Shaping customer experiences through product catalogue evolution

A product catalogue designed for swift discovery removes friction from sales and supports growth for both new and existing customers. As part of his series on the digital customer experience, Tiago Lopes considers how to continue the digital journey with a finely-tuned product catalogue and value-added non-telco products.

“You never get a second chance to make a good first impression.”

Driving up digital sales with an easy browsing experience in your product catalogue will be critical to initiate successful engagement during onboarding.

Previously in this series, I spoke of effectively communicating with your customers to cultivate enduring relationships, and how creating engaging digital experiences to keep customers coming back is not without its difficulties.

However, once you’ve acquired your customers, the mission is not over.

Customer engagement continues in the product catalogue

In the past, service providers had a huge number of products and packages designed to be sold by sales agents in stores or in call centres. Now, the need for an intuitive digital commerce experience has led service providers to replace a multitude of product offerings with a smaller and simpler-to-understand range.

Segmenting the catalogue by line of business, sales channel, payment method and more, all helps to narrow down the options and ease the process of product discovery. Furthermore, customer profiling can then be used to identify more specific and meaningful product catalogue recommendations for existing customers.

Bundling mobile connectivity with devices continues to be one of the most important drivers to attract new customers, with unlimited and pay-as-you-go plans increasingly popular as they give customers a sense of freedom. This now extends to any product that does not require a duration-based commitment because people like to come and go, leaving their options open.

A number of different filters are also commonly used when choosing from a catalogue, for example, device brand / model, contract length and service plan. And considering the short memory of users, it’s always important to provide clear visibility of what’s being ordered and what it costs (including any future monthly charges), at each step in the product configuration and checkout processes.

Driving up engagement with non-telco products

Telecoms is an established industry that provides mission-critical infrastructure, where service providers are trusted by their customers. In an increasingly busy market however, this isn’t enough to stand out against the competition.

Many big players are now branching out, becoming Digital Service Providers by reselling partner products, because it’s more likely that consumers will purchase additional products through their trusted service provider, rather than from a brand they aren’t familiar with. In exchange, service providers earn a share of partner product sales, and partners can reach customers that might be hard to target otherwise.

For example, during COVID, there was a surge in demand for healthcare products, so a proliferation of related products became available to order through service providers. Now, many CSPs are taking advantage of their brand to resell health, insurance, security, IT and other products as part of their offering catalogue. These can be marketed as standalone products or bundled with telco services, providing additional mechanisms for differentiation from competitors.

A wider product offering beyond connectivity can serve to increase the time consumers spend on digital channels, creating opportunities to boost engagement, brand awareness, retention and customer lifetime value, as well as supporting service providers’ business growth.

Supporting service providers’ needs for fast time-to-market

However, the rollout of new offerings often comes with significant challenges for service providers, particularly with regards to the time and resources required.

This is where a modern and flexible product catalogue is critical in shaping a positive customer experience, including:

• Accessible to non-technical users, enabling new products and packages to be built using natural language and image recognition.
• Order de-composition and fulfilment using low-code/no-code capabilities to enable separate, automated and parallel fulfilment operations for each service type included within the same bundle.
• Comprehensive partner management and settlements with cost and margin analysis to support marketplaces and B2B2X business models.
• Easy to configure digital channels for fast-track deployment of new and delightful customer experiences to support sales.

Equipped with the right product catalogue solution, service providers can diversify their offerings, grow their businesses and keep their customers digitally engaged.

Continue your digital journey with Cerillion’s Enterprise Product Catalogue. Contact us now to find out more and to request a personalised demo.