Andreas Kelch/Vivior AG: Building Customer Relationships with the Personal Agility System

Andreas Kelch is the Head of Sales and Marketing at Vivior for Vision Care in Europe. Under the motto, “better well-being through better health and better vision,” Vivior has developed technology to enable data-driven customization of multifocal lenses.

Previously, opticians just provided eye examinations, contact lens fitting and other services e.g., screenings; with Vivior they can for the first time measure the environment in which the person lives and works. Andreas works with local opticians, chains, buying groups and distributors to present the value of the Vivior approach and integrate Vivior’s system into the opticians’ own sales process.

The PAS Stakeholder Canvas played a key role in establishing a constructive relationship with their customers that was trust-based, goal-oriented and quantitatively measurable.

The Challenge

Andreas explained, “We have developed a new technology and a new product for opticians, and in 2020 we successfully acquired 80 customers, mainly in Switzerland and Germany. With the pandemic challenges and the associated online meetings and training, the integration of Vivior into the business processes of opticians has proven to be a problem.”

“Business processes vary from optician to optician. We wanted to understand our customers even better and developed a new customer management process. Integration with pricing models, customer approach and process flows proved to be particularly important. It is essential that the optician recognizes the added value of Vivior and adapts his offering accordingly.”

“As the pandemic subsided, our customers experienced a large increase in business which kept them busy processing orders. They were also confronted with labor shortages and other constraints, so there was little time available to deal with new technologies such as ours.”

Desired Outcome

“We saw potential in strengthening our personal customer relationships.”

“For a startup, the most important goal is traction. Getting eye care specialists and end-customers to use the product and confirm that customers also see value and get value from the product. This is an important confirmation to investors that their money is well spent.”

“We wanted to help the optician integrate our product effectively and successfully into their sales process. We wanted to strengthen our relationships with our customers and make sure they understood the value of what we and they are doing. We wanted measurable goals, so everybody could see that the goals are being achieved.”

Path to Success

“Within the new customer management process, we created a customer on-boarding process with defined steps so we can manage and monitor our own success.”

“The first step in this process is to meet with the optician to understand his situation and help him understand what steps are necessary to be successful with our product. The next step is to analyze the processes in terms of process and price integration within his store. A systematic customer approach also proved to be very important.”

“The next step is to define and commit to a series of additional steps, including training their employees to understand the use of our product and know how to take advantage of it. Together with the customer, we set a measurement target for monthly Vivior usage. We provide an individual action plan for the entire team for easy visualization and tracking of the solutions provided. Upon completion of the customer management process, the optician is certified as a Vivior vision expert. A nice benefit for our customers to celebrate and share.”

“Once the customer agrees to buy our product, we meet and interview them using the PAS Stakeholder Canvas. We tailored the questions to our context. The canvas asks questions about goals and challenges, and the conversation offers us an opportunity to share our insights. Based on their goals, they define their “customer commitment” – what they need to do to be successful.”

Actual Result

“Sometimes the customers are a bit surprised about the questions. They did not expect us to talk about their own concerns. This doesn’t happen very often in a sales process. It was very important to emphasize confidentiality. After that, it was no problem at all. There was never a fear of sharing anything.”

“The customers appreciated that we offered this consultancy service to them. They appreciated that we did not leave them alone and that we cared about their success. The interviews were well received as they were perceived as a service to get their problems solved.”

Defining Measurable Results

“Every active customer now has an action plan with an integrated commitment to concrete usage goals. We can make visible to everyone involved how important the technology is to them. The commitment is important both to the customer and to us. The customer sees the value they get from the product and hot to differentiate themselves in a competitive market. We can define and meet our scaling goals.”

“Our relationship with the customers is now stronger. They understand us and our product better, too. The benefits are more clearly perceived and their commitment to use our product is high. We also have opportunities to learn how our product could be improved to make it easier to use and more valuable for our customers.”