Getting to grips with the new economy

A new consumer survey commissioned by digital commerce solution provider, Avangate, has put a spotlight on the current state of omni-channel marketing, or what the company is calling the new services economy. It shows how consumers buy online services, as well as identifying some of the key drivers and detractors to consumer adoption.

The results have helped shape the latest development to come from the company, the Avangate Commerce Solution. This is aimed by the company at addressing the needs of the rapidly growing online services market.

Some of the key findings of the research shows that 63 percent of US adults already use at least one online service daily with over 50 percent of those adults paying for those same services. Also, over half of US adults would consider paying for online services if they were offered as a trial or could be purchased with the ability to self-service modify their service options at any time.

Meanwhile, 90 percent of consumers do not update their credit cards on file, directly dropping retention and revenue.

Some of the top customer frustrations with Online Services include 49 percent having difficulty in reaching live support,41 percent frustrated by inflexible purchasing options, and 35 percent complaining of slow customer service/resolution.

Avangate’s response has been with new features to help companies reduce the cost of customer acquisition, and quickly create, package and market new services to improve speed overall time-to-market

“Online Services is the next trillion dollar market being accelerated by the explosion of cloud computing and mobility, coupled with increased consumer demand to purchase whenever, wherever and however they want. This proliferation of new service offerings is cutting across all industries – from finding a limo driver, to accessing business software, to receiving legal advice. In this new world where buyers are in control, the expectations for online service providers to personalise and seamlessly sell, deliver and support have been permanently raised. We call this the New Services Economy," said Carl Theobald CEO, Avangate.

The Summer ‘14 release of the Avangate Commerce Solution includes features designed to help companies accelerate their growth and better monetise how buyers are buying today. This includes accelerating the time to market with the flexibility to easily price, package and then commerce-enable every customer touch point to be able to order, activate, and service customers, and enhanced online self-service (hosted online carts and account management)  with one-click renewals, enhanced cart abandonment recovery AB testing tools, new cross-selling and renewal promotions, and rules-based retention flows.

It also provides brandable, secure mobile carts with simplified ordering and mobile analytics, services distribution with multi-language customisable partner-reseller portals, direct subscription registration, expanded affiliate attribution, categories, and subscription payouts. A call centre console provides full capabilities for call centre and other agents to fully manage customers, orders, subscription management (suspend, discount, extend), as well as cross-sell and manage trials.

It also simplifies the scaling of services businesses without having to add more `back office’ teams of IT, finance, risk, and chargeback manpower. Automated commerce triggers  provide rules-based triggers for commerce and subscription billing events for cart abandonment, personalised cross-sell, retention, and recovery/dunning processing, while securemManagement of cards on file provide one-click ordering, renewals and upgrades, multiple cards on file self-service.

It comes with expanded chargeback and fraud management tools, automated processing, detailed insights per product, reasons, payment methods and billing cycles and services, together with continually expanding global support and compliance. There is now Russian and Portuguese customer support, expanded local support numbers, SEPA and EU Consumer Rights adoption.

“Over a year in the making, our new release brings together commerce requirements for the New Services Economy, enabling online services companies to quickly package and price service offerings with complex options; provision, manage and automate service entitlements; and drive critical retention via smart customer and payments management. This will help companies speed time-to-market, eliminate integration headaches, and rapidly launch new services in 180 countries worldwide without dedicating valuable resources and facing the constraints inherent to in-house, build it yourself from the ground up offerings,” said Michael Ni, Avangate’s CMO/ SVP of Marketing and Products.