Businesses have no shortage of tools for acquisition and support. This pre-purchase phase is the playing field of many marketers where they can guide customers on their journeys, learn about their prospects, start relationships, and hopefully acquire new customers.
But that’s where connection often breaks for physical goods brands. Unlike digital products, where real-time engagement data provides instant feedback, once the purchases of physical products are complete, many brands lose the connection with their customers.
Brands do not have visibility into how customers engage with these products, whether they are using them regularly, and if they are satisfied. And, critically, if they are running into challenges that impact their likelihood of repurchasing or spreading positive reviews.
Unfortunately, these lost connections with the customers are often never regained until a problem comes up or a special offer is presented. And then customer loyalty may not be as strong as it would have been had the brands been able to stay in touch with customers all along.
Why Brands Can’t Connect
The driver behind this lost connection with customers is simply the lack of options. Many companies rely on emails, discount offers, and flash sales to re-engage after that vital first purchase.
But few tools exist to engage in helpful conversations as part of a personalized product ownership experience. As a result, brands often still rely on dated and asynchronous tools like surveys, focus groups, support tickets, and online reviews to understand the unique customer perspective.
Unfortunately, these lost connections with the customers are often never regained until a problem comes up or a special offer is presented.
Consequently, when businesses fail to form connections that enable them to:
- Gain information and data about the customers,
- Understand how customers are using the products (or not),
- And learn of any issues and questions customers might have,
they risk customer churn. They also fail to gather data for product innovation, new offerings, and for cross-/reselling.
The results for many retail brands are not great. From what we’ve learned, many new customers are lost within the first 90 days of purchase. Retailers are stuck in constant, costly searches for new buyers while losing valuable ones.
So, what should brands do?
- Brands need to shift their focus from reactive problem-solving to proactive product experience (PX). With the product and the customer at the center, they can gather, apply, and instantly act on that information.
- This usage data can be shared across all their systems to build stronger relationships with customers on their customer experience (CX) journeys.
PX: Putting Brands and Customers Together
Today, many customers struggle during unboxing – that first moment where expectation meets reality - as well as making the all-important shift from new and novel to a daily habit.
The key for providers of physical products – from smoothie boxes to e-bikes – is to maintain a connection with customers. Right through the critical phases of unboxing, usage, care, and maintenance, and upselling/reselling.
PX is all about making and maintaining hyper-personalized connections to customers during their ownership experience. It requires that brands maintain and interact with customers in a way that understands both their usage state and the specific products they purchased.
Delivering hyper-personalization at scale utilizes AI to marry customer-specific information (skill level, preferences, usage patterns, even things like skin type or personal goals) with:
- Product information,
- Known usage issues,
- And even environmental information,
to provide an experience that is helpful, timely, and aligned with the brand.
For example, if you sell specialty health juices and a new customer makes a purchase, chances are that you know little about them. You probably are not aware of the customer’s tastes and preferences or their goals in drinking the juice.
Similarly, the customer may not know how to use the product in an optimal way and (most importantly), if they will ourchase from you more than once.
In this case, a good PX journey, delivered as a digital assistant, starts with an expectation setting. Like alerting the customer to the delivery date, refrigeration needs, and any tools they’ll need in the kitchen to make the juice taste optimal.
Once the order arrives, a good PX engagement strategy will engage the customer to help them get started and to learn more about how they plan to use the product and why.
With this information, you can make personalized recommendations about when to drink the juice and offer suggestions around broader wellness goals.
Bottom line:
PX is about meeting the customers where they are at. This helps brands get ahead of common problems by ensuring that the customers are prepared to make the most out of their products. Also, it alerts them to new offerings and to helpful advice. All things that help brands stay closer to their customers.
PX and CX: What’s the Difference?
In short, the biggest difference between CX and PX is that CX predates the purchase and PX is post-purchase.
For brands with digital products and services (think Netflix, Kayak), there isn’t much of a delineation. These brands remain in constant contact with their customers throughout their usage.
This ability to stay connected to customers throughout the full customer journey is a major advantage. It is one of the reasons why digitally-native offerings have considerably higher retention rates.
For product brands, CX gained importance as purchasing patterns shifted from in-store to online. Over time, ensuring customer satisfaction became integral to formalizing retention strategies and quantifying the customer’s overall experience.
PX is all about making and maintaining hyper-personalized connections to customers during their ownership experience.
PX bridges the gap between initial purchase and when a customer reaches out for support due to a problem, or worse, simply never comes back.
The goals of PX are to guide onboarding and initial usage, establish patterns of usage, enable feature discovery, produce support and education, and anticipate common problems before they happen.
Overcoming PX Challenges
The difficulty with PX is that traditional marketing and support tools aren’t designed to guide and support customers in their product use. Thus leaving brands with critical post-sale connections gaps. The missing piece is creating this connection in a way that enhances customer engagement and satisfaction.
...when customers feel supported...they, in turn, develop long-term usage habits...
Let’s take a closer look at each of the challenges of PX and how brands can overcome them.
1. Some companies try to piece together solutions using the systems they already have. The problem is that most of those applications weren’t built to respond in real time to customer interactions.
That’s why many are now turning to AI-based platforms that can learn from each exchange and adjust automatically.
For instance, if the system recognizes that someone is new to a skin care line, it might share simple tips to help them build good habits and make application easier. If it sees that a customer already has an established routine, it can suggest adding a serum for better results.
Even though the intelligence behind a PX platform is complex, the delivery to customers can be simple. It might be as easy as a text message with a link to helpful content or a short video showing exactly how to get started.
The goal is to make it effortless and enjoyable for customers to get the most out of your product or service.
2. There are very few tools that collect zero-party data (data your brand collects directly from customers and can be used to drive future interactions with them). But when brands gather insights directly from a product’s usage, the benefits can be game-changing.
Zero-party data, collected passively through customer interactions rather than impersonal surveys, provides real-time visibility into customer behavior: without interrupting their experience.
The challenge lies in earning that data. This data depends on customer trust and voluntary participation; people share information when they believe it will improve their experience.
For example, sending texts asking how the initial experience has been can build on the relationship, not just the transaction. Along with providing additional resources, next steps, and/or connecting them to a community via social media or forums.
3. PX strategy should be designed to provide visibility into individual customer issues that can be resolved before the customer has to escalate them or worse, before a customer is lost.
The key is leveraging a responsive system that properly responds to customer queries, thanking the customers who are doing great (and maybe asking for a review). And then simultaneously funneling and supporting those customers who are struggling.
The best applications utilize AI to direct customers down the path to support that they need to be successful.
4. Most brands still operate in silos, where marketing, CRM, support, and product data don’t connect in real time. As a result, brands may deliver a suboptimal experience or miss opportunities to cross-sell or upsell happy customers.
The solution is to connect these systems through integration points that allow information to flow freely. This approach doesn’t just improve CX: it also makes marketing campaigns more targeted and effective.
At the same time, by addressing issues proactively and streamlining interactions, brands can reduce support costs, freeing resources for growth and innovation.
Why A PX Strategy?
A solid PX strategy can help brands identify and resolve issues faster, inform product roadmaps based on real-world usage, and develop smarter cross-sell and retention strategies. It can engage with customers in a way that builds loyalty and trust and expands word-of-mouth and review opportunities.
When brands connect with customers through personalized interactions, guided usage experiences, and predictive support, retention and loyalty are built.
And, when customers feel supported throughout their product journeys, they, in turn, develop long-term usage habits that turn them into lifelong advocates.
McKinsey’s research shows that contextual, personalized cross-selling can lift revenues by 15%–20% and that companies excelling at personalization generate significantly higher loyalty and growth.
In practice, when customers feel seen and valued, they’re far more likely to renew their subscriptions or make those all-important second purchases.