The Long Tail in Customer Service and Relations
In the past several years, there has been a shift in business models from big head to long tail. For instance, we have seen Amazon’s recommendation functionality bring success upon not only itself, but also its users shopping in niche markets. Now, the long tail model is also making its way to communication product companies Twilio and Intercom.
In sectors such as customer relation management and enterprise resource planning, there is a need to broaden the arena of third-party vendors that cater to the more rare, niche, but important customer needs. In the past, software products used to be specialized and have basic, general functions. Therefore were unable to cover all the needs of customers, and developers would have to develop over the original product in order to cover the uncovered needs. This is based on what author Chris Anderson calls the “big head” model. The big head model relies on selling the few, best-selling goods; its profit strategy relies on selling a lot of copies of each kind of good. Now, third party-vendors are collaborating with one another to provide tools to “deliver customer needs”. Developers of companies can utilize these “developer tools” from these vendors to mix, match, and construct their own software products.
For instance, Twilio is a vendor that provides a communications platform service that other vendors use to efficiently integrate communication into their own software products. Another communication company called Intercom released its own “developer program” with the purpose of supporting all the developers that build functions on top of the Intercom product. Intercom is known for its messaging products that are used in sales, marketing and customer service teams in companies across the world. Its developer program helps developers build integrations of Intercom into their own, personalized products that can be used by other companies and customers in future. Intercom itself provides new integrations that can be used by developers in their own software products, including Aircall, which allows companies to “record and access customer phone calls over Intercom”, and Statbot, which allows “one-click, zero-setup analytics and insights for Intercom”. In addition, Intercom is using Twilio’s SMS API to power its SMS notification function, which allows consumers who want to contact businesses over their websites to do so over SMS rather than waiting for the business to reply to a contact form.
In the past, it used to be that if developers wanted a certain function that was not covered in the core product in the “big head” model, they would have to develop it themselves. What Twilio and Intercom’s service is now offering for developers is a wide, range of functions and tools that developers can easily integrate into their own product, which can be then used by other companies. Twilio and Intercom are not following the “big head” model; instead, they are following the “long tail” model. The long tail model is selling a large variety of less popular, more niche goods. Twilio and Intercom are essentially selling many tools and functions for developers of other companies to buy so they can integrate it and personalize their own software products. You can even see interdependence- Intercom uses Twilio’s SMS function to increase the number of tools they can sell to developers. These tools are not all popular, but they each serve a different purpose that certain companies may find really useful for communicating with their customers. This “long tail” model fits with the variety of companies that Intercom and Twilio serve today, and like Amazon, who also follows the “long tail” model, will likely increase profit as customers get more personalized, niche service.
http://www.computerworld.com/article/3140178/application-development/intercom-integrates-with-twilio-jumps-on-the-developer-ecosystem-bandwagon.html