How a Product Information Management System Improves The Customer Experience
Your company’s success is based on your brand, and your brand is connected to the customer experience. But what if your customers are being turned off by bad experiences?
You can turn things around with a product information management system. This can offer you a smoother business while improving your customer service in a number of unexpected ways.
Keep reading to learn more about why the customer experience is important and how an information management system can improve it!
Product Experience vs. Customer Experience
Many businesses think they are already offering a good customer service experience. However, it is more likely that you are focusing on product experience instead. Product experience is basically your short-term goal of giving a customer what they need. This is typically what feeds the initial design of your storefront. However, customer experience is long-term and even predictive. It involves anticipating customer needs and determining what their experience is like at different touch-points while they navigate your site. A good product experience is important in getting your business off the ground. But solid customer service experience is at the heart of long-term success.
The Service Advantage
Ultimately, businesses have a pretty direct question about focusing on customer service: how will it help them stand out from the competition? The truth is that customers see many stores as interchangeable. If they need a certain product, they simply search for the price that suits their needs. However, ongoing loyalty is a matter of more than the right price. Customers will stay with a business that offers superior customer service and accessibility. Anyone can offer a good price. But you might be the only business in your niche that can offer quality service.
Improved Customer Loyalty
All those good customer service experiences you are providing? They add up, and it leads to ongoing customer loyalty. Customers assign value to a business when they feel like they have a positive relationship (more on this in a minute). And that loyalty translates to customers becoming powerful advocates on your behalf. For many demographics (especially the millennial generation), there is no substitute for word of mouth advertising. They are wary of the traditional advertising you offer, but hearing about the positive experiences others have had with your business is a powerful way to gain new customers.
More Personal Relationships
Many businesses see their relationship with customers as purely transactional: the customer has needs, the business fulfills those needs. Simple, right? Not as simple as you might think. Customers like to feel special, and they want to feel like they are doing business with a company in tune with not just their needs, but with their values. A good customer experience is going to feel personal and promote better relationships between buyer and seller. This knocks out two birds with one stone, as it makes your customers feel especially valued while giving them a chance to know you as more than just another company.
What Is PIM?
So far, we’ve focused on the benefits of customer service in and of itself. Here’s the big question, though: how does a product information management system lead to better customer service? Think of product information as more than simple info: instead, it’s a roadmap that customers use to navigate your website. The better the info, the more accurate the map. This has been the secret to success for giants like Amazon.com. On such sites, the customer doesn’t just get the information they search for: they get suggestions for related products they might need, which drives sales while improving customer service at the same time.
But how does PIM actually work?
The Function of Product Information Management System
The big name of the game for PIM is “accuracy.” It helps you to be as accurate as possible when describing the products you sell. Plenty of data on big sites is inaccurate. And even if you start out with accurate data, you are much likelier to have errors as your business grows larger and larger. PIM allows you to do things like bulk updates of products, so you don’t have to focus on just one thing at a time. And you can create your own groupings of different products, giving you the flexibility to create your own unique taxonomy. Product info, prices–everything can be adjusted with the press of a button. So, you get a smoother-running company while providing a more accurate experience for customers.
What are other advantages?
Boosting Sales
From a profit perspective, this is what it’s all about. A PIM provides unprecedented opportunities to boost your sales. The ability to group products and create your own taxonomy means it’s easy to offer seasonal sales on everything labeled, say, “summer” or “Christmas.” This allows you to offer special sales throughout the year, keeping things both convenient and fresh for your consumers. You could do this all by hand (think catalogs and spreadsheets), but that’s both time consuming and error-prone.
Better Search Results
From individual consumers to the biggest businesses, everyone on the internet knows this one truth: the best business in the world means nothing if no one has ever heard of you. It’s important to always focus on improving your SEO and jumping up in the Google search rankings. However, you might be surprised that PIM can help you do just that! For one thing, in-depth and accurate descriptions of your various products makes it likelier that they will feature higher in the search results. And making things easier to find for your customers means they will visit more parts of your site, further boosting your site in the rankings. Remember, too, that PIM can help you easily add keywords and metadata, which is the final ingredient for SEO success!
The Bottom Line
You know how important product information management systems are to your business success. But do you know who can help you get started? Innovit is a company that focuses on eCommerce growth, and PIM is one of our specialties. Contact us now to see how we can help you grow!