It’s probably a testament to people’s innate need to socialize that consumers have become more demanding in customer service. Facing a monolith such as Amazon – and the kind of support that we have come to expect from them – has pushed a lot of consumers to the more personalized services of small companies. And it is to this that the subscription boom owes the majority of its success.
Because of this boom, the increasing competition is now a given for tea subscription businesses. High rates of churn is also becoming increasingly common. Luckily, as a tea subscription business owner, you can handle any obstacles that come your way with intelligent planning and research.
Automated vs. Humanized
For tea businesses and many other businesses, it has become increasingly common to automate services, where a database and algorithm decides what to offer to clients, who to send payment reminder emails to, or when to cut services of a customer. This all happens in the background while the owners are busy getting more customers. After all, automated means less expenses, less personnel required for support, cutting out the slow and inefficient human component, and therefore more profit.
What does this mean for your tea subscription business? It means that you are slowly becoming disconnected to your consumers. But more so, it means you’re losing control of the process where people who didn’t resubscribe to your service just fall off the wagon, and you don’t notice them except on your bank account report.
RELATED: Tea Subscriptions & How to Prevent Customer Churn
The challenge now becomes the humanization of your service because the increasing automation has placed more value on rare and surprising experiences. And that’s exactly what you should provide as an added value of subscription-based services.
Humanization makes product experiences memorable and encourages the perception that products, services and content are tailored just for us, which helps us build a more manageable framework for engaging. Therefore, it enables us to categorize information as relevant or not relevant, which helps narrow the overwhelming vortex of information we’re subjected to each day.
Let’s be clear that this does not mean that you’re leaving automation. But more of designing a process where you can integrate human qualities like conversation, relationship and emotion back into your business – leaving the transactional to automation. Doing that may require uncovering what lies on your processes and unpacking a definition of service to our consumers.
5 Steps to Adding a Humanized Touch For Your Tea Business
1. Set up a Process That Allows Interaction
Processes allow for a fast and painless product delivery system. Some people want to just make a purchase without getting to know the business. But for discovery products like teas, customers might appreciate an option to talk to a human about their orders. Setting up chatboxes with real live humans can help customers feel like they are important and valued. As much as possible, give people the opportunity and the option to talk to real people about your teas or related products – whether on chatboxes, email or even the good old phone. This is because some people prefer instant answers, while some prefer the back and forth of email. Providing people with convenient contact points that they know they can contact in case there's problems, makes for very loyal customers.
2. Let Them Be Part of Your System
The moment your customers sign up, take them to a journey that they’ll never forget. Keep them excited as you make them aware of where they are in the system. They just signed up? Hooray! Congratulate them! You’re preparing their orders? Send a photo! Tell them their tea is on the way! You get the idea. Keep them engaged with an email or even a text update. Make them feel like they are part of a production and they’ll never forget the excitement you bring into their lives.
3. Allow Your Customers to Grow with You
People (and their preferences) change. They might like flower teas when they’re all the rage but they may go back to their favorite black tea in the future. Show your customers that you can grow with them and it’s possible for you to adjust with them. Know your customers enough to have an understanding of what’s on their plate and communicate how you can help.
4. Incorporate Personalization
Take note of small details – names, birthdays, preferences – and use them when communicating with your customers. You can use tech tools such as CRMs (customer relationship management) and take notes of their history with you so the customer doesn’t feel like a new customer all the time. If you have an automatic email welcoming every subscriber, old customers might feel off about this. Another example is failed subscription payments. Usually, this gets handled with technology – like sending automated emails, for example. Gravy Solutions, a startup helping subscription-based businesses recover failed payments, however, created a tech solution which alerts its retention specialists when there are failed payments. The retention specialists act as an extension of the subscription companies own workforce and talks to the subscribers personally. These small details can go a long way in maintaining a connection and fostering trust.
5. Highlight Your Human Elements on Social Media
Let your customers know that you are part of their community. Whether Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter or Instagram, being involved in issues that are important to them makes you a relatable company. Make your presence felt and use social media as an opportunity to show off your products, your people, your projects and your advocacies.
Final Thoughts: Use Tech as an Extension of Your Tea Service
Humanization, personalization and using automation doesn’t have to be an either/or argument. Tea subscription businesses – who are willing to put in the work and willing to use technology as an extension of their service – can benefit from the effectiveness and cost-efficiency these automated tools provide, while also making meaningful, lasting connections with their customers.
Logan Freedman, the content marketing manager at Gravy, has been a key leader in editorial and content marketing since 2014, being an expert on reducing customer churn, customer retention and SEO. He’s published in Rolling Stone, Newsweek and USA Today. To learn more about Gravy, visit GravySolutions.io.