What Is After-Sale Product Engagement?

Finding that value-added connection with customers is urgent given the world today.

 

In today’s climate, most people aren’t excited to make in-person purchases. COVID-19 catalyzed a seismic shift in retail, creating an urgent need for company-consumer relationships and brand survival.

 

Not to mention the “pre-sale” landscape is crowded and commoditized, no longer allowing companies to differentiate, create special relationships, or build brand equity. The race is on to capture the market and captivate customers in a more innovative way. Brands must now transform themselves by providing a connected, more personalized product experience after the sale.

 

Keep reading to learn how after-sale product engagement can be the answer for brands looking to stand out from the pack.

 

According to Temkin Group, investing in customer experience initiatives can double your revenue in three years. Add to that, more than 86 percent of buyers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience.

 

The logic is simple—building a relationship with a customer helps increase the chances that they’ll purchase your brand’s product over another. Once you’ve made the initial sale you can hope for repeat patronage based on the product quality, brand loyalty, or other factors.

 

But what if engagement didn’t stop after the initial sale? What if there was a way to leverage the purchased product to strengthen your customer relationship, brand loyalty, and retention rates?

 

Enter after-sale product engagement. Through after-sale engagement, businesses can use purchased products to strengthen their customer relationships. Every product has a life after the sale, defined by the unboxing, onboarding, usage, and maintenance stages of the consumer-product continuum.

 

What does the after-sale lifecycle consist of? It’s any opportunity to engage with your customer post-sale. This includes onboarding, when your customer is getting to know your product, enjoying, when they are using it, and maintaining, when they want to upgrade or continue to take care of the product they already know and love.

 

Onboard – Consumers learn about breaking in their product and improving their utilization with it.

Enjoy – Consumers use and enjoy their product and the product performs as expected.

Maintain – Consumers either maintain care for their product directly from the brand and their recommendations or use third-party service providers to keep their products performing optimally.

 

Each of these stages has numerous opportunities to connect directly with your customers, from when they unbox their favorite pair of shoes to when they are alerted to purchase a new pair of strings on their well-loved guitar. We call these opportunities product touchpoints -- an email, text message, or other alert triggered by source data, like the weather, time, or product usage. ‍

 

After-sale product engagement is best utilized when brands embrace product touchpoints throughout the entirety of the product lifecycle. Customers that were once on the fence about re-purchasing from a brand will become a loyal brand advocate, as they know the company will be supporting and connecting with them every step of the way.

 

After-sale product engagement is a continuous process, but can be incredibly beneficial for a company. Creating high-value product touchpoints can have several benefits, including: