Maintaining Customer Relationships after the Sale with Ken Rapp from Blustream

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Ken Rapp 0:00
Today’s IoT revolution has put sensors in lots and lots, you know, billions of products. And that data today has been used to monitor and alert, but not really to then use the data to put in the context of the whole lifecycle of the product.

Alexander Ferguson 0:23
Welcome to UpTech Report. This is our applied tech series UpTech Report is sponsored by TeraLeap. Learn how to leverage the power of video at Teraleap.io. Today, I’m joined by my guest, Ken Rapp, who’s based in Massachusetts. He’s the CEO at Blustream. Welcome, Ken, good to have you on. Thank you, Alex, nice to be here. Now Blustream is an after sale, customer engagement platform. So from your website, if I understand correctly, you’re focused on helping physical goods companies build aftersale connections between their their products and the end users. This concept of where you play a role, I’m curious, can you help me understand the problem? Like the the concern that these companies, these physical goods, companies, they have a product? What are they concerned about? What is the problem that they’re facing that your product exists to solve?

Ken Rapp 1:16
awesome question. Thanks. Yeah, and let’s just explain physical goods. So physical goods are anything from musical instruments to pets or a good up could be a physical good to, you know, RVs, and boats and motorcycles. So that’s what we mean by physical goods rather than software products. And the problem, it’s actually very interesting, the problem is that there’s no relationship, or very little relationship between a company or a brand our favorite brands and their consumers after a sale. So there’s been a lot of work done presale in marketing automation, and in making sure that you manage the filling up your your pipeline, with some campaigns, as well as managing the pipeline through the stages. And then the order comes in, we all do the salesman dance, you know, who we got our order. And then what happens is, the consumer goes home, or they they have something delivered, and they have their product, and the only time you tend to hear from them is if there’s a problem. So the third place that there’s a lot of great platforms are around, you know, inquiries or service type systems to have tickets, so you don’t drop a ticket. But if you think about the, the relationship that the consumer has with their product, it’s throughout an entire life cycle, a life cycle could be a month, a life cycle could be 100 years, in the case of some some, you know, musical instruments that are heirlooms and passed on. And along those those life cycles of products, there’s an opportunity to help companies connect with their customer around the engagement of the product. And you know, that’s really exciting for us that we’re helping the industry to, to create those relationships around the product back to the brand.

Alexander Ferguson 3:24
So you kind of lay the foundation here that there’s lots of solutions out there for for companies on the front end the pipeline, get them in get them in what how do I track them? Where were our leads? What are they doing? And then when they actually have a problem, there’s lots of software solutions, but you’re painting a picture of a gap in the middle like after they bought the product? How do they stay connected to the brand? Why? Why would a company care about that section? Aren’t should they be happy to have the product? And should should they care or worry about them until they do have a problem? What’s the role what what do you see is the need their

Ken Rapp 4:05
lifetime value? So after a sale if you don’t know who your customer is, then you clearly as a brand could lose them to competition. And you know, we call ourselves churn busters, you know, we really are, are in the in business to help companies connect with their customers to create a lifetime relationship. And there’s really three major benefits to the company. The first one is that retention and reducing churn by helping their customer actually know something about their product that they need to do some action at exactly the right time. And it creates loyalty and trust between the company and that customer. And then that creates an opportunity when the customer should buy something, maybe it’s an accessory or a consumable or another Another bicycle, you know, they’re right there with that brand. So it creates revenue. So first one’s retention, I call it three R’s, the retention, revenue. And the last one is referrals. You know, when when you’re, when you have a brand that is connected to you, in a, in a virtual connection to provide coaching and value to you about their products, you tell your friends, because, you know, wow, they’re actually they care about how you’re enjoying that product experience. And so Did that answer your question?

Alexander Ferguson 5:34
Yeah. Well, guess who the at a company would be the one that would lead this type of effort? Is it marketing?

Ken Rapp 5:42
Yeah, marketing, management, product management, marketing, communications, cmo, you know that that’s

Alexander Ferguson 5:50
getting repeat, to be able to get repeat business, you say the churn buster. And, and I often, as I kept talking with SAS companies, they always talk about churn, but because they don’t want people to stop paying their monthly fees. But in a product worlds, obviously, the point is, you want them to keep buying more products, more solutions from the company,

Ken Rapp 6:12
right? Yeah, well, it’s a whole ecosystem. But yeah, if I’m a, let’s take an example of a musical instrument. So I buy a guitar, I happen to play guitar. So I buy a guitar, and I go home, I might have gone to a big retail store. And if I’m the retail store, when I go home, actually, let me back up. If I went to that guitar store, big retailer, I might play a whole bunch of guitars. And then when I go home, what’s the first thing I do I google it, or I search, you know, I look at Amazon and I find a million hits on that kind of guitar. So it’s completely commoditized, the world online buying has completely commoditized the world. So how do you compete in that environment, if you’re the brand that you really have the right fit for that consumer, but it’s got to move to after the sale. So now I buy the guitar and I bring it home. And let’s talk about what happens in that lifecycle. I we call, we call it three stages, you have onboarding, which is when I unbox the instrument, I pick it up and start to tune it up. And, boy, I don’t know, maybe I don’t know how to tune it up. So maybe I should have a video right there. And then on, click here, and we’ll show you how to tune up the guitar, how to clean the guitar, how to hold the guitar, what kind of music do you like, right, so that’s all onboarding, then the enjoying stage stage to enjoying and usage depends, if I play a lot, there’ll be certain tips and coaching I’d like to have and if I’m a classic rocker versus a jazz person, you know that they’re different tips. And so using a product throughout its lifecycle, and enjoying it, and maybe I want to play in a band, or I want to jam with someone, maybe so there’s all sorts of what we call touch points around there. And then lastly, maintenance. So there’s always maintenance and care. And, you know, being being a guitar person, I actually don’t really know how to adjust the truss rod and with different guitars, they’re they’re different, the maintenance and the Polish, and what if it gets wet? And you know, how do I store it, if I’m not gonna play a guitar for a little while you supposed to loosen the strings and put it flat or do you you can cause some problems for the neck and things. So there’s this onboarding and joining and maintenance stages of a product. And if the company or the brand that I bought it from whether it’s the retailer or the brand itself, is connected to me and advising me and coaching me through that experience, I’m much more likely to look to them, when it’s time to buy more strings, or to buy the maintenance kit or to seek out the right service provider to the luthier. They’re called to make the right adjustments on my musical instrument. And that this transfers to any any product. So could be a pet. It could be your RV. It could be your house that there’s all around us your first onboarding, then you’re enjoying and usage and then your maintenance. And I just want to wrap it up with you know, one connection point that when I talk to people and share what we’re doing is your car. So when your car asks you to change the oil, you probably changed the oil rather than if a campaign came to you with a coupon when you don’t even know how many miles you rode because you know the car will take care of that. So this product centricity is really where we come from it Blustream are all about the product, the product perspective to the consumer from the brand, rather than just looking at the consumer to take an action about some task. And in the car example when I first Got my car, which is a few years ago, I thumb through 100 page manual. And there was probably 25 touch points in there, maybe more. But I haven’t looked at that manual since I put it back in the glove box and just drive my car. And so that’s a lost opportunity for the car manufacturer or the service provider, to be helping me understand what to look for, whether it’s, it’s been, there’s been no rain for the past month, and it’s too dry, you should do something to the car, it’s been raining for two weeks, and you should do something to the car,

Alexander Ferguson 10:35
you paint a picture of that. The product worlds consumer product world is such a commoditized, I’ll just find something, whatever is cheapest product out there. And you know, we’re not even choosing to say that in person, we may explore it in person, but we want to go online, just buy something. And so you’re pontificating, or rather stating that it’s better place to market is the existing customers once they come through, by continue to market because you can have a relationship with them. And that’s where you’ve really honed in on this customer marketing after the sale post sale. How How does this solving this, then affect the average customer customer, like the average consumer, if, if multiple brands all around us started doing this? How does this play out then.

Ken Rapp 11:22
So if you think about your own world, you probably have a handful of products around you that are important to you. And that would be nice if you got some tips. So we break down the the touch points into educational tips, alerts, like something you should be aware of is going to happen and purchase recommendations, those three things, and we trigger off of either a time basis. So day one trigger an educational video welcoming you to, you know, thanking you for buying that guitar and welcoming you to the guitar many brands family. It could be an inquiry where you say a trigger is have you have you written 10 miles on your new bicycle yet. And you say yes. And then from a product perspective, we’re able to track at 100 miles, we’re going to keep track for you. You wrote 10 miles in two weeks, we’ll give you you know, in 20 weeks, we’re going to come back and we’re going to suggest to you here’s the maintenance to adjust the brakes. And you know, fix the handlebars and adjust your seat and make sure the tires are right. So it’s educational. It’s alerts if there’s a problem like Oh, if you’re riding 10 miles a week, or every two weeks, you likely want to have you want to check your your air and your tires after you’ve gone about 50 miles, that’s an alert. And then finally purchase recommendations where again, if it’s 100 miles, the recommendation is that you do you know how to tune up the bicycle Would you like to buy a little toolkit accessory that you know has the right tools in it to adjust the seat and the handlebars and the brakes. So we really look at engagement product engagement as touchpoints and it creates this great experience for the consumers they just as a consumer, wouldn’t you love some you know, someone to tell you in the fall I live up here in New England in the fall. It’s a you know The Winter’s coming and so what do you do to your lawnmower to have it ready to winterize it and and give me the education like so I don’t have to worry about let it just show up and tell me what to do. Meanwhile, all summer it was giving me tips about my lawn, you know, and telling me how to keep the lawn mower running well how to keep my tractor you know, the air in the tires properly, but also how to make my grass greener if I want to greener

Unknown Speaker 13:51
can

Alexander Ferguson 13:53
Why Why are you passionate about why did you decide to start Blustream and do all this?

Ken Rapp 14:00
So it’s interesting, I’m an unmet needs kind of guy. So I you know, I love to find unmet needs that really bring value to consumers or to a business, particularly a business and their customer and marry the two the unmet need with some innovation. And what’s cool here is this is this is not rocket science that we’re doing. What we’ve done is we’re applying modern, cool technology that’s available to us to a problem I call that an application business rather than, you know, molecules or rocket science. So, you know, I found so I play guitar and I was volunteering my time up at one of the local schools here in their entrepreneurial program. And one of my colleagues came and presented that his his $2,000 guitar had cracked because of a Very cold, New England Cold, dry New England winter. And so I said, geez, why didn’t the guitar actually tell him before there was a problem that there was going to be a problem. And he and I started chatting, and then you know, I met the rest of his team. And off we off we went.

Alexander Ferguson 15:17
And then so Blustream comes into existence, your your focus on physical goods, I feel like a lot of this type of solution is on the software side already. It’s like Customer Success teams exists as once you’re using the product. There’s there’s already automated emails that come to you and training and onboarding, but in the physical goods. I think it’s there. Like I buy stuff from Amazon. And there’s a little document and takes me to a video over here. But it’s not as organized. I like I bet you get a little bit. There’s there’s some onboard, there’s some tutorials and trainings in here in here. But I guess you’re trying to bring more organization to it more. Are you bringing tracking? like is that? Is that like, another big piece?

Ken Rapp 16:04
Sure. So let’s start with the organization. So what’s what’s very interesting is most brands and companies already have the content on how to take care of and use and enjoy onboard enjoy and maintain their products throughout the product lifecycle. But where is it? It’s on their website. And so I as a consumer, or a customer of the product, have to remember to go Google it or go up to their website and find it when I think I need it. After I’ve had a problem.

Alexander Ferguson 16:37
So how are you communicate? Is it email texts? What?

Ken Rapp 16:40
Yep, so to date, we’ve we work with companies on our full stack, which would include white labeled mobile apps that will work with companies on if they would like mobile apps, or email or text if they just want to be connected through, you know, off the shelf, standard email or text. And then we, I wanted to mention, because you sort of headed there is that today’s IoT revolution has put sensors in lots and lots, you know, billions of products. And that data today has been used to monitor and alert, but not really to then use the data to put in the context of the whole lifecycle of the product. So your example, right, so you, you get home, and you’ve got the the onboarding, video and the pamphlet in the box, and that’s all cool. But then it stops, and you start enjoying and using the product, and you have to go find information to you know, get the most out of it, and to stay engaged with it. And as I said earlier, you know, we’re churn busters, I’m blown away by some of the metrics of churn in the world, you know, people buy products, and then they they’re not successful with them lose interest, and then they end up in the scrap heap or, you know, they just don’t use them. And so we really see ourselves helping someone who makes an investment, you know, be able to get the most out of it, and then continue to enjoy and use the product.

Unknown Speaker 18:12
This

Alexander Ferguson 18:14
focus of churn busting, I mean, there’s, there’s, again, on SAS world, the software world, there’s tons of stats that people track of how is the church? Is that common in the product world? Do they track that type of statistic?

Ken Rapp 18:26
Some do, some don’t. But everybody knows that if you can retain a customer, and cross sell and upsell and provide more value, through education and alerts, you have a much higher likelihood of that customer coming back.

Alexander Ferguson 18:45
It’s like repeat customers, I feel like that often is the common terminology that’s like, let’s we need to get more customers coming back. But it’s the same concept of churn is you want them to buy more your products, not go somewhere else and buy other products?

Ken Rapp 18:59
Yeah, it’s it’s interesting, because you know, you mentioned after a sale, that’s what we’re all about. And you have companies even if they don’t know what churn is, and we talk with them and begin to articulate the what’s the value of retaining a customer, and you said something earlier, that’s pretty important. Today’s behavior is pre sale is, is completely commoditized. Just Just go search on any product you want, whether it’s a lawnmower or a guitar and you get millions of hits, right. So what happens is, today’s marketing dollars are being spent to remarket and resell to this, you may already have the customers, they may already be your customers and you’re still spending all that money upfront to try and differentiate in this very difficult commoditized world. Imagine if you were connected to that customer. Bringing them value interacting with them asking them Oh, so you’ve now hit 100 miles? How is the bicycle behaving for you? Or how is, you know, Lucky the puppy doing? It’s going to rain on Saturday? Did you know that? You know, Lucky might be a little worried? Would you like to learn about what that the puppies can be scared of thunder and there’s something called the thunder jacket. And and we’ll show you a little video about, you know what a thunder jacket can do to calm down a puppy, when there’s going to be rain. And we do it by monitoring the weather for the weekend. And so this is technology that’s available to us today. And yet, it’s not been applied to this after sale product engagement opportunity.

Alexander Ferguson 20:46
The shift in the marketers mindset of where are they spending their dollars, I can imagine that is a problem that is a concern of Okay, where we only have we have a limited budget, where are we going to put our effort and time. And you make the point that you’re spending money on lead gen and in whatever ad marketing but you’re really getting the same customers? So why don’t you just shift it to truly focusing on on your customers in this post sale environment? Do you do you foresee that is going to become the norm then that that every product company is just going to put more and more energy on that post sale and reducing churn?

Ken Rapp 21:21
I think you have to right. I mean, that’s our mission is to help every company have a new and meaningful relationship with their with their customer after the sale. And it’ll it’ll transform, it’ll transform your business, you can, you know, some of the stats are, you know, you can double your revenues in you know, a few years by crushing churn by increasing LTV by improving retention. And, you know, we’re providing a platform that will allow anybody with a with a physical product to quickly set up a trigger, an educational tip alert or purchase recommendation and the channel, you pick those three, the trigger might be time, you know, and 24 hours do this. And the content is the video that they already have on their website, and the channel might be a text. And then two weeks later, the trigger might be the weather, you know if it’s going to be raining five days before it rains, you know, offer a video or a blog on what happens if your product gets wet and how to take care of it after it’s wet. And then here’s a you know, the channel might be we’re going to use email. So you put those we you put those together, and then load them into our cloud and our cloud will just take care of it for you

Alexander Ferguson 22:43
all these features. Were you just talking about or or connection points? Is that something that you’re setting up for them? Are they going in, they see other options? And they’re just connecting the dots? Is it custom built? Like what is the complexity when it comes to building these triggers?

Ken Rapp 23:02
Great question. So the history of our company, we White Glove service, our customers all the way from IoT and sensors if they need them. And we have partners that we work with for that to mobile apps that are you know, white labeled, so that they can be branded for our customer or what they need, all the way up to the triggers the content and the channels. And we work with our customers in the history of the history of Blustream from end to end, full stack. But as we go forward, we’ve actually designed and are deploying in the second half this year, by end of year touchwood is where we’re headed for taking our cloud engine, the Touchpoint Manager and enabling anyone to use to use the cloud and the Touchpoint Manager with time or increase to the consumer or, you know, scraping the web to understand if it’s going to be the weather or some new important information that triggers the content they already have tied to email text or some other channel that they want.

Alexander Ferguson 24:13
What’s the biggest objection you’ve seen from others in regarding your technology for that adoption? And how are you addressing it?

Ken Rapp 24:22
Yeah, so the biggest challenge I think we face is on us, you know, articulating the story as an earlier stage company is difficult and it takes iterations and conversations and I think we’ve not been as clear as we are now about what it is that we’re doing and the value we bring. So I we’ve we’ve talked a lot with you know a few companies because we focus primarily on our back wheel I call it the power the power wheel which is the product and the in the architecture and you know today we have a million data points in our Coming up into our cloud and making decisions and recommending, you know, recommending the right, the right action at the right time to customers. So for us, we focus there, and now we’re out. And we’re talking with people. And we’re getting much better at, at what we’re what we’re saying. So we really see ourselves as the marketing automation system for after sale focused on products, which is much, I couldn’t have said that to you three, four or five months ago. But that’s from being out into the market. As soon as we say it, I’m blown away, Alex by VPS, of sales, VPS of marketing, CMOS, they’re like, of course, we want to have a relationship with our customer after the sale. In fact, we only get south of 15% of a card back, you know, registering the product. And so we don’t even know who the 50% less than 50% of our consumers in the world we have we have their names or their emails or bring any value to them. And even worse is if you’re a brand, and you’re working through a retail channel, so a bigger box store, which is changing, as we talked about, you definitely don’t have any connection until there’s a problem, and then they call you and they want it fixed,

Alexander Ferguson 26:16
you know, bring up a great point. So how are you addressing that issue? Then? If somebody buys one of your products somewhere? How do they get into the system? How are you able to stay in touch with them? How are you addressing that.

Ken Rapp 26:30
So we’re really, really important point you’re making there that you have to let everybody opt out anytime they want to. But what we do is starting from the point of sale system, we offer up the first touch point, and it’s either through the point of sale system or through their CRM of the brand we’re working with, will offer up a thank you for the purchase. And here’s what we’re you know, here’s a touch point, here’s something, we want to bring a value, here’s a video, here’s a little tip, and then you know, opt out at the bottom, if they don’t opt out, we go to the next one. And they, you know, they can opt out anytime. But see, we’re really less about frequency and more about content more about value. So you don’t need to hear from, we don’t believe in hearing from a brand. You know, once a week, you should hear from a brand every day for the first 30 days, if that’s the right content to help that consumer through that specific product. And then it’ll taper down and become more of the lifecycle through enjoyment and usage. And then there’s maintenance that are run in the background. So we build this incredible trust. Because it’s not spam. It’s not just a sequential campaign. It’s actually asynchronous it because there’s inquiries about a product that you don’t trigger on right away. You know, like I said, if I know that I’ve played a guitar for 10 hours a week, you know, at 100 hours, I really, that’s that is nothing that could be in three weeks, it could be in three months. So inquiring, when that happens is not a standard campaign, you know, a goes to be step one to step two to step three. And that’s what’s running up in the cloud and keeping track of, you know, each personal consumer, you know, each consumer, each customer and customer’s needs.

Alexander Ferguson 28:24
kind of coming to a more open ended question here of just looking ahead. What kind of futuristic technology Do you see is coming to to this industry of both marketing, but post sale, customer centric focus? What do you see as far as the technology that could be coming and that you’re excited about?

Ken Rapp 28:49
I think that products are going to be smart, and get smart, they’re already smart, but they’re getting smarter. And those, that the technologies for IoT is getting so inexpensive that you can put a sensor on anything. And we think that’s the wrong job as a standalone, just putting sensors on things, because you can it’s not the right job. But I think as you look ahead, every every product will come with some sort of intelligence in it. And we want we believe we’re the platform to tie that in that data and bring a lot of value for the entire lifecycle of the product, whether it’s a vacuum cleaner, or you know, a new fish, you know, that you get, I mean, I’ve gotten home with my kids put a fish on the table, you know, had a ball, and then I say no, what did they tell me to do? How what’s how warm should the water be before I put the fish in the water? And yet if I’m successful at that hobby, right, so I might buy another fish and then I need a bigger tank and then I need to, you know, I’m going to have like maybe salt water and before you know it, I’m a big customer there. That’s what this is all about. This is so weird. so delighted to be helping the consumer have an awesome customer experience and the brand, the be the power behind it. And we’re the platform underneath that to with us.

Alexander Ferguson 30:11
I appreciate the vision of that of it both for the company being able to have that connection with their end customer provides value and get repeat business. But for customer as a consumer, I can actually get the answers the insight when I need it. When when things come in. For those that want to check more the site, just so you know, is blustream.io. And looks like you’re able to book a demo. Is that a good first step for people to take?

Ken Rapp 30:41
Absolutely. And it’s blu without an E so it’s Blu stream just to clarify kind of the little dots. It’s the blustream.io. So that’s perfect. Thank you, Alex.

Alexander Ferguson 30:53
Absolutely. Thank you so much Ken for for sharing, taking us along this this journey, the insight and the focus that you have on post sale in the future of product, how he’s able to physical goods companies putting more emphasis after the sale, helping the customer so thanks again, Ken for your time, and we’ll see you all on the next episode of UpTech Report. Have you seen a company using AI machine learning or other technology to transform the way we live, work and do business? Go to UpTech report.com and let us know