Simon Bloom 0:04
Thanks Tam. Good morning, everybody. And welcome to our first ever Pendula UK webinar. Very warm welcome this morning from the UK and from the Netherlands. The title of today's webinar is intelligent data driven subscriber engagement hosted by Pendula and Subscription Factory. Next slide please. So brief overview of the agenda today, we're going to do a very quick introduction to your speakers this morning. We're then going to pass over to Timo from Subscription Factory, he's going to take us through some of the fundamentals around subscription excellence, we're then going to take you back into the Pendula world and discuss some of the retention strategies that we help support. And then Tam and Sanketh will take you through a really interactive session around some of those key use cases and bringing them to life. There will of course, be some time for some q&a towards the end of the session today. Just by way of a bit of housekeeping. If you do have questions, please can you enter them into the q&a tab at the bottom of your screen, we won't be using the hand up functions today, just as the presenters on call won't be able to see that. So if you do enter it in the q&a tab at the bottom, we will pick up those questions and come back to them in the final section today. Thanks. So today's speakers myself, Simon Bloom. I'm the growth Director here at Pendula for the UK and EMEA really pleased to be joined today by Timo who is the founder of Subscription Factory, and Timo will lead us off shortly. And then as mentioned, Tam, who is Head custom Head of Customer and partnerships at Pendula. And Sanketh who is the Delivery Manager and senior business consultant at Subscription Factory will take us into the products into some of those workflows and use cases and bring some of this theory to life today. So again, a really warm welcome to everybody attending this morning. So a bit of background on who we are today. So Pendula, we were founded in 2017. We're a Sydney based, Australian founded next generation customer engagement platform, we can connect directly to your existing CRM. We work with around 240 customers in predominantly the Asia Pacific region, are we able to enable customers to create delightful customer engagement experiences driving real time results within the tech ecosystem. Timo, would you like to do a brief description of Subscription Factory.
Timo Zuidgeest 2:28
I'm the founder of Subscription Factory. We are Pendula's partner and we are busy with subscription businesses. We're ready for it for decades. So tell me if you can please share me with me the next slide. So I can give you some groovy insights about Subscription Factory. So like I said, founded almost 10 years ago. We are as we're implementation partner, so we are supporting companies for the manage subscription billing and commerce solutions. We are written five plus professionals. We have a dedicated development team with another company. It's called RB two. And part of technology that we are using is Microsoft, of course Pendula sales will come in from there. And also some other ones sometime next slide, please. Because I think today's mainly, of course about Pendula, but what's keeping us busy a Subscription Factory that what we call subscription excellence. And what we've seen over the recent decades is what makes some what makes companies successful in the subscription economy. Yeah, and what why are others not really successful or less successful? So that's what I would like to discuss today shortly, you know, what is behind subscription excellence? And what are the things that you need to do as an organisation to become successful in the subscription economy. So there are a number of ingredients, you know, about subscription excellence, it's just a few of them. I'm sure there are many, many more, but these are the ones that I would like to highlight. So I think first of all, it starts with customer understanding. This means that companies need to understand the customer needs and preferences, and the company needs to be able to tailor their subscription offerings, and it should be an ongoing research process, constantly listen to your customers what they want, and what are the best offers that you can give them in your subscription commerce, then, of course, about product pricing, you know, it's about creating a value proposition and its needs offering a clear and compelling value proposition subscribers should feel they are receiving ongoing value. In exchange, of course, for the recurring payments that they are doing. Then its about flexibility and personalization. That means offering various subscription plans for different pricing tiers of features, or matching your customer needs. And of course, the subscription journey starts with a customer experience. And the user friendly experience means that subscription process could be easy, user friendly, and customers that really appreciate an easy signup. And they are also appreciating nurture features, you know, and they'd like to experience an ongoing value adding service to run your subscription business. It's about technology and infrastructure. Subscription excellence starts with scalability, security means happiness. Solid is scalable technology infrastructure. And this is necessary to handle increase the month, a subscriber base will grow. And because of the recurring payments you're receiving from your customers, you have to spend lots of time with continent product innovation. This means that an excellent subscription business stays relevant, or regular updating their content. And this could involve introducing new features, announcing existing offerings, but also expanding the range of services. And that old base, of course, also on data uses, and is all about research around your customers. utilise the customer data to make your business decisions original, meaning analysing customer behaviour, preferences and feedback helps when you're refining your subscription offerings in a better way, and also improve the customer satisfaction. And we're now we're coming more to the space of Pendula because that's about customer retention strategy. And this is all about. This is all about implementing customer retention strategies, a loyalty programmes, exclusive programmes for long term subscribers, and customer support, can help retaining customers over the long term. And then finally, right now going back to Pendula, being successful in your subscription business, it's also all about customer communication. You know, keeping your customers informed about new updates and features any changes to the subscription model, builds trust and builds engagement and transparent communications key also for positive customer relationship. And for that, I would like to switch over to Pendula because this is the company automate customer communication, encryption businesses, and Pendula were there and native connected. So back to you, Simon.
Simon Bloom 6:42
Thank you, Timo. Great, great introduction. And thanks for kicking us off this morning. So just a few slides, a few introduction slides to Pendula the solution. So we as I mentioned earlier, are a next generation customer engagement platform, our real focus has been on creating conversation or to a messaging for your customers in the moments that matter. And we're going to we're going to bring those moments to matter to life a little bit later on today. What we have found through our extensive work with our our customers today is that when we use alternative channels to email and there still is still a real place for email, but when we use alternative channels, messaging channels to email, things like SMS and WhatsApp, we see that the read rate is substantially higher, which means your customers have been able to access those key messages, those key calls to action much more quickly. And actually, the way in which they respond becomes much more efficient. So we see response rates with Two Way messaging via via SMS, for example, around 45 to 50%. So really substantial differences in communication strategies, which allows us to drive those proactive retention strategies that Timo just mentioned. Next slide, please. So, as I mentioned, Pendula is a customer engagement platform. We are built for marketers, and customer engagement professionals. We operate a workflow that is very marketer friendly. It's an intuitive drag and drop canvas that allows us to create great engagement campaigns very, very easily and very, very quickly. You'll notice on the right hand side, just a collection of some of the metrics that we impact. And then think about some of those those strategies that Timo mentioned in the introduction, improving the engagement rate, looking at how we can improve conversion around upsell or cross sell, how do we reduce churn so keep people with your product with your brand for longer. And again, there's always that feedback piece pieces around customer satisfaction and survey completion. Again, super critical to understand the sentiment of your customer. Next slide please. So as you would expect, you know, AI is everywhere in the world today. And you know, no less so within the Pendula ecosystem. So not only do we have machine learning built in to our products, but generative AI is built in to allow us to do some clever things as we're talking to your customers. So allow us to analyse sentiment, for example, is the customer happy, you know, neutral or potentially disappointed or unhappy? And can we identify the next best offer in the market or potential within your product portfolio? Can we also use AI to think about segmentation and how we process different types of customers think about maybe vulnerable customer segment. So again, AI has a real part to play in helping us to create really personal one to one proactive retention strategies. Next slide, please. And finally, you know, when we thinking about the topic of today's webinar, about industry leading customer engagement or registration, the types of results that Pendula and Subscription Factory can bring to the table for your customers really is demonstrated here. So very significant upsell rates of around 27%. Very strong cross-sell our rates of around 30%. Looking at policyholder conversion looking at call centre connect rates, what we're trying to do through our product and through the services, that Subscription Factory help deliver is really to think about some of those key metrics, the cost to serve metric, the retention metric, the upsell. And ultimately we're looking at how do we drive more revenue? How do we drive more for less within your customer base? Next slide, please. So final slide for me, I think before I touch on the moments that matter, if we think about the state of retention, you know, we definitely see it is very much a multifaceted topic retention is a collection of targeted tactics that continuously need to be refined. And again, the Pendula workflow allows you to constantly iterate and and refine those tactics. If we think about reactive retention, what we don't want to be doing all the time is just thinking, Okay, we have a problem, now we need to go and solve it, we need to be thinking ahead of that and turning reactive into proactive. So again, the Pendula system, along with sub factory's, support really helps us think about those proactive strategies. And, you know, the biggest challenge in most of our customers, businesses today is really that a reliance on other teams. So IT etc, with with the Pendula solution. And with Subscription Factory's support, again, we can help break down some of those silos. This is a very quick to deploy solution. Typically, we stand up new campaigns or configurations within within four weeks. And iterative campaigns follow very quickly after that. We sit on top of your existing ecosystem. So again, we don't need to do an extensive data models upfront, we don't need to do a lot of integration work, we've done a lot of that hard work behind the scenes already. So we tried to reduce the reliance on IT, of course, there's a role for them to play. But um, we tried to take that overhead out of your business so we can be non disruptive, and hopefully help your customers as quickly as possible. Next slide, please, Tam. So final slide for me before I hand on to Tamsyn and Sanketh to take us into a bit more of the detail and some of the use cases bring those use cases live. So we, we talk a lot about moments that matter. So these are key to delivering outstanding subscriber experience, and ultimately helping to improve retention. And we do that across the new subscriber conversion. We do that to help increase the customer lifetime value and to reduce churn. And if you just look at the wheel briefly, you know, if we think about the lifecycle of a subscriber, everything from that initial lead nurture, to conversion to topics like cart abandonment, where maybe that customer is looking to do something, but it hasn't quite completed that call to action. Maybe they want to pause a subscription due to economic reasons or dissatisfaction in the service. We think about all these small moments that matter to these customers. Pendula with Subscription Factory allows us to go and target those people in proactive ways to retain them and to help create that create a real sense of loyalty with you, and your brand. And you can see again, just another example of some of those metrics that we've touched on along the bottom of the slide. So I'm going to pass now to Tam, Tam is going to take us through some of those use cases. Along Sanketh, and bring this to life. Thanks Tam.
Tamsyn Attiwell 13:01
Great, thank you, Simon. So when we think about those moments that matter in the lifecycle of a subscriber, we wanted to highlight four use cases today that we know are pretty well placed to utilise both Zuora and then Pendula's, two way messaging capability to be able to communicate proactively with your customers. And in particular, for this webinar session. We're focusing in on the subscriber journey. So the first use case that we're going to be walking through is upsells. So we already have a subscriber that's been acquired. But is there actually more that we can do to put them on a cost efficient rate plan? We then go on to the cross sell use case? So do you have additional products and services that actually could enhance the customer experience with your organisation? And then as we move into churn prevention, what are some of those early indicators that we can detect the pack, the fact that you know, customers may be thinking of churning, so we'll walk through some of those. And then finally, today, looking at the customer service, customer experience, I know from my own background, being involved in post sales for many years, the more we can do to proactively reach our customers and enhance their experience, the better it's going to be so that they don't get bill shock when their subscription is up for renewal. Okay, so let's look at the first use case the upsell use case. We're going to take into consideration that Sally has been a customer of the Acme Coffee Company for a number of months now. And she's recently started to consume more coffee capsules than the plan that she was originally signed up to. Actually that sounds like Simon you and I get through quite a lot of coffee as well each day, don't we? So the Acme coffee cup company wants to send a proactive and personalised message via SMS. But we can also use whatsapp and other channels in order to communicate with the end consumer. And we want to be able to offer a more efficient rate plan for Sally to move on to rather than having to buy ad hoc purchases of additional coffee capsules, which is going to work out to be a much more expensive way for her to be able to consume that subscription. So as we take as we walk through in a little bit more detail, we're going to have a look at how the interaction between the Zuora subscription plan at the back end links with Pendula and then see this from the end customer experience. Though, we can see here, it's a bit of a timeline of how Sally is going to be seeing some of that messaging coming through. She has opted in when she signed up to the subscription plan. Of course, best practice and recommendations that we quite often talk about with our customers, we always look at the opt in opt out capabilities. So there's always going to be an option in the messaging, even if they've opt in that they can opt out at any point from receiving the messages. So as we start through the flow, we're just going to look at the fact that Sally's going to receive the SMS message with an offer to upgrade to a more efficient plan for her based on the consumption trends that we have seen with Sally over the last few months. Sally then received the message she responds, Yes, actually, that's great. I'm going to accept the offer. And then we're going to move on to understand a little bit about, okay, what's going to happen in the back end of that rate plan, once Sally has agreed and confirmed that she wants to take part in the offer. And then as you see the conversation flow, we're going to also perhaps take the opportunity to ask her to complete some customer feedback, we can send the link out to the survey via their SMS body message. And then we can also look at, okay, confirming via email that she's upgraded to the latest plan. But we can see that actually, we don't have the latest email address for Sally, the email has bounced back. And therefore we want to ask Sally if it's possible for her to send us her latest email address. And that's really important when we look at future campaigns, making sure that we've got the most up to date information for our customers, that we can have that interaction to ensure that we have all the latest data for the customers. And as we can see, the email is sent the information is updated in the back end, we're using saw in this example. But of course we interact with all sorts of environments. So typically, we're writing to and getting data from CRM environments, but we also integrate using webhook capability and API capability. And we have over 80 standard integrations that we can utilise very quickly out of the box as well. Okay, so I'm gonna hand over to Sanketh, where he's just gonna talk a little bit about the back end, and what happens in the store environment. Thank you, Sanketh.
Sanketh Nageshmurthy 18:26
Thank you, Tam, for the brief introduction, right. So we solve from Tam, right. So it was mainly about customer communication. So it is also about what Simon said. So it is not, we are reactive to what Sally does in our subscription journey. But it's more proactive. So as soon as Sally subscribes to coffee machine plan, so we welcome her through the messaging. So welcome her to the coffee machine subscription. So we keep her in touch. So we build relationships with customers through messaging as soon as he subscribes. And then this is where you're not like we get reactive and see see when we see our usage as exceeded for two consecutive months of we send a personalised message telling Okay, so your usage has exceeded for two consecutive months. So we are proposing an advanced plan to upgrade so when Sally just clicks you know like from the message Yes. So immediately on the Zuora back end, you'll see the old plan is removed and a new plan is added right. So this is this can be Zuora, but it can be any other system. So as time actually mentioned. So, you know, like Pendula integrates with Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics and many other systems. So, you always see you know, like with webhook integration, those upgrades or record updates will be able to see also on the backend system. So, what is also key when we think about power of Pendula so as Simon also mentioned, it is always about two way communication, right so many times you know, like we send this upgrade emails but the opening rate of the emails will be very low. So our customers or subscribers are busy, you know, like they might be travelling, dropping cash to their home, they will be travelling on trains, so they might not have enough time to open up emails. So you know, like having these messages just on phone replying is, you know, like, they can get results very soon. And this is what we see also on the back end. So we move on to next slide. So also on the back end in Zuora. So you see the subscription version has upgraded from version one to version two. So it all happens, you know, like, from the timeline perspective, very immediate, and with just messaging. So talking also, from my background from the IT perspective, right. So when you're thinking about bringing this to the life or in terms of workshops, so you might spend quite enormous time and having the idea for it, to have your webshop ready to have your back end ready to have your upgrade plans up and running and everything. But we can think about power of Pendula three different ways you if you are in subscription journey, so whether you are at the launch phase of your subscription journey, then you have launched your initial product. So before, you know, like getting this upgrades into the workshop we can start with messaging, you know, like you don't need workshop at the point in order to launch this. So you can just go by a messaging and you can see the quick results. So that is at the launch phase. Suppose you're in your subscription journey, or the optimise phase. So you're trying out, you know, like different price points, different regions, etc. And different promo codes offer. Yeah, this is also the phase where more of Pendula comes in, you know, like, you don't have to, you know, like, wait for the entire workshop to be ready, but you know, like, you can start seeing the results by driving the messaging, you know, like, that's, that's the second factor. And also the third if you are in your subscription journey at the scalability standpoint. So, every customer, you know, like we see a lot of subscribers either, you know, like they started their subscription journey five years ago, three years ago, two years ago. So everyone is in one of their phase, whether it is launch, optimise or scale, but part of Pendula, you know, like it can drive value in each and every phase of your subscription journey. So that is the key here. So maybe let's resume also with Sally subscription journey to see various other use cases. Moving on to next slide. So yeah, so now we see, you know, like, we welcome Sally to our coffee machine subscription. And then yeah, we saw our upgrades with this or upgrades happened in last couple of months. So now, what we do, okay, so after 10 months in the subscription lifecycle, so Sally requested, you know, like cancellation, so maybe a Sally thought, okay, so I need to become caffeine free. So I don't have to use my coffee machine subscription. So let's request for a cancellation, right. So, and this is where also, the key power of Pendula comes in. So this the personalised messaging, right, so where we say, okay, so yeah, we do get this request from a lot of other customers, and this is what we suggest, okay? So, we are happy, you know, like, you want to become caffeine free, but you might also have some friends or relatives at home who want to, you know, like, get the advantage or use coffee. And then here is our offer, you know, like we get you a free, personalised free plan for one or two months. So you can continue using your coffee capsules, right. So basically, it is the same messaging, which is sent out from Pendula, and then you know, like, basically, Sally response. Okay, so I'm happy to get this free plan. And then, you know, like, Sally continues our subscription journey with a don't sell plan. So, to the for the slide. Yep. So now we have also Sally continuing that subscription journey, right? So, it might be 12 months in our subscription journey. So now, our subscription got renewed for next 12 months, but leveraging the data so as Timo mentioned, so it is also about data utilisation. So what are the data which is present on the Zuora platform, you know, leveraging all the data. So we saw, you know, like in Zuora, there might be missing payments, and there are two, three open invoices and this is where, you know, we can start personalised messaging, Sally telling, okay, so here are your open invoices. So, we are expecting payments from this open invoices, and also we can give a link to your My account area where you know, like, she can click in our message, she can go back and make our payments and then those payments will get immediately reflected back in Zuora as well. So, that is part of you know, like and also we can also leverage our data of the payment methods. So, let's say our payment method is getting expired or it is approaching expiry. So, this is where we can also you know, like drive messages to Sally telling Okay, so, we are seeing Okay, so, your credit card is getting expired. So, please update your latest payment method. So, once we have that in so it continues the subscription journey. So this these are all the various areas right so which we can see how we can manage vending or well as don't sell. So, it can also be not only coffee machine, so it can be of any other industry for example so whether you know like there are a lot of social media influencers who are using their own website so there might be website building software's so if the request for cancellation for any reason, you know, like we can tell Okay, so we are holding on your data for a particular period of time. So here is the down sell plan so you can go for and keep your website up and running. So it can also be for Cloud Storage. So whether you're syncing your photos or videos, to some cloud storage, and if you want to, you know, like, reduce the plants. Yeah. So it applies to different industries, whether it is insurance, healthcare, or you know, whether it is music loops, for example, you're offering music software to build your own music loops. So if some developer has, you know, like, read a lot of music loops, and then he wants to cancel, but yeah, maybe we can keep his data for some time. So you can get leverage off his music loops until a you know the complexity moves out and then you can upgrade to a later plan. So there are a lot of ways to look at this part of Pendula and also with respect to various industries. I think with that, I will give it over to them for next use case. Thanks, Tam.
Tamsyn Attiwell 25:45
Thank you, Sanketh. Okay, so our final use case I'm before with is regard to customer support, or the customer experience. So how do we ensure that we're keeping the customers that we've got for the long term, and really making sure that the experience is delightful. So here's an example where Sally's coffee machine has broken, she's tried to repair it based on some FAQ information that she found, but actually doesn't feel like it's going to be fixable on site in her kitchen. So she's sending an SMS message and inbound message to the Acme Coffee Company. Basically help. This is a obviously a sentiment that can be understood quite easily. And that's actually where we using natural language processing to try to understand the sentiment that's coming from the customer. And this is really important. So it allows more of a freeform response or message from the customer, rather than being very predictive around the type of responses that we're expecting. So that's a capability within pendula that has been released this year. And then we're also looking at okay, so when we understand that there's a problem with Sally's coffee machine, she needs help, we're going to reach out and ask exactly what the problem is. And understand yes, okay, you've tried to fix it. Basically, we need to send them the coffee machine back, we're going to use our geolocation node, so we can reach out and grab external data into a workflow at any point within that flow. So it doesn't just have to be data that's gathered from the initial trigger of the workflow. But we can use that data partway through the flow, and aggregate and use those merge fields as we continue throughout that conversational flow. So we're going to use Sally's region, from her contact details to understand, okay, where's the nearest centre that she needs to send her coffee machine to, and we're going to use that geolocation node to pop out, grab that information, and she knows where she needs to return the coffee machine, we're going to send her a QR code. So it's very easy for her to be able to go and scan that and send the machine back. We can also again, send a survey to get feedback from Sally to her as to her experience. And then we can send her a new machine back as a result of that whole conversational flow. So that's just another example of how do we get to know the customer a little bit more, but how do we make that experience really easy and engaging for Sally? Okay, so Simon, I'll hand back to you so that we can just do a summary of the key takeaways today.
Simon Bloom 28:40
That's great. Thanks so much, Tam. And Sanketh really, really great session there. Just take us through to those four use cases, great energy. And I think hopefully, those listening in and viewing the webinar today can really see some some things that resonate with their own businesses. So yeah, maybe just next slide. We'll, we'll cover a few summary points from that section. So, you know, what do we do during that explosive day? So if we if we think about Acme and how they look to build trust with Sally, well, your number one was that proactive communication. So we've talked about this throughout the webinar today, the ability to go out and create a conversation proactively to be able to give the recipient in this case, Sally, the opportunity to be able to respond in the way that best suits her, and to get to the outcome that both her and the business were looking to do. Being transparent and proactive about her payments and renewal. So I think really important that, you know, we show empathy, when we're looking at customer engagement strategies. We use the technology and we use the services that are available to our businesses and our customers to really make sure that experience is authentic, and the customer believes and feels the loyalty to that particular brand to get the outcome that we're looking to achieve. I think gathering feedback again, we talked about this in some of the earlier slides, you're looking at some of those survey mechanisms, understanding sentiment as they go through that engagement is really key in terms of how you then proactively, you know, evolve the communication strategy that we're having with these customers? We've talked a lot from a technology point of view as well today around, you know, how do we collect data from, you know, lots of different parts of your technology ecosystem, whether that be Salesforce CRM dynamics, whether that Zuora billing of subscription services platform or other technology you have within your infrastructure, I think using that data is a key strength of Pendula's, bring that data in and using that data to run those flows. And to really personalise those flows. I think the other the other important piece around data here is about pushing that data back to those system records. So again, Pendula is not storing your data. Beyond the use case that we're showing today, we were using it for the purpose of delivering that flow and that engagement experience, but then writing that data back to the system of record. So back to Salesforce back to Dynamics back to Zuora, as Sanketh very clearly showed. And again, leveraging her feedback to improve, you know, our experience and how we talk to our customers, is absolutely critical. So whilst this is a customer engagement strategy, I think there's a huge amount of learning for employees, of our businesses to really learn from this process and to help evolve how we drive long term relationships. So with that, I think we're going to move to some q&a. Tam, Sanketh and Timo, on your toes ready for some great questions. I know Tam, Did you want to maybe kick off some initial questions you want to cover?
Tamsyn Attiwell 31:25
Yeah, absolutely. So I'm just looking at the q&a panel to see if we've got any questions coming in. So please feel free to pop in any questions there. We did get sent a few questions earlier on in the session. So I think one of them was with regards to the use of AI. Within the workflows, I know, some organisations are a little bit reticent about the use of AI, especially if we're using, you know, for example, chat GPT, we're going out and asking questions, we're getting information back, you know, do we then let that loosed upon the end customers. So the trend that we've been seeing, and guys feel free to jump in? Once I've just perhaps given my view is, so the trend that we're seeing from our customer base, is that really, you know, it's about using AI to help categorise information. So whether it's open ended questions, or whether it's responses that we're seeing within a conversational workflow, we're then able to perhaps reduce the amount of resource that's been used in order to determine the sentiment from the customer, and exactly their their feeling and the sort of the request and the query that they're coming to. So if we go back to the last use case that I talked about, with regards to the customer experience, quite often we're hearing that that's really useful if we can use that type of experience and the generative AI capability to be able to understand the sentiment of the customer, and then branch accordingly and dynamically as a result of that, that tends to alleviate a lot of the pressure from the customer support teams. Now Of course, we're still able to go and use a web hook to be able to create a ticket with an agent. But actually, what we're trying to do is help to reduce the volume and the pressure that some of the support agents are seeing. So that's a way that we're seeing a lot of clients using AI at the moment. Guys, I don't know if you want to jump in and add to that.
Timo Zuidgeest 33:37
Nothing to add to that, Tam. And I think we've got one more question coming. In particular, I think that's one for you Simon?
Simon Bloom 33:46
So let me let me just read the question out for the benefit of the audience. So the question is, maybe, maybe Tam and Sanketh, kind of fly this one in your direction initially. So how are the support and case management integration and automatic retention capabilities with IVR? So with interactive voice response, AWS connect, etc. So for example, if an IVR call automatically records an incoming support grievance for a particular product or service, how should retention workflows, trigger action? So how do we use telephony and that call centre experience also be potentially part of a trigger? In some of the flows that Tam you and Sanketh show today?
Tamsyn Attiwell 34:20
Yeah, shall I take that one, and then Sanketh, please feel free to jump in, if you if you would like to. So, obviously, with the different channels that were able to, to utilise within the workflows, you know, quite often we'll see that there's an incoming support call. It's then about understanding. Yeah, how are we going to manage that call? Do we reroute that to another agent, for instance, or somebody that perhaps got some special subject matter expertise in that area? Or indeed, can we start to trigger a flow as a result of that. So there's a couple of areas where we tend to interact with the support team or the agents. So in this respect, we can trigger a flow to reach out to that customer based on the information that they've sent through. So the way that we can trigger a flow is either through a scheduled event, or it's through a change of data, for instance, in the backend CRM environment, changing the rate plan, as we saw with the Zuora example. Or, indeed, you can manually trigger a flow based on certain things that are happening. So it could be a CSV file of data, where you want to send out some batch communication, you can still expect responses. But that's the way that we could trigger. So in this particular example, you can trigger a flow, it could then send out some frequently asked questions or a link to a website to go and try to understand the issue that the customer is experiencing, we indeed could then again, if not resolved, at that point, go and use a webhook to create another ticket that an agent can pick up. I think that's what we quite often see is that we try to use a flow as much as possible, understand the sentiment of the customer, and then post it back to the agent, if no result or satisfaction is received at that point.
Simon Bloom 36:22
The only thing I may add to that is just to maybe say, you know, one of the one of those macro metrics that we're trying to help him impact and certainly that cost of service metrics, I think, in the customer service, grievance topic, I think, where we can, you know, reduce call volume, inbound call volumes, and call handling. And we can satisfy the you know, the subject via a messaging channel by a conversation or two way messaging, that's certainly beneficial, both from a revenue perspective. And hopefully, from a customer experience perspective, I think, Tam, you really nailed the point at the end there, though, you know, I think if you go through, you know, two or three rounds of looking to understand sentiment and trying to find the right solution, and that's still not possible via messaging, then of course, the call centre and the human agent is always going to be a great, you know, step to go to maybe provide that final resolution. So, yeah, really, really great answer, Sanketh anything you wanted to add?
Sanketh Nageshmurthy 37:16
No, I think I agree with you, Simon, right. So, as I mentioned, there is scheduled workflows, you know, like, user subscriber can ask, you know, like type message help or you know, like HLP or different ways of asking help, and then you know, like, they should, workflow can give up with a set of options, you know, like to which different category they have questions with, and then that is where, you know, like, we can try to reduce much human interaction and then try to take it more into the messaging and if at all, it does not fit, then yeah, hand it over, with a clearer creation of case either in Zendesk or some other system to the support agent. Yes.
Simon Bloom 37:53
Perfect, thanks. Right. So I have one more question for the panellists surprise question. Just come in. So if if each of you, I'll come to each of you, Timo first, one piece of advice on how you would advise a new customer to help get started with something that we've seen today, so we'll go Timo, then we'll go Tam and then we'll go Sanketh in order. So one one piece of advice with tip to get started for today's audience, and then we'll we'll close out the webinar.
Timo Zuidgeest 38:19
Yeah, I think it's all fair. So when we are onboarding new customers, the first focus always is, of course to get subscription billing and commerce platform up and running. And what we normally see when it's done when a customer's life, I think then it will, but then I think then the real battle starts, you know, that's where you need to start communicating with your customers, not only to onboard new customers, but also to keep them. And I think that's the most important thing. I think the work we're doing, like Pendula, you know, just sure that you can keep your customers and that you can, and that you can support your upsell and that you can support your growth.
Simon Bloom 38:47
That's great. Thank you Timo great, great advice, Tam, coming to you next.
Tamsyn Attiwell 38:54
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I think we're always trying to look at ways of packaging workflows to make it obviously very easy for customers and organisations to get started with almost like templates of workflows that they can reuse. And Timo, I believe that Subscription Factory have also recently launched, you know, as assays. So this is a Zuora as a service kind of package in a box. Again, that helps the deployment to get up and running very quickly. You know, my, my experience of a lot of implementations probably similar to Sanketh, over the years is, you know, try and get up and running with something very quickly to demonstrate the value, don't try and boil the ocean. So take two or three, four use cases that, you know, are really going to drive the value, get those up and running, make sure that, you know, everybody's comfortable with using those flows. And then you can expand out from there.
Sanketh Nageshmurthy 39:50
So for me, I think it's all about customer communication, right? And building relationships. So it is it is key to start messaging them, you know, like at the very initial phase, just to start that engagement going just to start that relationship going. So yeah, it can be from Zuora after they become subscriber or it can be you know, like, at the lead level, you know, like when the potential lead, you know, like, start having those touch points with the customers through messaging so that, you know, like, it's always human interaction, you know, like, getting those personalised messaging in so that they build trust, and then they can always, you know, like, respond to our messages in the later phase of the subscription engagement, you know, like that is key point for myself.
Simon Bloom 40:28
Amazing. Thank you Sanketh. Great, great advice from the team there today. Hopefully, that's useful for for those listening in this morning. So we're just gonna wrap up. Now, before we leave, we would love to offer you an opportunity to book a 30 minute consultation with with both Pendula and Subscription Factory, following this webinar, if you would like to book an appointment, to discuss your business, and maybe some of your challenges and some of what you've seen today. Please do use the QR code there on the screen now. If you register your details, then yeah, we will get back to you and find the right time to speak with you over the next few weeks, probably after the festive season. But yeah, please take advantage of that offer. Now. We'd love to talk to you more. And then next slide, please. Tam. Yeah, just just a huge thank you. Thank you for your time this morning. We know it's a busy time of year. We know work is busy. And it's sometimes hard to find 30-45 minutes in your day to jump out of the day job and look at something different but we really appreciate your attendance this morning. Best wishes for the festive season and hopefully you get a nice break. If you would like to reach out to both Pendula and Subscription Factory, Timo's details and myself on the screen there. And other than that, just a big thank you on behalf of the panellists today for a great webinar. Hopefully it was really useful. We will post the recording in due course and Yeah, watch this space for the next webinar coming up very soon in the new year. Thanks, everybody.
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