down sold-out products. This is what is commonly called catalog management.
This enables retailers to be efficient at organizing their products by ensuring consistency and quality information is displayed across different channels. Moreover, the combination of dedicated software with skilled content managers facilitates a collaboration between the advisor and retailer for a smooth online experience.
These three software tools significantly refines this whole process:
- Digital Asset Management: These tools will help different teams across an organization to easily operate together in an organized way, and modify media files such as images, documents, and videos.
- Product Information Management: They centralize the details that customers, platforms, or employees need to know about the products they are selling. Syndication allows the data to be shared across all sellers, channels and languages. Managing it well is a lever to the localization of your catalog.
- Content Management Systems: These are essential to create consistent online user experiences. Their collaborative features support the organization of workflows and queues, as well as the ability to create, store, edit and publish web content. Moreover, they allow to put this online content into context.
With the three of these software tools combined, it is possible to offer a smoother online experience that is closer to in-store. It facilitates teams to have an exact idea of their stocks, a close connection to their CRM, and flawless ad equation between online and offline stocks for the whole organization. By using this data, it enhances the customer experience by being able to analyze and forecast trends.
The three immediate impacts:
- It is possible to show more relevant recommendations to any specific customer
- Avoids huge disappointments when a product that was displayed as available on the website – has just been sold or ordered in a shop
- The retailer is able to have an integrated view of the performance of its products to then act upon it.
Automation and tools play a critical role in this process, but reactive content managers with the ability of retrieving information in an ad-hoc manner if the software is missing information is key, as one will not be able to work as efficiently as you would want it to.
This strategic stock management, that can only be allowed due to integrated Content Management, can be pushed even more when a retailer is present across different markets with different languages. To offer a best-in-class experience, customers need to feel close to the company’s values, which are mostly embodied by marketing strategies and the salesperson who is selling the product to you in a shop.
Online, this can be done through an accurate localization plan following trends analysis, based upon which digital asset works, in which context (placed by the content manager at the right time).
Thinking about its Content Management strategy as unified and collaborative, making use of the right combination of tools and the right people to enact it, is a lever to gain competitive advantage in a space that is getting more and more saturated. Consumers are searching for companies they resonate with, that are capable of not only understanding their needs but also predicting them.
The link to CRMs makes even more sense when the retailers know that a product lifespan is about to reach its end, and then offers to renew its purchase for example. Those smart ways of engaging with customers, which can only be facilitated by integrated Content Management – should be the go-to for any online platform aiming to remain competitive in the market.
Finding a partner like Webhelp, who is conscious of the different technologies available on the market and is able to find, train and nurture the right profiles that fit to your brand, with the ability to develop your digital strategy, is becoming more important than ever. Whether you are a retailer selling your products across multiple platforms or you are a platform yourself.
Talk to us today about how Webhelp’s Digital Content Services can help you deliver best-in-class online experience to your customers through designing the best mix of technology and people.
Learn more about our Digital Content Services for Content Moderation.
Author
Thomas Japy
Digital Content Services Business Analyst