Concierge onboarding - focus on customer needs

One of the biggest mistakes in scaling a business is to focus solely on getting a customer quickly, with no idea or plan of what to do to tie them down for the long term. Fortunately, taking care of the customer is becoming fashionable. Online store platform Shoper has created its own concierge onboarding system, which supports customers not only at the beginning of their e-commerce adventure, but most importantly shows them how to use the service in the long run.

Onboarding with a concierge

Building user loyalty to a brand is currently the most important trend in customer service, which cannot be underestimated. Especially in subscription solutions, like the SaaS model in which we provide our software. Recognizing the true needs of customers is crucial for us - they are very often people at a particular moment in their lives, changing their career path, making economic decisions that are important to them. That's why we want to not only passively accompany them, but actively advise them, and when necessary, even lead them by the hand. Hence the idea of a concierge onboarding system.

Concierge (pl. concierge) is a butler, a caretaker of the home. The duties of a concierge, such as in luxury hotels, include caring for guests and fulfilling the whims of discerning clients. Onboarding (English: "on board" "on board") is a name used mainly by the HR industry to mean introducing someone to a new position, preparing them for their new duties. The combination of these words and their meanings perfectly reflects what concierge onboarding is - it is active assistance tailored to the customer's needs and requirements while introducing him to the service, familiarizing him with the product.

Of course, any customer service department can say that it helps you take your first steps. It's available on live chat, publishes guides, FAQs and tutorials. But concierge onboarding is an entire strategy based on analyzing customer data to anticipate their questions, concretize their needs and answer them before they say them.

Conducting onboarding activities is boasted by foreign companies such as coldmail platform, Milkshake, and marketing automation tool, Customer.io. They confirm that a fine-tuned concierge in customer service results in increased conversions and reduced time for customers to test services as they begin to pay subscriptions. According to representatives of these companies, one of the key elements in concierge onboarding programs is personalized and personal contact.

Idea

How did Shoper develop its system? There are more than 10,000 stores on our platform, and every month a new test version is set up by more than 1,500 entrepreneurs. With such an amount of customers and data, it is difficult with a standard approach to contact each of them quickly and easily, and it is also difficult with the all-day answering of customer calls and e-mails to make constructive use of the information collected in the system. That's why we decided on a pioneering concierge onboarding project on the Polish e-commerce market, which completely reorganized the work of the Customer Service Department. To the benefit of both parties.

Implementation

After analyzing the conversations of the Customer Service Department, we created a structure of the most frequently asked questions and answers, and based on it we prepared a dedicated database. It was initially used only by a test part of the department. It quickly turned out that this very part boasted twice as many conversions, counted as the number of e-shops whose owners switch to subscription after the free trials. From the beginning, concierge onboarding was about making good, direct contact with the customer and educating him in the best possible way. That is, by responding to his real needs. They are the key to further service.

The implementation of concierge onboarding on the Shoper platform, and in Dreamcommerce-owned stores on two other Zencommerce platforms, working in India and Turkey, was handled by Lukasz Kozlowski. Our idea was for the Customer Service advisor to know the attitude and requirements of the store owner: whether they are beginners in e-commerce, but an experienced seller, and how much time they want to devote to the business. We will suggest and hint at different things to a mother on maternity leave who is taking her first steps in e-commerce, others to an e-manager who expects to make millions in sales. For sellers we are also often a kind of coach, through advice we mobilize them to develop.

Our modern method of client deployment has been enhanced with an easy-to-understand graphical interface. As a result, we don't have to describe each user with a series of sentences, but do it in the form of clear graphics. The customer and his new e-store are presented in a schematic picture, and data about him is added on the fly by DOK staff in the form of short information. The graphic is also automatically supplemented with data from the test version of the store and online surveys. Ultimately, this is how the image of the store owner is created, containing data about himself, the nature of his business, his needs, the functions integrated in the store. This allows us to supervise and support the activities of our entrepreneurs. We are able to quickly locate a problem or need and react to protect customers from losses.

On the basis of the information from the concierge, a store audit is also carried out - consultants monitor on an ongoing basis the changes made by the sellers and after a few weeks call with advice on how to optimize the functioning of the store at a given stage. The graphical representation also allows a consultant who has not yet had contact with a particular customer to quickly get an idea of the store's situation. By looking at the graphic, in a few moments he is able to answer questions and suggest next steps.

Effects

Testing of the system began in mid-2016, and the entire Shoper Customer Service Department switched to it in October. The effects were noticeable after six months of working with the new model - customers rated the service department employees as more professional and customer-oriented. And this had an impact on conversion - during the tests it was up to 20-30 percent higher than in the same period a year earlier. We also learned lessons about the work of consultants - we are aware of what we still need to improve, and what works well.

What's next?

The system's development plans for the near future include extending year-round monitoring to e-shops, not just in the startup phase. And not only in Poland, because, as mentioned above, concierge onboarding has been implemented in all countries where Dreamcommerce operates - that is, including Turkey and India. Simultaneous integration in three different markets was a challenge, as the system had to be customized for each market. Using it in these several markets makes it possible to observe the differences between them. It turns out, among other things, that in Poland it takes their owners up to several months after trying out the test version to decide to set up a paid version of the online store. The situation is different in Turkey, where the decision is made much faster. Poles often take a more conservative approach to new business, slowly expanding their business by stages, when entrepreneurs in India immediately aggressively attack foreign markets. Experience in the international arena confirms that concierge onboarding effectively locates opportunities and threats for any entrepreneur using the platform. With this knowledge, it is much easier to manage the international organism that is Dreamcommerce today and to develop the concierge onboarding project as customers' needs change.

For a company operating on a SaaS or subscription business model, implementing a customer success approach is key. Customer success directly affects the success of the platform. And our data shows that if an e-store doesn't start selling within three months, its chance of continued business decreases. That's why it's so important for us to observe customers and identify their needs at the very beginning. And mobilizing them to take action, especially when their motivation drops.

Text author: Tomasz Tybon, director of sales and marketing at Dreamcommerce, initiator of the concierge onboarding approach in customer service