How a PIM Can Improve Customer Experience and Loyalty

Imagine walking into a clothing store and realizing there’s no order to the products. The kids’ shirts are mixed with women’s accessories and men’s shirts are crammed on a rack with athletic pants. Not to mention the price tags on each item don’t match the final sale price at checkout.

You’d never buy anything there and you would storm out swearing to never go back in. You might even make it a personal mission to tell anyone and everyone about your horrible shopping experience.

While a bit over-the-top, this hypothetical shopping experience is a physical representation of bad data management. If products aren’t cataloged by type, they appear jumbled in a digital format. If product data (price, size, colors, etc.) aren’t logged, customers can’t filter and sort to find what they want.

And as we all know, if customers can’t find what they want, they are not happy.

Customer experience is a broad term that encompasses all interactions a customer has with a brand, from initial contact to post-purchase support. A great customer experience begins and ends with how well a brand solved a person’s needs. Commonly, this means delivering a personalized experience and exceeding expectations. 

If a loyal customer is a repeat customer, then brands need to be on point in every interaction. Customer loyalty comes from an emotional connection between brand and buyer. This means feelings can be hurt and customers can feel let down if a brand experience doesn’t delight them as it once did. 

Showing Accurate Product Information Is Table Stakes

A Product Information Management (PIM) solution is a must-have for any manufacturer. It gives teams a single-source of truth for all product data. From images and spec sheets to price and product compatibility, a PIM organizes it all. A PIM eliminates data silos and ensures only approved and up-to-date product information is used in every instance. This means all customer-facing materials always display accurate product information.

When a company’s PIM is connected to a Digital Experience Platform (DXP), data-driven experience can be seamlessly created. Manufacturers who implement a PIM and DXP are able to create and launch a digital catalog in under 30 minutes. They can also improve the product registration process by making it completely digital. That’s a competitive edge that creates a differentiating customer experience.

A Unified Data System Results in a Unified Customer Experience

With a PIM, manufacturers can properly support each and every product throughout its lifecycle. A powerful PIM solution is able to organize custom attributes that facilitate cross-department collaboration. Lumavate’s PIM can handle associating related products, multilingual content, sales information, technical specifications, and product-specific digital assets.

This means product managers aren’t the sole owners of product specifications stored in various spreadsheets. Marketing isn’t the only team with access to product descriptions, videos, and lifestyle images. Instead, product data is unified, related, and managed.

Within a PIM, warranty terms and product registration instructions are associated with each product line or SKU. For manufacturers using Lumavate, this means their website product content is always up-to-date. So when a customer is looking up their product’s warranty information because something is broken, what they read on the website matches what the Customer Support team tells them.

Beyond the table stakes of organizing product data in a PIM is relating products. By associating products with similar options, accessories, or parts, manufacturers have the opportunity to delight customers by narrowing results based on individual needs.

Brands Can Earn Repeat Business by Suggesting Related Products

After a customer purchases a product, brands have an opportunity to engage the customer and draw in repeat business by suggesting an attachment or accessory that works with their latest purchase. For example, a brand could suggest an attachment to a small kitchen appliance or a coordinating product that has the same aesthetic as the previous purchase.

Related products can also appear as customers browse a brand website and build their cart with all the parts and accessories they need to support a new product purchase.

By organizing product data and relating similar products, manufacturers can anticipate customer needs and delight them with seamless digital experiences. Manufacturers also benefit from streamlining internal processes. A PIM empowers team members to find the information they need, when they need it, and know where to update product details when they change. This eliminates confusing internal email chains with attachments and siloed data storage solutions, i.e. spreadsheets and local files. 

Instead, team members and teams can collaborate in a centralized solution, contributing their area of expertise to ensure product data is always accurate. Resulting in customers seeing and having access to the product information they expect.