Subscriber Acquisition is the New Sales!
A mature subscription business is currently the most tangible benchmark for ambitious e-ventures. Most critical for its success is the interface to all human stakeholders: the subscriber acquisition system.
Subscriber acquisition does not succeed by simply having the most up to date technology. Software solutions like Zuora have prospered by recognizing that subscription business is its own specialized business model. A subscription platform must both attract new subscribers and work to keep already existing ones. Having more satisfied subscribers equates to greater success in the subscription economy. Therefore, having an interface that makes communication with current and potential subscribers easy, even pleasant, is of the utmost importance. In addition to subscribers, incorporating your own employees and partners, such as resellers, will also bolster your business. Managing subscriptions involves a combination of hard and soft skills. From a technical perspective, you need great integrated software elements to make your system fit for its intended purpose; while from a client-facing perspective, you need great training, design, storytelling, UI and UX. This article will focus on where these two facets come together in what we call subscriber acquisition systems.
As more business occurs online, it is increasingly important to consider customer experience from a digital perspective. Concepts created by subscription economics push the demands of customer centricity even further. We must not only target short interactions with subscribers, but also establish and nurture long term business relationships. To make this happen, we must be aware of what our subscribers want and how we can dynamically customize offerings around them.
A subscription platform needs to be consumer friendly. But how can an immense subscription system, patched together from various subsystems and devoted to automation smoothly interact with human clients and stakeholders? To deliver such an experience, we need a thoughtful concept that transforms the complexity of our business and offerings into a personal and transparent interaction. This concept must translate between the logic of an efficient machine to the more sensitive aspects of human behavior. Before we can fill our platform with the appropriate look, feel and content, we must give this concept a technical backbone. As many business owners know, business and technical product are inseparable. You have to consider both sides in one process -- business means tech and tech means business. Business strategies and human interaction must be considered holistically for a successful subscription platform.
In a digital business, the online platform is the equivalent of our shop assistant, our service personnel, our friendly advisor or coach. This is the very closest layer of interaction with human stakeholders – the people we want to convince every day. It is here that we want to create a seamless experience devoid of the slightest distraction or unpleasantry that could cause someone to unsubscribe. More abstractly, it is possible to see digital businesses as a dance between three major stakeholders. The first and foremost being the subscribers themselves. Then second, your employees, who concentrate on acquiring subscribers and keeping them happy. Your trained employees and a customized subscriber acquisition system ensure a smooth internal workflow. Third are your partners like resellers or b2b customers. They need to have very specific rights and defined processes so they can help your business without detracting from it.
If you are absolutely sure that your platform is fit to interact seamlessly with these three groups, you would rank among the top three percent of the world’s best subscription interface providers. Above average subscription businesses are almost never complacent. They always feel the need to compromise each day for the future betterment of their product. Perhaps this steady uncertainty is exactly what makes high performers good – your subscriber relations will only remain competitive if you keep working to perfect them.
A complex system makes processes simple
Professional subscription management platforms cover a wide range of processes by combining different corporate software solutions. A company in the subscription economy cannot continue to be successful if their subscribers feel their processes are out of date or impersonal. Thus, most subscription businesses consist of multifaceted systems that are almost inevitably highly customized to the company’s very business model. The overall complexity of subscription businesses is from having to combine at least a CRM, the financial administration, the billing and subscription management, probably an ERP-System and, last but certainly not least, a face to the customer. Thus, a subscription business is a kind of technical Frankenstein consisting of subsystems like maybe Salesforce or MS Dynamics, maybe Zuora, SAP and others – a system that aggregates many separate processes into one interface that the consumer interacts with. The subscriber acquisition and nurturing system works as a direct interface to the customer and will be the only thing the subscriber has direct contact with. It is the place where various groups of people can subscribe or manage subscriptions.
Understanding your Stakeholders
Administering a single subscription may have several consequences in such a complexly layered interface. If a subscriber upgrades the service, this may require several changes in contract management, billing, cash collection, service delivery, sales & CRM or financial administration. We certainly wouldn’t want to overwhelm our employees or our business partners with all this complexity – let alone our core stakeholders, the subscribers. Thus, the subscriber interface has not only to look good and fulfill all the promises of good UX, but also to translate complex information demands of complex systems into bite-sized interactions that the subscriber can easily manage. This is not a simple task and how this is accomplished varies for each business. However, there are some proven methods that can be applied and some common pitfalls to avoid. Let’s take a closer look at the three different stakeholders.
1. Employees
A modern subscription management system is a brainchild of the digital age, and it is driving automatization to new heights. Still, it is surprising how many things are still done manually in some subscription companies. This is especially true when an analog business converts to a subscription model and decides to automate processes that still rely on analog proceedings. But even businesses that are totally automated and digital may want to reserve time and resources to retain human niceties here and there.
One popular trend is for sales persons to moderate the entry to the subscription community, the initial contracting. Sales agents may do this with the help of something called sales checkout. The salesperson helps subscribers choose the best subscription for them and sends the offer out to be confirmed by the prospect very comfortably before it will automatically enter the systems database. A similar feature that incorporates more concepts of subscription economics is a CPQ functionality. Its purpose is to make sure your staff members who are involved in quoting always do so accurately, regardless of how often the management may want to update contract details to reflect changing market conditions. Furthermore, it also ensures that every quote given by a sales representative fits into the current overall strategy of the business.
There are numerous other examples of how automation can still possess a human touch and how including human centric processes into the IT-Infrastructure of your platform is beneficial. In an ideal world, these techniques would seamlessly integrate to solve all your strategic or operational issues. To best handle volatile digital markets you need to flexibly model technique to fit your workflows, and sales representatives who are well-versed in subscription systems are the perfect buffer.
2. Resellers & Partners
When it comes to growing a business, you must tap into every channel available to you. This may mean opening your platform to partners and resellers. Like your employees, your partners need reliable systems and processes. Furthermore, you need an administrative management system that gives every group of partners access to the right system resources. You may take some liberties to reduce the amount of work you put into UX and design in the partner portal, but not too many. It is necessary to be proactive and think in terms of business relationship management and nurture your business contacts as well as your subscribers. The most important service you can provide them with is clear communication, consistent logic and a simple way to handle all transactions – no matter how complicated the digital processes in the background. Although all this may seem like another project as complex as your subscriber platform, it may be more than worthwhile since it has the potential to open up a whole new revenue stream. If you manage to define clear and logic communication with your partners, you allow their success to be your success.
3. Subscribers
Last but certainly not least are your subscribers who access your IT-system. Yes, you read it right – you need to let them work for you and use your system’s resources. First, your marketing plan should guide a potential subscriber to a membership product. This may happen without any involvement from your employees. The subscriber may receive their crucial first customer service interaction just by logging in and choosing a package. The process may not look like much of an effort – just choosing a service package, filling in personal and payment details. However, there is a lot going on behind the scenes- administration and finance like billing, financial accounting, and money collection for example. What’s more, you must also give the subscriber instant access to the right services, which may well require submitting information to several databases and departments. There is a lot of data flow happening as soon as the subscriber confirms. Still, the customers themselves should never interact with this complexity. They just experience a very convincing process invisibly embedded into a pleasant portal – everything is straight-forward and simple. They only thing they think about are the services they subscribed to. Your subscribers should never consider what it takes to make this happen. Once someone has subscribed and the deal is closed, subscribers want certainty and confirmation. They also want flexibility. There may be automated communication tailored to their individual situation but the key to efficient subscriber retention lies in frequent and personalized interaction.
More advanced subscription businesses also offer their subscribers flexibility, such as a mature Subscriber-Self-Service solution. After logging in, the subscriber can feel comfortable to administer all services, communicate and learn more. If they experience any uncertainty, they can log in and solve all issues – whenever they want and wherever they are. In this way, your subscription platform provides a personalized experience with constant support. This shows a subscription platform is more than a shop. It has to provide a save basis of a long-term relationship.
Conclusion
Digital markets are volatile, and businesses must be agile to secure their mid and long-term success. When you consider all of the processes your subscribers, employees and partners initiate with just a click, it is already quite complex. However, subscription adds another dimension – time. You have the ability to nurture long-term business relationships right now, so why wouldn’t you? The business operation decisions you make now will invariably affect your business relationships in the future. Businesses need to be proactive. For these reasons, subscriber acquisition and maintenance must be planned out thoughtfully and implemented carefully. While your subscribers’ needs are paramount, your methods for acquiring new subscribers and nurturing the ones you have is a close second. After all, you created new technology to be used. Without subscribers, your efforts may go to waste. Therefore, your subscriber acquisition and customer success should be planned alongside your technical systems and business plan at large. Within the subscription economy subscriber acquisition systems are the front-runners in your sales force.
By Oliver Viel & Christine Kong
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keylight is a full-service partner for digital strategies focussing on subscription businesses. The Subscription Suite by keylight is the leading subscriber acquisition system on the market, giving businesses a highly customizable interface to their customers with full automation of their subscription-related processes.
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