6 Efficient Strategies to Improve Customer Communication

In today’s world, communication happens on multiple levels: from email to live chat, voice call to social media channels, customers use their preferred mode of communication while interacting with a brand. Effective customer communication is a facet of customer service that businesses need to excel in for enhanced profitability and improved customer acquisition. The secret mantra to formulate effective strategies for improving customer communication is to gauge your customer expectations and respond to them in time. Improving the way your brand is communicating with its customers will build strong relationships by addressing their concerns.

What is Customer Communication?

Customer communication is defined as the process through which a company connects with its customers. These interactions take place over most popular communication channels such as email, phone, live chat, online forums, social media, messenger, customer portals, and so on. The reason businesses focus on creating effective customer communication strategies is to minimize negative word of mouth and quickly escalate agitated customers’ issues.

What is Customer Communication Management (CCM)?

Customer communication management is defined as the process of delivering consistent customer support and messaging support across all communication channels while understanding all customer pain points. Basically, it focuses on strengthening existing customer relationships by the overall improvement of communication strategy that in turn enhances customer retention and customer acquisition.

Popular Customer Communication Channels

Communication in this first-paced digital world is not limited to only traditional communication channels such as phone calls, letters, and in-person communication. Innovation and rapid scientific development have given birth to many new-age digital channels which are as follows:

1. Phone

Voice calls i.e. both inbound and outbound calls are the communication channel that is exclusive for resolving complex customer issues. It is one of the most reliable channels that help in calming agitated customers by troubleshooting the problems through calls. Moreover, nothing is more reassuring than a customer speaking to a customer care agent who can proactively listen to them and give suggestions accordingly.

2. Email

There are more than 4 billion people in the world that use email. It is one of the best cost-effective communication channels that people prefer while reaching a brand. Businesses can actually get the whole customer conversations and interactions through the same mail chain thus helping them in resolving their issues in a better way possible. Most of the companies across the globe have an email where customers can reach them related to their queries.

3. Live Chat

Live Chat is one of the commonly used communication channels by brands that enable them to respond quickly to their customer queries. Customer support representatives usually interact with customers in real-time while resolving their queries as well as cross-selling and up-selling of products. Many of the brands automate the process for smaller size issues so that the customer care representatives can focus on complex issues.

4. Social Media

In this modern digital world, there is no doubt that this era has been dominated by social media platforms. Almost all brands nowadays have their social media handles where they promote their products and interact with the customers. It requires very little investment compared to traditional marketing methods for marketing their products and services.

5. Online Forums

Online forums are something that helps consumers to post their views against products and services of different brands. It can be posted on any 3rd party website where customers get genuine feedback rather than biased feedback sometimes present on the company website itself.

Ways of Improving Customer Communication

Most businesses globally strive to improve customer communication across all stages of brand development with their customers. While building a strong brand culture around effective communication might be time-consuming, however, it is effective too which results in excellent customer experience, loyalty, and acquisitions. Below is the list of strategies that can be used by many brands for enhancing their customer communication.

1. Offer Personalized Customer Service

Personalization is a powerful tool when it comes to grabbing customer attention and delivering memorable customer experiences. Salesforce research claims that personalized email campaigns are responsible for more than 29% higher email open rates and 41% more click-through rates when compared to ordinary emails. You can greet your customers or share the content based on customers’ likes and dislikes. Delivering personalized customer service is the main agenda of businesses to gain more customer loyalty, retention, and acquisition.

2. Promote Proactive Communication

Most of the customers are not satisfied with the type of services they receive from their preferred brands. Be proactive in terms of reaching the customers and resolving their issues promptly. The best way of mitigating a delayed solution is to make sure the customers get notified about each progress of their issues. Either your support team can reach the customers manually; else the whole system can be automated which will send SMS or emails to the customers regarding the issues they have lodged. Proactive self-service like articles, FAQs, online forums are good options that can resolve basic queries.

3. Automate Customer Service

Companies that are known for delivering excellent customer service are the ones that have automated their customer service process. Customers usually find their solutions faster when the systems are automated. While your customer care representatives are busy resolving more customer issues, the chatbots will help the customers in dealing with the issues with preliminary solutions. Not only does it help the customers in getting faster responses, but also the support team finds ample time in prioritizing their work based on urgency thus boosting productivity.

4. Integrate Omnichannel Approach

Businesses that are successful in integrating omnichannel customer service systems are proven to retain 89% of the customers compared to the companies that fail in adopting this system. They only retail less than 30% of their existing customers. Having a proper omnichannel platform will help you in redefining the way of customer communication in online and offline ways. You can gather detailed insight into the customer journey which will help you in enhancing communication across all channels. To achieve this, identify the preferred communication channels used by your customers, effective customer engagement strategy, and deliver consistent customer experience throughout the channels.

5. Monitor Customer Communication Metrics

To develop a strategy for improving customer communication, it is essential to measure and monitor them regularly so that you understand your progress in delivering a seamless customer experience. The metrics that can be used in this process are Average Resolution Time (ART), Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), First response Time (FRT), etc. Improve your customer communication by assessing your support team performance, enhanced communication skills, better customer interactions, etc.

6. Ask for Customer Feedback

One of the most commonly used metrics to measure and monitor the success of customer communication is customer feedback. According to Microsoft, 52% of consumers worldwide believe that brands must take action on customer feedback. Feedback helps in improving the quality of products and services, identifies the gap between businesses and customers regarding sheer perfection of products, improved customer relationships, etc. Offer best-in-class customer service while implementing customer feedback to your products and services.

The Bottom Line

In this era of digitalization, when the brands are not able to meet their customers in person, it becomes more crucial to delivering seamless customer service by following a proper customer communication strategy. Eventually, following a proper plan in meeting customer expectations will help your business to thrive in the market thus reducing the number of negative customer experiences.

At Trupp Global, we strive to focus on meeting our client’s requirements thus offering them solutions that will help them in growing their business. Our experts understand the customer pain points thus offering them effective solutions while harnessing the power of the latest technologies and tools. Our services are streamlined in a way so that we can provide customized business solutions to our clients.