Understanding product-price configurations

The first thing you need to be clear on is exactly how and for how much you'd like to sell your products. Determining subscription terms, billing periods, as well as discounts and mark-ups, is essential for a sustainable revenue stream.

In keylight, you can configure the elastic product catalog based on exactly what you offer. Crucially, a well-designed subscription system will enable your team members to experiment with offerings for different customer segments and automate price decisions without the need to manually modify list prices for each use case. This not only saves time in the sales process but is essential for billing accuracy and a streamlined environment for selling as your product catalog grows.

Consider a multi-channel sales strategy

The next part of the process is to decide on your acquisition channels. These typically fall into three categories:

• Assisted sales
  This includes orders, quotes and guided selling.

• Customer-led sales
  This would be a self-service capability and a customer portal.

• Partner-led sales
  This is where you employ the support of resellers and a partner portal.

As subscription businesses grow, they typically seek to have all three acquisition types available to maximize profitability and market reach. keylight enables all three, with a fully connected platform that gives all users the information and capabilities they need to access the product catalog and make accurate sales that give the customer what they want. This sets the path for a positive experience and long-term customer relationships.

Helpful integration

Lots of customers also like to integrate with their existing CRM system to maintain contact record and manage the sales pipeline.

Streamline subscription order processes 

Now you need to look into the details of that order journey. One of our strongest capabilities at keylight is our platform's ability to configure order journeys, creating clear digital pathways for both the internal user and end customer experiences. This facilitates sales efficiency and the customer relationship, using a combination of the following:

By enabling customers to take actions themselves in the management of their service you improve their sense of control, trust and autonomy. It also gives you more touchpoints and data gathering opportunities to inform future developments.

This makes it easy for sales teams, partners, and/or customers to see which products are applicable and pre-approved for the chosen plan, and helps to make sure users access the product or service that’s right for them.

 Configure, Price, Quote

Having the capacity for modern CPQ means you can tailor the quoting process to meet customer needs.

PDFs and digital signing makes it easier and faster for customers to accept quotes without barriers.

With these functions, customers are sent on a journey that takes them from prospect to purchase and into the next stage of their relationship in a seamless flow.

Helpful integration

Businesses can also integrate with the provisioning system so once a client has purchased, keylight can determine what the customer is entitled to going forwards in terms of product features and assets.

Nourish your customer relationship

Once a customer has subscribed, they move into the next stage of their journey and a fundamental one for the success of a subscription business—nurturing an ongoing relationship. This means nourishing the customer through regular engagement, opportunities and updates based on the data provided by your platform. Key ways of doing this include:

Keeping your product/service relevant is central to nurturing ongoing relationships. Every day is an opportunity to upsell and engage customers so they are incentivised to maintain their relationship. You can do this with discounts, coupons and product updates.

Billing is central to the subscription experience, making sure it's easy and seamless, not just when it's set up, but ongoing as well. For example, automated reminders and messages to avoid things like failed payments and bill shock are great ways to avoid churn.

Data is definitely king in subscription businesses, and with a platform like keylight you have the benefit of continuous and structured information on customer behavior, as well as the analytics to understand it. This can be used to identify churn risks, the best customers and improve everything from customer retention to average customer spend.

Helpful integration

Lots of clients like to integrate this information with their marketing and email systems to continue that clear, seamless communication across the whole customer relationship.