BlogmyQuery – BMQ

Word-of-mouth is a powerful tactic that every marketer could dream of. Positive word-of-mouth can influence buyers purchasing intentions, build trust, and drive your conversion rate higher. You may be surprised, but it can help your search engine optimisation (SEO) efforts too.

Reviews and testimonials are one of the ways customers help build the trust and credibility that is needed for those all-important conversions. But many businesses will not realise the potential of reviews or testimonials, leaving them out of their content marketing strategy despite how effective they are. 

What are reviews?

You may not realise it, but online reviews are very impactful and have a big influence on your online presence. As e-commerce sites and online shopping continues to grow year on year, the importance of reviews will continue to grow too.

But what are reviews? A review is feedback that a customer will give on the experience they received from using a product or service. A review can be positive or negative and are usually publicly available for all to see. Reviews can include a rating (or star) system, as well as short comments, outlining the customer’s experience.

It’s estimated that around 90% of customers will look at reviews before visiting a business or making a purchase. While reviews can improve trust and credibility, leading to potentially higher conversion rates, a lack of reviews or negative reviews can have the opposite effect.

Reviews are mainly hosted on third-party sites, such as Google, review sites, or listings on business directories. However, businesses can also host their own reviews on their own website or e-commerce platform. We’ve all looked at the Amazon reviews before buying an item, haven’t we? The same goes for any other e-commerce store.

Reviews help other potential customers to get an insight into whether the solution you are offering for a particular problem or pain point resolved such issues. They can also be used by businesses to measure customer satisfaction. Where negative feedback is given, it provides a business with a chance to improve its service or product.

What are testimonials?

A testimonial is similar to a review, providing much more detail and insight. As testimonials are longer, there is much more scope for outlining an experience using a product or service as a story. 

Unlike reviews, a testimonial is directly collected and managed by the business. Despite this, testimonials are still very effective in a B2B environment, unlike reviews that are more suited for B2C. A testimonial usually includes the company the person works for, their name, and a profile picture.

Even though businesses collect and manage testimonials, they are still effective in influencing potential buyers. Testimonials’ strength is in their length. Testimonials that provide as much detail as possible are much more effective than shorter testimonials.

Testimonials can take different forms, including:

• Text
• Video testimonials
• Quotes
• Audio
• Case studies
• Social media
• Peer and press review

Reviews work much better as shorter items, but in greater quantities. The opposite is true for testimonials. However, testimonials that go beyond 3 paragraphs are typically less effective. As potential buyers can relate to the problems outlined in a testimonial, it allows an emotional connection to be made, which helps alter buying intentions.

Testimonials are typically given by customers or clients that have used a product or service. While the person giving the testimonial will be unknown to potential buyers, the experience they have using a product/service and their pain points help form a connection with potential buyers. 

Recommendations from influencers with strong followings don’t class as testimonials. That’s influencer marketing. While influencer marketing is an effective way to generate and amplify word-of-mouth and alter buying intentions, the two are different techniques entirely.

The importance of reviews and testimonials

Reviews and testimonials have a strong impact on potential customers. Just take a look at these 2 statistics to see how:

• 88% of customers trust reviews as much as a personal recommendation from friends or family.
• A business or product with excellent reviews (typically 5 stars) is likely to increase customer spending by 31%.

Here are more reasons why reviews and testimonials are important:

• It helps to build trust and credibility for your business and brand
• You can build a stronger connection with your customers
• Letting customers express their experiences helps develop brand advocates
• Helps increase brand awareness
• Increases lead generation and conversion rates
• Higher click-through rates
• Influences buyers’ decisions toward your brand, product, or service offering

The power of word-of-mouth

So, we’ve mentioned word-of-mouth being a powerful marketing tactic, but just how powerful is word-of-mouth? Word-of-mouth is considered to be much more effective at driving 5x more sales and generating leads than any form of paid marketing. Not only is word-of-mouth free but it’s also organic.

Long before the days of social media, reviews and testimonials, word-of-mouth was a powerful promotional technique. However, as it is now much easier to share and express opinions online, the power of word-of-mouth has only amplified and grown stronger.

Word-of-mouth is so powerful and impactful as customer trust is factored above all other forms of marketing. While 92% of people believe recommendations made from friends and family have the strongest ability to alter purchasing intentions, recommendations from others can still be very strong.

Word-of-mouth has the power to both attract and convert customers. Word-of-mouth is very good at raising brand awareness, and when used in the right places, can lead to a customer converting and taking that all-important action at the end of the buyer’s journey.

Customer reviews and testimonials are just one of the many ways a business can generate word-of-mouth. But remember, word-of-mouth isn’t just spreading positive experiences. Negative word-of-mouth can be just as influential for all the wrong reasons!

Other forms of generating word-of-mouth include:

• User-generated content
• Affiliate marketing
• Influencer marketing
• Referral marketing
• Partner programs
• Brand ambassadors
• Social media

Using reviews and testimonials in content marketing

Now we’ve covered how impactful reviews and testimonials can be as a form of word-of-mouth, how can you implement them into your content marketing strategy? Here are a few ways you can:

Include on your website

One of the first places many businesses will add reviews and testimonials is on their website. Whether it be a separate page dedicated to customer testimonials or reviews on individual product/service pages.

You could also include them on your homepage, which is the page that will see the most traffic. You even have the opportunity of embedding reviews into your site from third-party sources, such as Google. If you have great reviews, why let them sit idle when they can be used to highlight the value and benefits your product brings for solving a problem?

Add to your blog

Including testimonials in your blog posts can be a tricky one as you don’t want them to overshadow your content or distract the user from digesting your message. Yet when placed correctly, testimonials can be a welcome addition to your blog posts. Consider including testimonials in the sidebar to prevent any distractions and increase the chances of a customer becoming more interested in your brand or product.

Social media

With so many users and the ease of sharing content, using testimonials and reviews on your social media pages is a sure way of influencing potential customers. When many will form an opinion about your brand based on what you post on social media, social media is an ideal platform for sharing your testimonials. Combine with your optimal posting times for maximum effect.

Case studies

Case studies are very similar to testimonials but written from a business perspective. For that reason, case studies don’t have as much influence on buyers. But there’s nothing to stop you from including testimonials in your case studies, especially in the results or outcome section.

Email marketing

If you’re sending out regular emails to your subscribers, consider including reviews and testimonials to help drive conversions. Emails that are sent to leads can have a much stronger and more meaningful impact when paired with testimonials that highlight the benefits or strengths of your product. Just make sure the reviews and testimonials are relevant.

Near call-to-actions

What better place to include reviews and testimonials than near to where a customer is going to act? Placing reviews and testimonials in a strategic location near your call-to-actions will help increase the likelihood a user will act and make that all-important click.

How to get reviews and testimonials

You can’t use reviews and testimonials in your content marketing if you don’t have any to start with. So, here are some ways you can start building up your reviews and gathering testimonials.

• Ask your customers or clients after making a purchase, it’s estimated that around 70% who are asked to leave a review will.
• Exchange testimonials with your clients
• Encourage customers to leave reviews by offering an incentive. Be careful about this though as you could be breaking the conditions of some platforms, such as Google.
• Use the reviews on your Google Business Profile alongside business directory and listing sites, such as Trustpilot, TripAdvisor, and Yell.
• Conduct marketing research, such as surveys, to find out customers’ opinions
• Use your existing praise from customers, but ask permission first
• Set up Google Alerts to track mentions of your site and reviews on third-party sites, such as news reports or testimonials on other blogs.

Responding to reviews

It’s not enough just to get reviews. You need to take the time to reply and respond to reviews, whether they be positive (and especially) or negative. If you don’t take the time to respond to reviews, it may seem to your potential customers that you don’t care once they’ve purchased from you.

When responding to reviews, there are some tips you should consider to help develop a positive experience and build relationships with your customers. Whether you are responding to a positive review or a negative review, consider these tips:

• Try to respond to the review as quickly as possible
• Thank the customer for their custom and for leaving a review
• Use the customer’s first name
• Keep your reply short and sweet
• For bad reviews, apologise and sympathise with the customer and acknowledge a mistake was made. Avoiding responsibility or denial only makes the situation worse.
• Address the problem and try to provide a solution (where possible)
• If there’s an issue, take the conversion to a private form of communication, such as email, chat, or phone)

Righting any wrongs is a chance to turn a negative into a positive. It also means you may not have lost that customer either. Correcting any mistakes and admitting responsibility shows you are open and honest.

You also can respond to reviews with your targeted keywords, such as your business name or products. Not only will you be building better relationships with your customers, but your SEO efforts will get a little boost too.

By dealing with the problem, a customer who left a negative review may be more inclined to stay with you in future. After all, it’s 7 times cheaper to retain your existing customers than to acquire a new one. Why not give customers a second chance?

Conclusion

Reviews and testimonials are powerful marketing tools that every business should consider making use of. Not only does it help in building trust and credibility, but the influence word-of-mouth has on altering buying intentions shows just how effective reviews and testimonials can be in your content marketing. So, why not get started?

The post The Effectiveness of Testimonials and Reviews in your Content Marketing Strategy appeared first on noupe.

This cannot be denied that “digital transformation” has been the major reason for the fundamental changes in the result of businesses. Also, the way businesses are operating, and the integration of digital technology in digital transformation have a massive role in it. In the modern world, organizations are gaining benefits from digital transformation. There are numerous businesses that are replicating big names just after witnessing the benefits gained from digital transformation in their organization.

Modernizing the legacy process, effective and result-driven workflows, safe and sound security, and maximum revenue is to name a few under the line of benefits of digital transformation. The following are the top benefits for all business types, must check them out!

Top Result-Driven Benefits Of Digital Transformation

Digital transformation has allegedly changed the perspective of organizations operating systems. The process of the operating systems undergoes 4 stages such as; systems, processes, workflow, and culture all are its part. However, by taking the advantage of workflow automation, AI, and machine learning companies are gaining potential leads and increasing customer retention. See what the other 8 benefits are:

Strengthen Data Collection

There is no use in collecting tons of customer data when the data is unreal or non beneficial. What’s the catch? The data provides the real benefit of optimizing, which can later be used for business prosperity. Here comes the digital transformation handy and it accentuates the system to gather the right data and incorporate it fully into the business which can raise the business bars to a higher level.

For the organization’s betterment, it is important to know how the customers’ data is collected, stored, used, and shared across the platforms. To maintain customer relationship management (CRM), you are advised to ensure customers that their data is safe and are under high security with automation.

Enhanced Customer Experience (CX)

Customers when interacting with automated and digital resources automatically expect a lot from them. However, for any business, the best it could do is to not let its customer down. The digital transformation unlocks efficiencies that give seamless, real-time, and intuitive experience to the customers. 

Digital transformation allows you to give your customers complete agency over their data privacy, which certainly leads to customer satisfaction. According to the Accenture reports, “For the substantial business growth, customer experience CX has emerged as its key”, also, it says “increase in CX even by single point can lead to millions’ growth annually”

Boost Productivity

Hence digital transformation has been following the high-end technology advancements provided by automation, AI, and machine learning in this modern world. Therefore, in the organization, having the appropriate high technology can actually boost productivity. Wondering how? It actually takes up the responsibility of the manual tasks, and lets employees focus on more important tasks. Also, it can integrate data throughout the company and let the employee feel less burdened.

Forceful Resource Management

According to the sources, the average number of applications used in businesses in 2020 is about 900 — all kudos to digital transformation. Because it makes information and resources solid for the businesses, and also, protected. For business intelligence, digital transformation can integrate applications, databases, and software. 

Whether it is a finance department, marketing, or sales, each and every department has a sensitive data that requires a safety which can be driven via digital transformation. 

For an organization, to maintain its credibility in the market it is highly advisable to equip and optimize data with easy to use tools and help the team to make their work done properly.

Data Driven Customer Insights

For best customer understanding and customer needs — you being the business owner must create a business strategy that is customer centric and must fulfill customer needs. Also, for better customer insights the ideal way to do that is to have a safe and secure data set. 

How digital transformation helps in gaining the best customer insights? With the help of structure and unstructured data. Personal customer information falls under structural data, whereas, social media metrics is an unstructured data that help the business to drive more insights. 

In addition, the collection of data enables the strategies for the business to provide relevant and personalized content. 

High and Maximum Profits

Companies that go through the digital transformation process are more efficient and profitable; it also helps companies get noticed more.

However, according to the SAP Center for Business Insights and Oxford Economics, the companies that follow the digital transformation process gain more than the usual companies. The results are as under:

More than 75% of the companies are reported to have increased profits with digital transformation.

More than 80% of businesses say that they have increased their market share

With the digital transformation companies are earning 23% better revenue in comparison of their competitors

Uplift Digital Culture

Without a doubt, the digital transformation is encouraging a digital culture by tailoring the environment with the right tools. Also, these tools help to connect in a seamless way, in addition, it moves the whole organization to a new level of digitalization. 

Certainly, it helps the online businesses to take advantage of the benefits of digital transformation and keeps pushing the businesses to grow in a better way. One such example is upliftment in dropshipping businesses in different industries like clothing, pets, jewelry etc. lately which has gained tremendous interest and which is possible with the help of free tools like the Woocommerce and WordPress.   

Cost Savings

Last but not the least — cost savings. Which business would not want to save the cost? ALL OF THEM! Switching to digital transformation will not only save business costs but also time. Once you have switched to it, the integration of it would make work and business more efficient.

What Are the 4 Main Areas of Digital Transformation?

Many the thoughtful researchers and many advocate digital transformation in 4 areas. However, it is further categorized in the light of Microsoft and Association Success. Let’s have a look at both of them:

According To Microsoft:

According to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, CEOs should focus on these areas in digital transformation:

1. Empowering employees
2. Engaging customers
3. Optimize operations
4. Services and products

According To Association Success:

According to an article on AssociationSuccess.org, businesses should have 4 specific focal points when designing a digital transformation plan:

1. A strategic focus
2. A customer focus
3. A culture focus
4. A data focus

Conclusion

Data protection and safety is no longer an IT task, it shall be looked after by digital technology & MDM solutions too. Also, the companies are redefining their shape in the light of digital transformation. However, the businesses are seen gaining in many areas such as; data collection, improved customer experience, high cost savings, maximum revenue, and more. 

The post What Are The Benefits Of Digital Transformation? appeared first on noupe.

A fact to understand! — As society evolves, the need to update medical services increases too. But for this, everything comes into consideration — the shift in healthcare workers, fluctuations in drug producers, and the evolving needs of patients.

A senior healthcare professional said, “20 years from now, fatal diabetes and cancer could join the defeatable polio group! This is what every leading healthcare app development company has to work on.”

In my imagination, this could look like… the upcoming technological advancements will make us switch from smart wearable devices to invisibly embedded sensors. If you feel that the devices on your wrists or the apps on your smartphone are a wonder, you have no idea what the future holds for the healthcare field! Every leading healthcare app development company is doing its best to create devices that make operations seamless. These healthcare trackers, wearables, and sensors are present, and there is still a lot that the coming generations will witness ahead of this.

Today, approximately 133 million Americans are coping with chronic health conditions – ongoing and generally not curable diseases.

As our society is evolving, our healthcare requirements will naturally demand better. Well, if you too have been wondering what the future holds for this industry, this article is definitely for you.

Evolving Tech Trends in the Medical Industry

The medical industry has embraced most technology updates with open arms. And to be honest, these are not just buzzwords in the market but reasonable solutions to the current health-based problems.

There have been simultaneous transformations with the emergence of Cloud Computing In healthcare space. Peeping into a few of the many tech trends that will affect the healthcare industry in the time to come:

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Artificial Intelligence is playing its role in just about every domain. And obviously, it has made its mark in the healthcare industry too. By the end of the next decade, AI will access human data to reveal disease patterns, care, and treatment.

Psychologists believe that the hospitalization experience plays an essential role in the speed of patients getting better. Adding more to this, the staff experiences impact them in providing better care to the patients at their facility.

Virtual Reality (VR)

Virtual Reality surgeries were only a sight to watch in fiction cinema films. However, virtual reality is all about great experiences.

As a matter of fact, the market growth of VR in hospitals is projected to go upto USD 6.20 million by 2029.

VR has helped plan, treat, and diagnose serious illnesses like addiction, autism, phobias, anxiety, and depression.

We trust calculators more than the human mind. Similarly, expert surgeons have shifted to using medical apps and robotic arms and machines for performing precise moves in surgeries. It makes the patients secure and boosts the doctor’s confidence.

Skilled and experienced doctors are adapting to the Virtual Reality game today, and the students are being trained to use such gadgets in educational institutions.

Augmented Reality (AR)

The AR is all about the improved sense of disease understanding. This implies that the diagnosis will be detailed and accurate if the disease is understood in-depth. An apt treatment process will follow this.

At the intersection of healthcare and technology, health-tech innovators have a unique place in the Future of Health, but they face some challenges.

Medical Tricorder

The palm-sized gadget is the Almighty of the medical field. Scientists are still doing further R&D to improve the performance and reliability of this device.

It is an all-inclusive device to calculate the ECG, heart rate, oxygen saturation, temperature, blood pressure, and many other levels.

3D Printing in Clinics

Have you ever heard of 3D print arts? Well, now health professionals can scan and take 3D prints of human bio tissues, artificial limbs, pills, and blood vessels. Interesting, isn’t it?

This will help them better diagnose and discuss, take expert opinions, and prepare your future reference directory.

The New Nanotechnology

This phase of the 21st century is the dawn of the nanomedicine age. The nanoparticles and nanodevices will soon aid in successful drug delivery systems, as cancer treatment tools or as tiny surgeons.

These devices can be controlled and managed via smartphone commands. According to the knowledge, they automatically relay and display diagnostic information.

Evergreen Robotics

Without a doubt, robotics is one of the fastest-growing fields today. These come with touch sensors, cameras, and microphones. Not only have these robots become assisting companions to doctors during surgeries, but also, these pharma robotics are capable of undergoing surgeries alone.

Ever since 2019, exoskeleton surgeries have taken the heat in the market. These structures look just like a human body, withheld the patient and performed the surgery.

Genome Sequencing

Genome sequencing means finding, tracing, and analyzing the DNA sequence of an organism. These tests help in finding a lot of results. The testee can derive the following results from the tests:

• Drug sensitivity
• Multifactorial
• Monogenic medical conditions (single-gene)
• Family history

Nutrigenomics, nutrition cross-field, dietetics, and genomics are already greatly benefiting from genome sequencing technology. Very soon, this will become affordable for individuals to try out.

Silico Drug Trials

Until now, current technology and biological understanding combined didn’t give favorable outcomes. However, it has been a while since these helped generate individualized computer simulations used in developing or regulatory evaluation of a medical product.

Also, this trend has completely transformed drug development procedures. Silico drug trials are ruling the pharmaceutical landscape. Most facilities have set their foot in adopting this trend.

Conclusion

The old and a few present-day systems also are not very efficient in giving the results. Consistency is everything. Moreover, the healthcare industry is not something that can afford A&B Testing. The device has to provide sureshot results or perform precisely as the command assigned because human lives are not revivable. 

There is a high amount of emphasis being paid to human health today. The focus of these advancing technologies is to minimize the health issues in hospitals. After achieving this, their focus will be on reducing the health issues in the patient’s homes.

The post Aftermath of Healthcare Industry Post the Technology Revolution appeared first on noupe.

Businesses don’t always have the resources to hire their own software development team. In such cases, outsourcing IT companies take over the development of individual software solutions. We will tell you how to find such partners and entrust them with your project.

When is outsourcing necessary?

When a businessman has a project idea but no “hands” for its implementation, they turn to out-of-staff IT professionals for help. This may happen in the following cases:

• If a company does not specialize in software development, it is unprofitable for it to build an IT department from scratch in terms of time and money. Business owners are handling this job over to more experienced IT partners like Andersen providing outsourced IT support.
• If a company needs to enter the market faster. Outsourcing software development companies can offer experienced specialists upon customer request. If an entrepreneur tries to solve the problems of finding, hiring, and training employees on their own, this can significantly delay the implementation of a project. If you wish to make yourself known faster and beat competitors in time, every day counts.
• If it is vital to save the budget. Rates of in-house specialists are usually higher than those of developers from offshore outsourcing software development companies. Third-party vendors have their own libraries, out-of-the-box solutions, and a robust IT infrastructure that speeds up development and saves time and money. In addition, ordering software from a third-party company frees the customer from organizational costs for renting a room, utility costs, and so on. 
• If there are no dedicated experts on the staff. Some projects require knowledge of rare technologies that staff members do not possess (artificial intelligence, machine learning, augmented reality, DevOps, and so on). If your company does not need such experts permanently, order a product from an outsourcing software development company.

Why is it more profitable to outsource a software development project?

Today, outsourcing is becoming a common practice that helps companies to concentrate on business goals, solve performance problems, improve service quality, and obtain maximum profit.

• With outsourcing, you can find professionals in any country for a smaller amount. Sometimes the benefit reaches 40-60% since hourly rates of developers in different locations can differ dozens of times.

• Outsourcing makes it easier to introduce new technologies and implement solutions that are beyond the capabilities of full-time employees. Thus, you don’t have to waste time on training new staff members. You can involve an experienced IT specialist from another country in a distributed team.

• Outsourcing software development companies have experience in managing projects from start to finish, which takes the burden off customers and allows them to focus on business value. If there is a strict deadline, an IT service provider can schedule work and choose the staff to carry out everything on time without sacrificing software quality.

Popular outsourcing models

Traditionally, businesses opt for outsourcing to hire an entire software management team or individual specialists. There are three models of custom software development:

• Project-based outsourcing. The bottom line is that an external team leads a project completely, from the beginning to the end, guided by the requirements, budget, and deadlines provided to it. The customer can partially participate in the creation of an application and supervise the progress of work.

• Dedicated team. A client contacts a third-party supplier to hire individual experts needed for their project. The customer develops software on their own, but they may not have narrow specialists or advanced professionals. Thus, they don’t have to search and hire an expert for one year. It is more convenient to opt for outsourcing.

• Staff augmentation. A provider offers a customer a special team (developers, designers, testers, project managers, and so on), while the client takes responsibility for the main processes. That is, this company pays for office rent, software licenses, equipment and utilities, employee training, and benefits. The client manages the software development project and distributes responsibilities within the team.

Being aware of the business problems to be solved, an entrepreneur will choose the appropriate outsourcing model.

Things to consider before outsourcing a project

Before handing over your custom software development project, you need to determine several points.

If you have your specialists, check out how busy they are and whether they specialize in the technologies needed to implement your project.

If you are planning to outsource development to a third-party vendor, calculate the project budget. As a rule, the benefit from cooperation with IT outsourcing companies reaches 25-60%. Therefore, it is quite possible to find foreign specialists with different budgets. But keep in mind that it is not always possible to get the best quality for a lower cost.

Custom software development is not a magic solution for every project. It will be successful if both a customer and its IT partner are deeply involved in the joint work and respect each others’ needs.

Steps to take when outsourcing a project

Step 1. Determine your project goals and objectives.

A project without a goal is bound to fail. You cannot effectively monitor its success, effectiveness, and completion if you don’t understand what you are implementing. You must understand the purpose of the project, its users, and its competitors. This way you can protect yourself from bad decisions, obscure characteristics, performance, and unrealized business values.

Step 2. Choose a location for outsourcing

The global outsourcing market is divided into Western and Eastern Europe, the USA, and Asia. In these regions, there is a significant discrepancy in the rates of specialists: from 25 to 100 dollars per hour. The cheapest development can be offered by Ukraine, Poland, and other countries in Eastern Europe.

Step 3. Narrow your search by choosing an outsourcing software development company

The search for partners should start with studying the top IT software developers in the region. You can easily find them in rankings made by Clutch, GoodFirms, Awwwards, and others. For an initial acquaintance, you can study a company’s website to get an idea of ????its experience, implemented projects, tech stack, etc.

Step 4. Contact the companies you have chosen.

If the customer has found several companies and does not know which one to choose, they should see if any of them worked on similar projects. This will speed up the development process, as the firm will be able to offer specialists who are familiar with the required technologies.

During the initial contact with an IT provider, you should clarify a number of issues on the project cost, the necessary specialists and their competencies, the pricing model, development methodology, and so on, and agree on a joint meeting to discuss important issues. Choose an IT outsourcing company with a clear and transparent approach to cooperation. Thus, you will get a partner seeing eye to eye with you. Such a provider will be committed to the final result which is high-quality software.

Step 5. Recruit a project team

Depending on the goals of a project, its scope, and timing, an IT outsourcing company will offer several working resources capable of fulfilling all customer requirements. Typically, a project team consists of a Business Analyst, a Project Manager, several developers, and testers. The project may also involve IT architects, DevOps engineers, cybersecurity experts, automated testers, and so on.

All these issues are discussed with the customer within the framework of the pricing model and budget, which are previously agreed upon. The client can hire both the entire team of an IT outsourcing company and specific specialists that they lack in their own staff or a distributed team.

The agreements reached are reflected in the following documents: SLA, SRS, KPI, NDA, etc. 

Conclusion

You’ll understand if you can successfully outsource software development to a third-party vendor only after carefully studying the needs of your company, its budget, and other issues that are important to your business. The very fact that this format of work is cheaper than in-house development speaks in its favor. And this is not the only advantage of custom software development.

The post Secrets of Successful Software Development Outsourcing? appeared first on noupe.

Customer account health is a data-driven metric to identify whether your customer is getting value or not. According to a popular survey, maintaining a customer health score was more predominant in organizations with a less than 5% gross churn rate. Although the survey doesn’t identify a lucid correlation between customer health scores and revenue generated through upselling or cross-sell. 

However, it shows a big impact on forecasting renewals and having a better clarity on the CSM role. A study has also found that 46% maintain a customer health score to forecast churn or renewals.

Defining an ideal Customer Health Score requires taking consideration into various elements. The traditional form of Health Score was calculated as a single score that eventually failed to demonstrate the accuracy of the customer’s health at a given point. A single customer health score is a bluff. As health never comes in one shape and form. There have to be multiple dimensions to health. Multiple dimensions when considered together provide an accurate Customer Health score. Various dimensions of it should comprise-

What are the assorted dimensions of Customer Health?

1. Financial Health: Gives an account of the purchase history, overdue invoices, purchased license, canceled license, etc.

2. Relationship Health: It measures how frequently contact has been established through touchpoints. Like, the frequency of communication of the CSMs with clients, and their rapport with the stakeholders.

3. Product Adoption Health: It simply measures the Product’s Stickiness. As example, the Adoption of the core features, active login days of the client, hoe frequently your product is getting used.

4. Service Health: Defines a transparent idea about the effectiveness with which your support team handles customer issues. For example, the number of tickets raised, and the number of tickets resolved. Therefore the happiness quotient of the client.

5. External Factors: Positive confidence tags, for example, If the customer is driving a case study with you, if they have referred anyone, etc.

A better form of Customer Success Technology will allow you to live the customer’s data at every interaction from product usage to the financial status of an account, and the high-level risk count, to extend the efficiency and therefore the effectiveness of your customer support system. However, there are a few elements that you need to consider while setting up the Customer Health Score. To jot down, the best practices include-

• Monitoring the correct metrics, i.e., don’t mix support signals with product adoption signals
• Measuring leading indicators with short lookup windows
• Having an easy risk strategy, i.e., the poor score should be broad and should take into account each churn signal separately.
• Acting on poor leading metrics till health score is good
• Regularly refresh your configurations (recommended periodically every 3 months) on the idea of new learnings.

Major Reason why Customer Health Score fails?

Most often Customer Success teams don’t put much attention to the look-back period while calculating the account health. This could be a significant reason where the major problem arises. Let’s take an example.  Imagine you have set up a customer health score for which an account to be in good health, the customer has to mark certain touchpoints in the customer journey. For example, they should have started doing more campaigns, should have started adding new users, or whatever your technology enables your customers to do. In this scenario, the look-back period could be one day, one month, 90 days, or perhaps a year that may entirely depend on the type of problem your product is solving.

Now, the key point, you should note here is that the longer the look-back period, the more likely you’re to get a false positive. For example, if the customer was using the product effectively in a look-back period of 90 days. Certainly, in the 90th day you might still be getting very good health of that account whereas, in the last 89 days, the customer might have simply stopped logging in. So you should keep the look-back period, as narrow as possible in order to avoid false positive results.

The key to putting in a successful health score is to balance the look-up period as short as possible. A typical approach is about two weeks, but it can very well depend from customer to customer.

What is the solution?

A very basic thing to know here is that there are various dimensions to the overall Customer Health than having information on how your customer adopts your product. Lots of CSMs remain in the misconception of using only product adoption as the key metric to decide the health score. We should consider other dimensions like Relationship, Service, Financial and Subjective opinions/External factors that may act as leading indicators as mentioned above. To craft an effective and accurate Health score, one has to consider various metrics of Health Score that are important to your company, product, and customers.

Some of them are mentioned below:

• Overall Product Usage
• Product Upgrades and Renewals
• Community Engagement
• Marketing Engagement
• Frequency of website visit
• Customer Support Calls
• Customer Feedback
• Product feedback
• Survey results

The new age technologies like AI (Artificial Intelligence) and ML (Machine Learning) are enabling advancements to reduce the pain and effort of a CSM in many ways. In fact, this technology is helping to predict and draw a perfect health score for customers.
AI and ML technology will help you draw a health score that is significantly reliable to give actionable insights to improve customer experience.

The post How can a Customer Success Platform Help you get the Perfect Health Score?? appeared first on noupe.