Last updated on June 16th, 2023 at 06:47 pm
You might have heard of the phrase product experience and been wondering what it is and how you can integrate it into your business. It certainly is not a new concept for brands globally and brings together various elements of the business to ensure a good experience for the customer.
Not only does it tie into concepts like the customer experience journey and the user experience, but it combines various departments to work together to achieve it.
So, just what is it, and what do you have to do to heighten your product experience in your company? We unpacked the concept in detail.
What Is Product Experience?
Right, let’s start off with defining product experience. In its essence, product experience is the customer’s journey with the product of a particular brand. Although similar to user experience and the customer journey, it deals solely with the customer’s experience with the product itself from beginning to end.
In the case of a SaaS business, for example, this would refer to the customer’s experience with the software itself. So, consider the moment the customer signs up for the software, is onboarded, and starts dealing with it on a daily basis.
What do they deal with when using the application, the plug-ins, the integrations? Do they find it streamlined and efficient? What are they thinking about the various features and are they satisfied with its usability?
These are all elements that need to be considered when managing the product experience. And if you truly want to succeed, making use of a product experience management platform is essential.
Spend Time Listening to Your Customers
First things first, you can’t provide a great product experience if you don’t allow your customers to provide you with feedback.
Spend some time finding out what they want and creating a product around this. This way you will start your brand and company off on the right foot by creating something that your customer will buy into instantly.
Create a platform where you can actually ask a customer how it is going. Email surveys or feedback emails are a great way to get them to respond and give you their thoughts on the product. In many cases, it can be quite difficult to actually get customers to provide you with these details, but there are several things to consider.
First, consider incentivizing the feedback. Provide discounts or free delivery for feedback. Secondly, if something is truly not working for the customer, the chances are you will hear about it.
Keep an Eye on Social Platforms and Other Feedback Channels
In many cases, users and customers take directly to social media to comment or complain about a particular brand or company. It is worth your while regularly doing searches on platforms and search engines to see what pops up about your company and your brand.
Not only should you be checking social media platforms but also various other platforms; the travel and hospitality industry would look at TripAdvisor, for example.
Customers actually expect you to take notice, even if you are not directly tagged, so try and keep an eye out. What is great about these platforms is that you can also keep an eye out for what is being said about your competitors too.
With this information, you can see where they are missing the mark, and where you can potentially improve upon.
Make Use of Contextual Onboarding
Onboarding a customer is one thing, but contextual onboarding takes it to a whole new level. Contextual onboarding is showing the right message to the right customer at the right time.
So, during the onboarding sequence with a new client, especially in the SaaS environment, each user has the option to adapt the platform that they are using to their needs. This may sound daunting, but the fact is, that when a customer has picked features that they want to use on your product, they are more likely to be more satisfied with your product.
So, create pop-ups asking if they want to integrate certain plugins. Would they like certain notifications? Would they like a full tour of the options, or would they like to simply get started?
This provides a seamless learning experience when signing up for your product. It teaches users on a “need-to-know” basis rather than overwhelming them right away.
The Bottom Line
Have a direct communication line with your customers and clients and allow them as many chances as they can to engage with your brand. Data is going to be one of the most important elements of your feedback channel, so spend time collating it.
