There are many touch-points of customer communication. These include live chat, sales calls, email, social media, and so on. Irrespective of the communication channel, you need to ensure that whatever goes out from your brand to a customer is precise, timely, and valuable. A strategic customer communication strategy lies at the heart of building a solid brand capable of attracting and retaining loyal customers.
Let’s dive deeper into some actionable tips on improving customer communication, a strategy that’s an integral part of the overall customer experience.
1. Be Proactive
Most customers expect brands to come back quickly to solve a query or to answer a question. That’s why customer-centric companies promote a proactive customer-communication culture in the organization.
- Use a proactive live-chat feature to connect with website visitors who’re going to drop off.
- Work on your customer response. It’s vital to track the response time on each customer communication channel and find ways to reduce it as much as possible.
- Many customers will ask you questions on your brand’s social media pages. Make sure to incorporate quick social media response templates as a part of your social media plan.
- Use the right mix of tools to make it easier for customers to reach out.
2. Follow Up
A good way is to keep tabs on the satisfaction level of every customer. You can use follow-up communication to get relevant feedback.
- A follow-up email or an SMS is essential immediately after you have resolved a customer query. Many businesses make it a point to follow up with customers a week after selling a product or service.
- If a customer has added a positive review, you must show gratitude by sending her a thank you email.
- You can show you care by sending personalized wishes on special occasions such as birthdays and anniversaries.
3. Align with your Brand Voice
Whether it’s an email or a sales proposal, or a social media update, make sure that each communication piece tells your brand story.
- Is your brand voice funny and informal, or is it authoritative and formal?
- Create a brand style guide that includes your brand’s core emotional values.
- Train your team to follow these values across visual and text-based communication.
Infusing a unique voice in customer communication makes it impressive and professional.
4. Personalize Every Customer Communication
Your customer is bombarded with hundreds of messages every day. It’s vital, therefore, to make her feel unique and more human. 84% of consumers say being treated like a person, not a number, is very important to winning their business.
- Use your customer’s first name to personalize a piece of communication, such as an email or a reply to a service request.
- Track your customers’ past product and content preferences. Make sure you align your messages according to individual customer choices.
- Make past customer data readily available to sales and services representatives so they can understand the customer better and communicate accordingly.
- Send discounts and offers to customers who make repeat purchases.
Personalized communication goes a long way in helping you delight your customers and stay ahead of the competition.
5. Be Honest and Transparent
One of the essential cornerstones of building trust with your customers is to be transparent and honest with your communication. Studies show that 89% of customers are more likely to support ethical brands.
- Train your teams to be open and truthful in their communication with customers. It could be about a service request that might take longer than usual or an answer to a query that a service representative is not sure about.
- Service representatives need to request clarification if they’ve not understood a query or a service request. This way, they can find the best possible solution to a customer’s problem.
- When communicating with customers, you need to be simple and straightforward. The idea is to get a customer out of a problem, and not confuse them further.
Be honest and upfront with your customers; it’s the best strategy to earn their respect and positive word-of-mouth.
6. Empathize
The easiest way to understand customer expectations is to put yourself in their shoes. Resolving a problem is about understanding the gravity of the situation and the extent of the challenge.
- It’s vital to be a good listener when communicating with a customer over a call or a live chat. The goal is to keep away distractions while learning about the nature of a customer query.
- Be positive and enthusiastic in your approach towards every customer.
- Ask questions about a problem but try not to interrupt a customer while speaking or typing a message. Patience is a good mindset when dealing with and talking to any customer.
- The right way to keep a customer happy is not to commit much and, yet, try to over-deliver on a specific query.
Final Thoughts
Customers are not just the bread and butter for any business; they have the potential to become active brand ambassadors and evangelists. All you need is to do is keep them happy and satisfied with your products and services. Communication is a vital pillar of a brand’s overall experience. And that’s why you must back every customer communication with a well-thought strategy and action plan. Keep it as transparent and as human as possible, and it’s likely to fetch the desired business outcomes.