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In the end, it’s not the adoption rates that affect your bottom line.  It’s identifying the customers – and their behaviors – that will have the greatest impact, guiding those customers through the adoption stages, and ultimately changing their behaviors to create product dependency and ultimately higher value for your business.  

By understanding the five-stage process that customers go through, from learning about a new product to becoming loyal to the product (and the provider), you can align your customer engagement strategies to accelerate success.

Moving from Being Aware (News - Alert) to Being Dependent

1.    Awareness (“I know this product is available but what can it do for me?”)

Marketing is the process of building a relationship with your customers and prospects.  Have you ever established a lifelong friendship with someone you had contact with only once?  Probably not. Generally, friendships – and all relationships for that matter – develop as a result of frequent contact over time.

While intuitively we understand the importance of frequency when promoting a product, for some reason when it comes to actually implementing a campaign, frequency is often sacrificed for reach.   When launching or promoting any product, it’s important to evaluate all of your touch points, i.e. portal, website, IVR, email, support representatives, paper bill, customer newsletters, account reviews, etc. and determine how to best leverage them for delivering the right series of ongoing messages that resonate with a customer and their needs.   For example, instead of rattling off a laundry list of functionality, simply state that the product can “save you time” or “be customized to meet your needs” and how.

In Seth Godin’s book, Permission Marketing, he uses an analogy of seeds and water to demonstrate the importance of assuring adequate frequency in your promotional campaigns. If you were given 100 seeds with enough water to water each seed once would you plant all 100 seeds and water each one once or would you plant 25 seeds and use all of the water on those 25 seeds?

A few months after launch, you should ask yourself: are we doing everything that it takes to move customers to the next stage of adoption?

2.    Learning (“I understand the basic features and functionality of this product.”)

Now that you’ve gained the customer’s interest, the next step is to build knowledge of the product’s full range of capabilities and benefits.  For this stage, it’s important to ensure that your approach adapts to the three different learning styles: listening learners, seeing learners, and experience learners.   Think about one of life’s earliest lessons: “The Stove Can Burn You.”   Listening learners heard this from their mother, believed it, and never touched a stove.  Seeing learners watched their brothers touch the stove, and never touched it.  Experience learners touched the stove – but only once! 

By delivering a blended learning solution, customers are able to define the learning experience that is most appropriate for them.  On-site training, group training, live webinars, recorded webinars, and written education materials are all proven tactics in driving product learning, and should each be considered based on effort required and expected impact.

Because the majority of customer inquiries around a product’s functionality will occur during the learning stage, it is imperative that a well-defined support structure and access to the appropriate education tools are in place to ensure efficient resolution.  If not, frustration will hinder customers from transitioning to the next stage. 

3.    Familiarity and Confidence (“I trust the information I receive and understand how this tool can help me.”)

After customers have an understanding of the product, usage increases and they begin to relate the product to their day-to-day tasks.   The goal of this stage is to make the product the preferred channel, which means ensuring that it is more convenient, comprehensive, and easier to use than the alternative.   If it’s easier to pick up the phone and call support with a billing inquiry versus logging into the online channel to self-serve, the customers’ behaviors will not change.   Ensuring easy access and accurate information is key to building product confidence and when done right, this is when adoption begins to influence key metrics such as client satisfaction, operational costs, and DSO. 

After customers have reached this stage, leverage Voice of the Customer communications to promote their product confidence and success stories (Example: “I saved 12 hours this month by having reports automatically emailed to all of my sales managers”) to build awareness and trust among the base.   Often customers do not want to be the first to adopt but if others are realizing tangible benefits, they’re willing to jump on the train.  

4.    Integration into Business Processes (“I’ve integrated this product into my existing processes.”)

By offering products that integrate and influence existing business processes, operators gain a significant advantage in terms of increasing their value with customers, and ultimately, retaining their customers.    At this stage, customers are using the product but it’s important to continue education on how the product can be extended to their business to increase efficiency.  For example, provide a step-by-step guide for Wholesale customers on how to use the mark up functionality to automate their monthly re-billing process.   Provide a list of example reports that customers can use to define and align their employees’ mobile usage with company policies.   Provide samples of graphical data points that can be downloaded for monthly department or executive reporting, such as total monthly spend, monthly spend by cost center, or a particular service spend by location. 

Although customers do not want to be inundated with communications, quick tips and tricks that are relevant to their business needs are typically welcomed and will help to build your customer champion network for Voice of the Customer communications.

5.    Dependency (“I rely on this product to do my job efficiently and value my provider for this product.”)

This is the goal – achieving the “must have” status.   Once customers have reached this stage, the impact on your business goals are maximized.   Customers have changed their behaviors and are relying on the product as the preferred channel.  This leads to reduced support and operational costs, reduced DSO, and increased customer satisfaction.  Perceived operator value and customer switching costs have also increased, which have a high impact on customer retention success.  

Although you’ve reached the final stage of adoption, it’s important to continually engage with your customers.   Leveraging those who are loyal to the product as an input and sounding board for the product’s future direction will ensure continued customer buy-in.  What other features would help them be more productive in their day-to-day tasks?  What other functionality would increase the efficiency around their business processes?  

The Bottom Line

With the right tools and resources in place, operators can not only ensure that customers register for a new product, but they can also guide them through these adoption phases to create product dependency.  After all, how fast you create dependency is how fast you’ll realize a strong ROI. 

Mark Sten is SVP of Global Marketing & Carrier Relations for Globys (www.globys.com), a leading provider of customer experience solutions for the worldwide telecommunications market.