AutoQL for E-Commerce & Subscription Management Software Users

~4 minute read

In a booming online economy, digital products like apps are considered consumer goods, just like any other item bought in a store. However, one of the key differences in how customers consume these products is how they pay for them.

The subscription payment model was designed to answer the question of how people should pay for something they buy and use online, rather than physically possessing the product after purchasing it.

Companies that use subscription models not only need to attract new customers and branch into new markets, they also need to focus on meeting the evolving need of current customers with the goals of increasing engagement, expanding, and mitigating churn as much as possible.

Read more: Providing Zero Learning-Curve Data Access for Small Business Operators

There are many reasons why users may churn, but having a full picture of each customer’s journey can help teams retain happy customers and successfully maintain monthly recurring revenue (MRR). Managing subscriptions also means encouraging customers to upgrade, ensuring that payments are processed efficiently, and tracking changes in accounts from downgrades to add-ons.

Sales, marketing, and customer service teams can all play a role in preventing churn. Decisions that team members make every day have major impacts on customer satisfaction and can influence whether or not a customer ultimately makes a decision to cancel their account.

Leveraging embedded conversational solutions for database access, agile teams can get the data they need, faster, and make impactful decisions as soon as possible. 

Staying on top of usage habits and account details can be difficult across teams with different levels of data literacy, even if they are using the same reporting and analytics functionality in their CRM, sales, or user management software as part of their daily workflows.

With an embedded conversational data access solution like AutoQL, anyone can get immediate answers to the questions that matter to them, as soon as they need them.

While a sales rep might ask for “All new subscriptions this month by plan type” or “Show me MRR for all Premium customers last quarter”, a marketing team member might ask “How many times was discount code X used by new signups?” or “Compare click through rates on landing pages to paid ads.”

Read more: Delivering Customer Behavior Insights that Drive Growth at Scale

Growth-minded teams and their leadership can easily explore their data starting with questions like “Show me total MRR and total number of subscriptions by subscription type” to compare which tier brings in the most revenue and which tier is purchased most frequently.

They can continue to ask follow-up questions like: “Average monthly sales and average monthly churn by customer service rep” and “Average days between initial sign-up date and upgrading to Premium” or “Compare Add-Ons revenue to Tier Upgrades revenue last month”

With access to data on demand, any team member can easily leverage data to gain deeper insight into customer behaviors and better understand how their day-to-day actions drive impact for the business as a whole.

Software developers offering commerce solutions in the SaaS space can better serve cross-functional, agile teams with next-generation data access that’s intuitive, immediate and necessitates zero learning curve for users. They can widen their reach to a broader range of markets and expand into new user groups within the companies they already serve, boosting their own MRR with data access functionality their users will get real value from.