[SSAA Interview]The Power of User Experience: Turn Leads into Customers with Miles Davison, Storeganise

Starting this year, Self Storage Association Asia interviews industry experts within the industry to share latest news and developments that they have come across. From investment to real estate trends, also from operation challenges to the latest technologies. Stay tuned to get your news from us, and stay at the top of your game. 

We have recently sat down with Miles Davison, CEO & Co-Founder of Storeganise to chat about their latest updates, how they help self storage operators to manage their sites even when they are on the move and more.

SSAA - Self Storage Association Asia

MD - Miles Davison, CEO & Co-Founder, Storeganise

SSAA: Hi Miles, thank you for joining us today. Let’s jump right into it. 

When you sit down with the client to talk about implementing a software solution, how do you translate their strategy into a suitable customer journey so they can make sure that the client(operators) are having the experience that they want their customers to have happening online?

MD: The first thing is always sitting down, listening to what the client needs. Understanding what are the challenges, what are the processes, and what are the things that they find challenging, what are their goals for the business in terms of the whole customer experience so then we can break that down and see how we can help. 

One of the core elements is our new customer portal and that really comes into play. 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.

SSAA: How is it different from the old one and what new features have you brought into this version of the software?

MD: We've always had the customer booking element but what we wanted to do was really rethink that customer journey and the user experience. So we spent a lot of time over the last few months going through every detail in that process, things like: when the customer comes onto the platform, how do they view the information for the different sites; what's the most important information and how do we present that nice and clear. We think also about the conversion aspect so obviously everything needs to be mobile responsive and mobile first, so that it will work on any device, but really is catered primarily to mobile first platforms. And then guiding the customer through that funnel so that it's really easy to find information and go through the booking flow. Within just a few steps - automatically book, pay for, e-sign for their units, and be able to move in instantly. 

SSAA: 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.

Can you talk a little bit about how Storeganise integrates with other software that might be in play in an operator's business?

MD: Our mantra has always been that we want to be a very open platform. We have obviously a number of pre-built integrations trying to be as feature-rich as possible within the context of what we provide but we also understand different companies are experts in different components. If you've got your own accounting software and so on, being able to integrate those is really important as you mentioned. We have an open api that allows custom integrations for companies that need that but we've also built in other tools.  A feature that allows every developer-like ways of automating tasks and flowing 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. 

SSAA: Can the software work with other digital marketing tools such as search engine optimisation?

MD: The information that you can gather from your website in terms of your search engine marketing and social media marketing and how that converts. A lot of people are doing that 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 actually 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 maybe 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.

SSAA: Data analytics are really important now. How does this new product help managers and senior executives to organise data so they understand what's happening in their business?

MD: A lot of what we look at from our management portal is around automation. A few different aspects come into this: the user interface and the user experience. We are trying to be a very feature rich but intuitive platform that makes it easy for newcomers to be able to understand the flow of processing move-ins and move outs, following up with customers and providing the right level of access for those different employees to use the system. Then 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 that we've been putting a lot of effort in recently is the automation tools. 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. And again that comes into that mobile first that i was talking about earlier. Everything that we provide to our clients, they can run on any device. So if they're in one facility and they've got a move in at another facility, they can just log in and manage, handle the payments and follow up with the customer at any time. 

SSAA: That's great for managers that are super data hungry and want to get the data they want, but some managers just want to focus on a few important metrics. Can you simplify the data and if so what data would you recommend that they look at?

MD: Yes, we are able to provide the deep analytics that are really important. Particularly to portfolio managers that need to get into the details. So 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. 

SSAA: What is new and unique in this software different from anybody else in the market?

MD: One of the big things that we have out of the box is the customer portal that 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.  On top of that, it's really customized to companies operating in any country. We have clients in over 25 countries across every continent. The platform can operate in over 15-16 languages. And being a company ourselves, we are fully remote globally distributed. All employees bring different aspects, different perspectives and different languages within our team. And that's played into how we develop our software, not only the ability to provide the software in different languages to our operators but for them to be able to provide that platform to their customers, accounting conventions, tax rates, currency codes integrations with gateways that operate in different countries. And all of those come together to provide the software that works seamlessly across any jurisdiction. 

SSAA: Fantastic! Thank you very much Miles, that's great today.

 To learn more about Storeganise and their products, please go to www.storeganise.com or contact Miles Davison at Miles@storeganise.com

About the interviewees

Miles Davison

CEO & Co-Founder

Storeganise

Miles is co-founder & CEO of Storeganise, which provides modern management software for valet and self storage businesses of all sizes all over the world. Storeganise enables business to automate much of their business including customer sign-ups and move-ins through its re-branded customer portal that can be added to any website in a matter of minutes. Storeganise is available in 15 languages and has been localised to be used in more than 25 countries around the world.

Prior to starting Storeganise, Miles also co-founded StuffGenie, one of the first valet storage operations in Hong Kong. He has been living in Asia for the past 15 years between Hong Kong, Tokyo and Shanghai, having previously spent time in Investment Banking and Logistics.