The power of user experience: Turning leads into customers

Andrew Work, Executive Director of the Self Storage Association Asia sat down with Miles Davison, CEO & Co-Founder of Storeganise to discuss how software can optimise selfs torage operators’ ability to manage their sites. Click here to view the original interview.

When self-storage operators are looking at implementing a software solution, what should they consider in terms of translating their strategy into a suitable customer journey?

The first thing is always sitting down and understanding what the business needs:

• What are the challenges?
• What are the processes?
• What are their goals for the business in terms of the whole customer experience?

One of the core elements of Storeganise is our new customer portal. It provides seamless experience from the website into the customer’s booking flow, into the client being able to login to view their units, upsell them on products and different bookings in different facilities, profile information billing and so on. So all of that comes together in the new customer portal that we’re offering.

The customer journey is really important, but what’s also important for operators is making sure that any new software that they bring in integrates with any software that they have in place. What software features should self-storage owners look for to that they can integrate with other software in their business?

Our mantra has always been that we want to be a very open platform.

We have an open API that allows custom integrations for companies that need that, but we’ve also built in other tools.   This feature allows every developer to automate tasks and flow information between Storeganise to other systems and back, to create the perfect ecosystem without having to:

• a) spend too much money on development and
• b) add too many manual tasks around that.

Is it important for software to work with other digital marketing tools, such as search engine optimisation?

The information that you can gather from your website in terms of your search engine marketing, social media marketing and how that converts leads into customers is important. But then how does that journey continue through the booking process?

• We’ve integrated in with Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Segment and Facebook Pixel so that you can have all of these different metrics to track the journey.
• With tools like Google Tag Manager and Segment, you can do a lot of deep data analytics, and more specific parts of the customer behavior where they are interacting with the platform.  For example;
• What’s pushing them out of the funnel?
• What’s pushing them through the funnel?
• This data allows our customers to tweak and also allows us to continue to evolve the platform to make it as user friendly as possible and to continue to improve that customer journey through the flow.

Data analytics are really important now. What should managers and senior executives be looking for in a software solution to help them understand what’s happening in their business?

For management to have a really good insight is obviously critical, so we have really deep data analytics and interactive analytics that can drive that. Another key component is automation. Allowing companies to have the option so they can choose how and what parts of the flow they want to automate. If they want to have fully unmanned facilities they can then automate the move-in process fully for that site, allowing a really hands-off experience both for the customer and manager. This allows the management to manage multiple businesses with little manpower and remotely.

Is it important to be able to simplify the data, and if so what data would you recommend that managers look at?

One of the things that we offer is the ability to:

• A) Custom dashboards for different companies that have very specific requirements for different investors and
• B) The ability to pick the different types of sites or the different data that they want.  You can get an overview for the whole portfolio or you can break down that data and just show the facilities within the northeast or the northwest. For local site managers, they don’t need all that data and it’s probably distracting for them, so we have site level analytics for them, a more broken down focused view of what it really drives their business needs.

How Storeganise can help

Storeganise’s out-of-the-box customer portal can be added onto a website within 2-3 minutes, so you’re ready to go with online bookings, contactless, fully automated bookings within minutes.  Book a demo with us here to learn more.

Related Article: Increasing the conversion rate in your self storage business