GlassHive Exec: Rich Customer Experience Key To Getting, Keeping Client Loyalty

‘[The vast majority] of customers say they'd be more likely to stay loyal if they have access to educational and welcoming onboarding, post sale. The key word is “post sale,” a.k.a. you gotta cuddle after doing the deed. Don’t roll your eyes. I'm just saying, don't shoot the messenger. It will help you. We can't forget our current customers just because we got them in. We can't just leave them high and dry,’ says Christine Ululati.

Easy access to rich media is an important way for MSPs to enhance their client experience and maintain customer loyalty, according to Christine Ululati, vice president of business development at GlassHive, an Allen, Texas-based provider of a sales and marketing application for IT service providers.

Ululati, speaking to an audience of managed services providers at last week’s XChange 2024 conference, sponsored by CRN parent company The Channel Company, said it is important to not underestimate the importance of marketing and rich media.

“[The vast majority] of customers say they'd be more likely to stay loyal if they have access to educational and welcoming onboarding, post sale,” she said. “The key word is ‘post sale,’ a.k.a. you gotta cuddle after doing the deed. Don’t roll your eyes. I'm just saying, don't shoot the messenger. It will help you. We can't forget our current customers just because we got them in. We can't just leave them high and dry.”

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GlassHive is focused on helping solution providers provide a magical, fun, and exciting user experience using AI and rich media communications.

The term “rich media” is really just a fancy way to say marketing, said Ululati (pictured).

“And marketing, as you know, is communications,” she said. “However, communication uses a combination of words, images, audio, and video to convey a message. It encourages the IT user to interact with our content until he gets the client experience.”

That’s not the entire story, Ululati said, because businesses struggle with effective communication as well as the need to communicate with different audiences.

“The way that we speak to our employees is different from the way we speak to prospects or investors, right?” she said. The way I speak to a child is not necessarily the same way I speak to a grown man. Or maybe it is. Depends. So what I'm trying to say is that our tonality, our dictation, our demeanor, all of that changes depending on who we're talking to. And so if you're not an experienced marketer, it's so important to learn how to market from the inside out. Meaning those closest to you are going to give you the most leeway, the most feedback, on how to better communicate with those furthest from you.”

That communication is especially important in a business-to-business setting, where 74 percent of B2B buyers are likely to buy based on customer experience alone, Ululati said, citing information from Zippia.com.

Typical consumers go on-line to research potential purchases, and need to feel a certain way before deciding to do business with someone, she said. “So if your brand isn't making them feel warm and fuzzy inside, they're not going to want to do business with you.”

Ululati said that when she asks MSPs what differentiates them, they may say their response time is great and their culture is amazing.

“And that might be true,” she said. “But that end user doesn't know that until they're actually doing business with you. Eighty percent of businesses interviewed said the experience a company provides is as essential as their goods and services [according to Salesforce]. … And 49 percent of customers who left a brand to which they’d been loyal in the past 12 months say it's due to poor customer experience [according to Emplifi].”

According to Salesforce, 76 percent of customers expect connected journeys and consistent interactions across departments, Ululati said.

“We're talking internal communication within your business,” she said. “A majority say it feels like sales service and marketing are not communicating. I feel like that's 100 percent. How many times do we send out campaigns and a lead calls for more information and they're calling your service desk, and service has no idea what the heck's going on?”

GlassHive provides a communications platform a “magical, beautiful” content library full of email marketing assets aimed at improving client experience, Ululati said. The built-in AP automatically designs a user interface based on an MSP’s colors and logos, and integrates with its PSA (professional services automation) platform, Salesforce, HubSpot, G Suite, Microsoft 365, social media accounts, distributors, and even quoting systems, she said.

“We have worked to bring you guys tons of branded content for AI and Copilot,” she said. “It's ready. It's in there for you to use today. And we are in the process of creating content for a new campaign called a ‘journey to the cloud,’ where we'll all get a magic carpet because it sounds like we're going to need one.”

GlassHive also has a vendor partner ecosystem, Ululati said.

“GlassHive is an MSP-first tool,” she said. “It is your primary line of business application where from first contact to signature you're living, eating, and breathing in GlassHive. And so how amazing would it be if your vendors were meeting you where you were instead of having to log on to 17 different partner portals for access to content or whatever you need.”

GlassHive helps by providing the tools to create content, welcome packages, landing pages, and all manner of collateral white papers, e-books, PDFs, infographics, and internal communication and employee training, Ululati said.

“We can also automate your communication to help with lead response time, because guess what? End users are judging you by your lead response time,” she said. “If it sucks, a company will think your service response time sucks. So if you can automate all that, that is going to help you guys tenfold.”

Ululati’s presentation includes a lot a ideas that Jimmy Zehner, CEO of Network Solutions Group, said he is taking back to his team at the Sarasota, Fla.-based MSP.

How to take advantage of rich media has been an issue at Network Solutions Group, Zehner told CRN.

“We're trying to develop our sales team,” he said. “And my sales guys, really, are, ‘Hey, we need some better marketing in order to get better support.’ So this was perfect timing.”

Zehner said his company has been in business for about 15 years and has grown by word of mouth and customer referrals, but needs to find a better way to attract and retain clients to grow.

“We never had a sales team before,” he said. “But I see that that honey pot is drained. So now I need to have a solid sales team and solid marketing to back them up in order to be able to continue to grow.”