The Journey to Ikeono 2.0 - A Deep Dive With the Founders

In the ever-changing world of business text messaging, Ikeono is staying ahead of the curve by innovating and actively listening to customers to truly understand what retailers need. 

Ikeono 2.0 is now available for all new users, and we bring you an exclusive insight into the why’s of all the changes. We sat down with co-founders Brett and Dru Lang to understand the vision behind the changes.

We also get a chance to discuss what’s next and the new exciting doors that Ikeono 2.0 opens up.

Q: What was the driving force behind overhauling Ikeono entirely?

Brett: When we started Ikeono in 2018 we had a very specific use case in mind, we were primarily interacting with bike shops using Lightspeed Retail.  

Five years and over 2,000 locations later, we realize there’s more at play.  

We weren’t doing a great job helping the other 50% of the bike industry not using Lightspeed to communicate with customers, and by interacting with other industries, we opened up the opportunity to learn from their lessons and apply this knowledge to our current customers.  

Dru: When we started mapping out what we wanted to change, we quickly realized it would be easier to start from scratch than try and rework systems that were heavily intertwined with the old system architecture.  

We remained steadfast in our original goal of providing robust communication tools that can be used at all levels of the business. 

Q: How did you land on these colors for the new redesign?

Brett: We actually decided on this color palette with the help of AI. Because when you want the future of color, you consult the future of intelligence. 

… of course not! We just liked the vibes of the purple and it’s now inline with our new branding. Overall, we have been working hard on revamping the overall customer experience from our website redesign to the recent updates to the portal. 

Dru: Yeah, the longer we do this, and the more intertwined Ikeono becomes in our lives, the more important it has become to ensure we’re as emotionally invested in the product. 

Q: Why is the concept of a unified inbox so important for retailers today?

Brett: It seems like every other week, somebody is telling me of some new platform people are buying through and retailers are struggling to keep up.  Silicon Valley likes to open up channels of communication without appreciating how difficult it is to keep track of the 99 others forms.

 The unified inbox is an effort to curb that frustration by consolidating multiple different channels into one inbox.  

Doesn’t really matter which channel a customer is reaching out through as long as it is easy to manage. 

Q: Can you break down the importance of having inboxes from a retailer's perspective?

Brett: The implementation of inboxes comes from the feedback of our users.  

Business text messaging has evolved to be a leading source of interaction with customers, retailers have found customers are reaching out for all kinds of reasons: special orders, service requests, product questions, warranty inquiries and more.  

Creating multiple inboxes, which we call sub-inboxes, are a way to manage high volumes of different types of messaging.  

Dru: Retailers can create an inbox for their service and sales departments, it makes it much easier for their team to manage everything and stay focused. 

They can even create inboxes as nuanced as one sub-inbox per team member, it’s completely up to them, and they will always have the main inbox to ensure nothing gets lost.

Brett: Yeah, for example the jewelry industry was keen on sub-inboxes because the separation between sales and service is very significant. Unlike the bike industry that has a lot of overlap, jewelry really does want to segment their messages.

Q: Where does Ikeono stand on text message signatures?

Brett: Over the past 10 years, we’ve watched businesses embrace texting and have been working on understanding the appropriate tone.  

It is not as formal as email, but also isn’t as informal as texting with someone you have a close relationship with.  

Signatures are one of those things that are very formal and generally associated with email.  The best way to think of it is you don’t usually have different signatures when replying to emails from a general inbox like info@businessname.com. Signatures are reserved more for personal emails like firstname@businesname.com.  

Well with texting, it is all coming from your business phone number not someone’s personal number and there's no guarantee that when that customer replies, they’ll be talking to the same person or if that person will even still work there.  

At the end of the day, the relationship is between the customer and the business, so regardless of whom they are communicating with, they should be receiving the same level of service. 

Q: What can retailers expect from Ikeono in the future?

Brett: We’re bringing to life all the cool shit we’ve been talking about with customers!  

We will be introducing a deeper integration with Google Business Profiles (formerly known as Google My Business). We want retailers to be able to respond to reviews, update business hours, manage messages from GBP  all in one place. 

Dru: Yeah, we just rolled out a rewrite of Ikeono Reviews in preparation for this.  

Our goal is to be the hub of all things communication for retailers, we’re consolidating more communication channels into Ikeono like Instagram messenger, Google Business Profile chats, and Email.  

Brett: And on the POS integration side, we’re updating Ikeono Campaigns to introduce more marketing oriented features. 

We want retailers to take advantage of the data in their POS and create tailored messaging for their customers. 

Dru: We will also be introducing card on file for Ikeono Payments.  We have heard quite a bit from the pet industry actually about the need to have a card on file for specific types of clients.

Brett: Yeah, a lot of pet stores have repeat customers ordering the same product each month and want to just stop and grab it.

Traditional 'subscription' integrations have limitations and we found having a card on file to be the answer.

For instance, traditional subscription models only allow customers to buy the same exact product every month for 12 months, but in the pet industry among many others, you might need to increase volumes, add treats, maybe a toy.

Retailers need flexibility and the ability to charge the account based on the customers needs, and really texting is the best way to accomplish this.

What’s the one feature you always wished for with Ikeono?

Let us know, we're always looking to innovate and improve. Drop your ideas in the comments ⬇️!