43% of Australians stopped buying from a company as a result of its communications during the pandemic. 19% of people also stopped dealing with a company when call wait times became too long, and a similar number went elsewhere when they could not get a response.
Due to the ever-increasing competition over products and services, brands must appeal to customers on every level to maintain their loyalty. Accurate and relevant personalisation can win customers, but many brands are getting it wrong, pushing customers away with customer service that is either slow, purely solution-oriented or lacks a personal approach.
Customer communication covers any way your business communicates to or with a customer, both online and offline. Your customer communications strategy should encompass everything from what platforms you use to communicate with your customers to the rules or guidelines you use to interact with a customer. An effective customer communication strategy helps build relationships with your customers, increase loyalty and retention, address customer concerns and complaints, improve your business sentiment and present a cohesive brand message.
We’ve put together tips on how your business can improve your customer communications strategy.
👥 Understand Your Audience
If you can’t identify who you’re communicating with, it can be difficult to know whether your customer communications are working or not. Knowing and understanding your target audience is crucial.
In your research, you might find that your customers are actively engaging with you on social media, but you’re not actively taking part in the conversation there. Or you might notice that your customers respond best when you promote sales and deals. These findings are useful for you to improve the types of customer communications you create and the language you use in them.
📋 Create clear customer communication guidelines
Creating a good customer experience is essential for retaining and attracting customers and it’s important to keep customer experience consistent – no matter the platform. If your email marketing messages and website praises your friendly team and excellent customer service, but a customer has a bad encounter with an employee that does not align with this, that’s a bad customer experience. Ensure you have customer guidelines that help you create a clear and cohesive customer experience with streamlined communication. This will work as a guide for all your employees – from those who engage with customers directly, to those who create communications for social media and your website.
🗣 Use positive language
It’s important to understand the way language is perceived when communicating with customers. If a customer contacts you with a problem or issue, there’s a high chance they will be frustrated. Talking with the customer in a positive manner using positive language will help to remove this frustration. A friendly attitude goes a long way and can help to build rapport with your customers.
📥 Collect customer feedback
Feedback allows you to gain insight into how customers feel about your business, open conversations with customers, identify your customers’ needs, and build long-term relationships. You can collect customer feedback in a few ways such as customer surveys, reviews, and insights, and can be gathered using email, tracking social media mentions, or paying attention to product or service requests.
📞 Automate customer service
Live Chat gives you an easy way to communicate with customers by answering quick questions, supplying the information they’re looking for right away, and solving customer complaints in real-time. Live website chat also allows you to streamline communication with customers because you can create guidelines for the scripts your chat agents will use—ensuring you’re presenting a brand-compliant and positive experience for your customers.
👋 Provide personalised communication
You should personalize your customer communications in all channels, including emails, SMS marketing messages, and when speaking with a customer on the phone. Personalisation comes in many forms—of course, using the customer’s name is the best way to personalize your communication. But you can also personalize your customer communications by geographic location, interests, past purchases, where they are in the sales funnel, and more.
🤝 Be transparent and authentic
Customers have a lot of options when it comes to making a purchase decision, your business can stand out by being transparent and authentic. Customers want to connect with brands in an authentic way, so it’s important for that to come through in your communications. This can be done by owning up to mistakes, sharing results from customer feedback and how you’ll improve, giving customers a glimpse into how your business runs, and creating a brand community. By prioritising authentic customer communications, you can build connections and improve customer loyalty.
💻 Use all channels
Customers can now communicate with a business via social media, email, live chat, and more. Your business should provide customer communication on as many of these platforms as possible. A proper set of tools such as a strong CRM can help support teams be more productive and efficient in solving customer issues. Customer service reps can answer questions via real-time live chat, send customers follow-ups, and team up with others to create helpful knowledge bases. All of this combined provides great benefit to the customer and can help you automate your marketing.
📣 Promote proactive customer communications
If you don’t want to lose customers, consider using a proactive customer service approach and helping people in real-time. Proactive communication with customers increases customer retention, loyalty, and satisfaction.
Customer communications enhance the experience customers have with your business and a great customer communications strategy can increase a business’ reputation, customer retention, and sales.
We’re here to help!
Our award-winning technology Client Centre with Lead Engagement helps you manage, automate and evaluate your leads. Stay ahead of your competitors by driving customer retention and acquiring new customers faster. Our software can complement your existing CRM by providing performance reports, so you can make informed decisions and regularly stay in front of your target audience. Want more information? Contact us today.
Jayde Nguyen