It's 2022 and there is no better way to start this year than by introducing several product enhancements. We are at all times striving to improve our service and during the last couple of months, we have been focusing on cornerstone analytical features, which includes a completely rethought Insights that now houses several KPI reports. Also, we are introducing a newly redesigned Workspace home, support of 3rd party chat vendors and more.

## Clear customer insights
Data = empirical evidence. Insights = analytical visualisation. To be able to provide precise insights it is essential to ensure data quality. This is why our data aggregation is not based on bits and pieces of secondary and inconsistent data sets, instead, we only rely on first level data that is directly and precisely collected from sources we control. With this as the premise, we can make the data a first-class citizen, which in return allows us to provide a 360-degree customer understanding from the initial visitor session and throughout the most intimate customer to product interactions. 

With our new Insights, your organisation and teams are now able to visualise relationships between usage, funnels, Assistants, customer demographics and much more. Moreover, Insights provides you with the one place for everything you need to know about the business-critical KPI's and content popularity.

![reports@2x](//images.ctfassets.net/scrf7o05zai3/CDOnbpM1TJ6MQOI3rwUiQ/81e7d42f9ee790ea8570dc92e3b57d79/reports_2x.jpg)

Your Insights will house a completely rebuilt dashboard that will provide a comprehensive overview of your customer activity. In addition, instead of spending time on collecting pieces of information from multiple sources and thereafter aggregating them to understand trends and measure performance, the new Insights provides you with the following KPI reports out of the box:

- Sessions development
- Visitors activity 
- Customer activity 
- Customer conversion rates
- Pageviews
- Customer by geography 
- Customer by gender
- Product registrations development
- Funnel performance
- Customer Persona

### Dashboard
Your Dashboard now consists of 9 different metrics aiming to give your end-to-end performance overview. To scope your analysis you can use a predefined period range as Today, Yesterday, Last 7 days, Last 30 days, Last 90 days, Last month, Last year and Year to date. As the predefined periods are not useful for all use-cases, you are also able to define a specific date range. 

![dashboard](//images.ctfassets.net/scrf7o05zai3/oYWxMjT2TDqMfxGEHTYHj/88ebbdcc7b8f66536db53e1311ba28a1/dashboard.jpg)

Moreover, in addition to selecting a period, you are now also able to further filter you data by Workspace, Assistant and Language. 

#### Customer Persona
We are also introducing a Customer Persona feature that allows you to get a clear understanding of who your customers are in detail.

> A customer persona is a statistical representation of your customer profile. Customer personas are an integral part of any quality support, marketing or sales activities. 

With a clear view of who your customers are, it's much easier to develop effective, targeted content and campaigns to your customers' goals and challenges. 

![persona](//images.ctfassets.net/scrf7o05zai3/6IGR3odjZ7gyUkm7Hu2RfK/3b44afce3b9183da736e980818a116ab/persona.jpg)

As evident above, with the Customer Persona insights you have visibility in the following 7 customer data points: 

- Gender
- Location
- Language preference 
- Device type
- Preferred currency 
- Time-zone
- UTM-campaign 

As with any other metric available on the Dashboard, the Customer Persona can be viewed both with date range and filters. 

## Workspace home face-lift
We are also happy to announce that we are releasing a completely redesigned Workspace home. Over the last month, we have been working hard on making sure that the Workspace home provides the best possible introduction to any Product Assistants. 

![workspace](//images.ctfassets.net/scrf7o05zai3/77p5EzOE7f2ya1xRGkdJWg/522e1ab06262a9d9495cfb2679edb26f/workspace.gif)

As evident above, the new Workspace home will now show Highlights, Videos and Topics.

## Chat enhancements 
Chat capabilities are extremely important for your ability to efficiently and efficiently assist your customer base. Here are 10 reasons why chat is essential: 

- Live chat provides "person to person" communication which is the most trusted communication form by customers 
- Live chat improves the support experience for customers as guidance can be provided during troubleshooting
- Live chat helps provide frictionless product onboarding as access to help is easily accessible 
- Live chat lets you build insights on customers and drive satisfaction
- Live chat reduces the risk for customer introduced errors
- Live chat boosts your post-sales effectiveness
- Live chat lets you provide 24/7 support (active sessions and self-service)
- Live chat increases customer loyalty 
- Live chat performance and ease of use can give you an edge over your competition
- Live chat can guide customers through product upgrades

### 3rd party chat vendor support
We are today providing 3rd party chat vendor support for your teams that want to use Layerise in collaboration with chat vendors as Georgias, Zendesk, Microsoft Dynamics and many others. 

![apps](//images.ctfassets.net/scrf7o05zai3/1WgOmpmhMsRAddjFnHmMs0/280e871fc8cfb339ec2cd7b92b9fff3f/apps.jpg)

With the support of the 3rd party chat solution, you can now build great product Assistants while at the same time providing the chat vendor that your teams are already using. 

## Other updates  
Apart from all the big updates mentioned above, we have also been working on smaller changes including: 

- Auto-detection of customer country code during sign-up
- Assistant speed has been increased by 36 %

## Thank you for your support!
All features covered in this release are rolling out over the next couple of weeks and are made available in [your account](https://www.layerise.com/auth "Layerise account"). Moreover, all features will be available for all marketed plans as declared on our [plan overview page](https://www.layerise.com/pricing "plan overview").

As always, do not hesitate to reach out to us if you have any questions or need a helping hand.

Announcing new powerful Insights 

A Product Assistant is a digital, more modern, customer-friendly, mobile-first, and interactive user manual. First and foremost, the definition of a user manual is fairly simple. It is a step-by-step guide providing information on how to assemble, install, and generally use the product, an introduction to its main features, and also troubleshooting instructions to help people use the product properly. It should be the fundamental part of the customer experience, but the reality could be far different from the theory. The reason is that people usually do not read conventional product manuals as our [survey](https://www.layerise.com/resources/blog/post/the-lack-of-effectiveness) suggests, mostly due to the mismanagement of customers' expectations and continuous lack of easily accessible information.

---

__Main conclusions__:

- A positive and highly significant relationship between a Product Assistant quality and perceived product quality
- A Product Assistant is a part of the whole product experience and overall quality perception
- The value, familiarity, technology and complexity of the product moderate the effect of a Product Assistant quality on customer satisfaction

---

The user manuals are not presented nor organized in a way that would accommodate our needs. We want the information to be understood and handed over immediately as we don’t like to lose time. Thus, instead of using conventional user manuals, we can take advantage of today’s digital world and make it more interactive and customized. That’s where our Product Assistant steps in, solving the lack of engagement issues and opening the door for more opportunities. After using an efficient and effective Product Assistant, your customers might end up perceiving it as a part of their quality evaluation related to the product. Thus, such high-quality interactive manuals could influence their views not only on your products but also on your customer service and the company itself (Gök, Ersoy & Börühan, 2019).

Customers view the most obvious product characteristics, such as durability, serviceability, performance, usability, or reliability as part of the *primary product*. Most of us would think that those are indispensable factors in assessing customer satisfaction. We seem to ignore that the accompanying products and services - well known as *secondary products* have an equally important effect on overall satisfaction and thus, customer perception of product quality. The right type of manual plays a crucial role in “the total product package” and therefore, in measuring and explaining customers’ level of contentment (Smart, Madrigal & Seawright, 1996). As a result, providing a Product Assistant of the highest quality seems to be of great importance when assessing perceived product quality. Let’s look closely into what happens “behind the scenes” by answering the following question:

### How could the Product Assistant's quality influence consumer satisfaction?

Above all, defining and measuring a Product Assistant quality is subjective from one organisation to another. However, looking at the academic conclusions, the quality of such an Assistant can be characterised by its usability, reliability, accessibility, readability, or findability (Mead, 1998). Consequently, having a high-quality Product Assistant can act as post-purchase product information signaling product quality. Why is this important?

---

__Characteristics of a Product Assistant quality__:

- Usability
- Reliability
- Accessibility
- Readability
- Findability 

---

In social psychology, the theory of “*Cognitive dissonance*” refers to the mental conflict that results from holding two conflicting beliefs. Thus, any discrepancy between expectations and product performance might cause high levels of mental discomfort. The dissonance is at its maximum right after purchasing the product (and before properly experiencing it) and that’s the foundation of satisfaction formation. Hence, the provision of post-purchase supporting information results in a decrease in psychological discomfort about the choice of purchasing that particular product. In a nutshell, sharing high-quality information helps to abate uncertainty and enable customers to make better use of the products, which ultimately impacts customer satisfaction. That means that a well-established user manual or in our case Product Assistant can influence satisfaction judgments (Cooper, 2011) (Gök, Ersoy & Börühan, 2019). This means that satisfied customers will start believing in your brand and become loyal. Such customers give your brand repeat business and form a major part of the company’s revenue. 

Additionally, another theory called the “*Contrast theory*” can explain the product evaluation process as well. It predicts that the customer will amplify the difference between the product received and the product expected. That means that if the post-purchase product performance fails to meet the pre-purchase product expectations, the consumers will not be happy (Anderson, 1973) (Korgonkar & Moschis, 1982). As a result, the Product Assistants can be used as a tool to help assess the product and the related satisfaction judgments. In other words, a high-quality Assistant can help breach the gap between expectations and reality, and thus, provide a remarkable customer experience. This is critical to the sustained growth of the business. Moreover, customers are the main competition differentiator, which means that without high levels of customer satisfaction, your business is likely to perish in the future.     

Furthermore, the findings of the empirical research by Gök, Ersoy & Börühan (2019) back these theories even further by revealing that there is a positive and highly significant relationship between user manual quality and perceived product quality. They found that consumers judge their interaction with such manuals as an intrinsic part of the whole product experience. Besides, it proposes that product value, familiarity, complexity, or technology, and product experience moderate the direct and indirect effects of manual quality on customer satisfaction via perceived product quality. These theories can be easily applied to the context of our Product Assistants as well since they are digital user manuals. In addition, the study of Jahanshahi et al. (2011) shows that through the use of more interactive content of user manuals (such as Product Assistants), customers exhibit even higher levels of engagement and satisfaction as well as demonstrate greater levels of brand loyalty.

All in all, Product Assistants accompanying the product should be viewed as an extension of the “core product” that influences its assessment and is an intrinsic element of the whole product and customer experience. Such overall perceived product quality mediates the influence of a Product Assistant's quality on customer satisfaction. Thus, providing high-quality Product Assistants should be a vital part of your product management and development strategies. 

### References

Anderson, R.E. (1973), “Consumer dissatisfaction: the effect of disconfirmed expectancy on perceived product performance”, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 10 No. 1, pp. 38-44.

Cooper, J., 2011. Cognitive dissonance theory. Handbook of theories of social psychology, 1, pp.377-398.

Gök, O., Ersoy, P. & Börühan, G., 2019. The effect of user manual quality on customer satisfaction: the mediating effect of perceived product quality. Journal of Product & Brand Management.

Jahanshahi, A.A., Gashti, M.A.H., Mirdamadi, S.A., Nawaser, K. and Khaksar, S.M.S., 2011. Study the effects of customer service and product quality on customer satisfaction and loyalty. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 1(7), pp.253-260.

Korgaonkar, P.K. & Moschis, G.P., 1982. “An experimental study of 
cognitive dissonance, product involvement, expectations, performance and consumer judgment of product performance”, Journal of Advertising, Vol. 11 No. 3, pp. 32-44.

Mead, J., 1998. Measuring the value added by technical documentation: A review of research and practice. Technical communication, 45(3), p.353.

Smart, K.L., Madrigal, J.L. and Seawright, K.K., 1996. The effect of documentation on customer perception of product quality. IEEE transactions on professional communication, 39(3), pp.157-162.

Effects of the Product Assistant on customer satisfaction through the perceived product quality

Curious about what we have been working on at Layerise during the past month? Luckily for you, we are ready with yet another product announcement. 

This time we are excited to bring you flow support. With flow being enabled, you can set enrollment criteria based on i.g. geography preferences, and Layerise will automatically route your customers through to the optimal flow all concerning your goals. Not only do flows help you configure customer journeys, but it also helps you visualize the different paths your users navigate through your Product Assistants.

## Introduction to flow 
If you are working with customer segments that for instance stretches over several geographies, in most cases it would not be optimal to service them in the same way. This might be due to local procedures, marketing needs etc. Eventually, you would like to be able to differentiate the customer journey dependent on selected enrollment criteria. 

![flow builder](//images.contentful.com/scrf7o05zai3/66HSn3M8skUPc2IUryUIcu/9891669596d6daf2becfe6694d689805/flow_2x.png)

With flow capabilities, you are able to treat each customer independently without the need for additional and redundant work. For each component you select i.e. Link, Rating etc. it is now possible to establish unique flows for customers based on different criteria. In practice, as illustrated below, if the geographical condition is met, the customer will be directed through the desired flow. 

![flow gif](//images.ctfassets.net/scrf7o05zai3/HD0wWBZzo5bzStOHQ0eqM/61c9fb5404651b46284515c999ff8cb0/flow_gif.gif)

Three examples of how to optimise your Product Assistant using flow are described below.

### Links 
Thus far you have been limited to one final destination for every link component. This is great but does not provide you with that flexibility when dealing with complex customer relations.

With this release, custom Link components are now available with flow options which in return provides you with the flexibility and workflow control to control where your customers are funnelled to based on certain criteria. 

### Rating
Equally as with the custom Link component, the custom Rating component now also supports flows. Thereby, you’re not only able to increase your company’s public trust score by automatically asking your customers to leave a review on your preferred review website. 

![rating component closeup@2x](//images.contentful.com/scrf7o05zai3/4kNqkycGna41ab1wX36Ln3/bf7e2e19686aa983bd4fc3920639de30/rating_component_closeup_2x.jpg)

You can also segment based on criteria, meaning you’re able to boost your trust score exactly where you want it.  

### Social Media
Social media presence and community validation are important for every brand. However, as social channels are fragmented into regional outlets, it can sometimes be very difficult to funnel customers to the right social channel, without requesting the customer to select location identifies.

With this release, we are now allowing you to funnel any customer to any of your social channels using flows and criteria. 

## Install App
Finally, we are introducing the Install App component. With the Install App component, it’s even easier to help your customers install the Product Assistant as an app. 

![pwa install](//images.contentful.com/scrf7o05zai3/4NAYhHFAMXEGVJnxoVnJcr/9a08d3e53e870be1edc2b28f97031726/pwa_install.gif)

Simply add the component to your Assistant and the component will explain what your customer must do to download the app in a few relevant steps depending on the customer device type (i.e. iPhone or Android).  

## Thank you for your support!
All features covered in this release are rolling out over the next couple of weeks and are made available in [your account](https://www.layerise.com/auth "Layerise account"). Moreover, all features will be available for all marketed plans as declared on our [plan overview page](https://www.layerise.com/pricing "plan overview").

As always, do not hesitate to reach out to us if you have any questions or need a helping hand.