With 27% of the world’s population being the millennial generation and entering the workforce, many target markets are now influenced by this generation. With such influence and spending power, the need for customer-centric strategies has become vital.
Customer service becoming digital
The fact that within just 10 years so many things have changed especially within digital communication is absolutely remarkable. The growth of digital marketing continues to expand and excel daily, with newsfeeds becoming information central, hosting headlines and highlights from entertainment to daily news around the world.
With the pace at which digital communications is growing, businesses should expect some challenges ahead.
Why customer service is so important?
It is proven that customers have become more confident with setting and voicing their demands, meaning that businesses need to provide the most efficient customer service.
Olive Huang, Research director at Gartner, adds that
“You must win at every interaction the customer has with your organisation, whether that be a marketing campaign, a call to a contact centre, an invoice, or a delivery reliant on the supply chain. Every department must play its part in a coordinated fashion.”
This is particularly important for the millennial generation, with Ken Blanchard echoing this by stating
“Just having satisfied customers isn’t good enough anymore. If you really want a booming business, you have to create raving fans.”
This is why improving your customer services and catering to their needs is so important.
Why digital businesses will fail
The greatest challenge digital marketing faces today are competences and digital transformation.
Digital transformation is the ability to rapidly act and react to changing data, competitive conditions and strategies fast enough to succeed. Businesses should always keep in mind that the ability to act on knowledge is power.
Unfortunately, for some digital marketing businesses, fall short of capturing, sorting and observing customer data. Additionally, businesses need to reflect on the data to ensure when to implement innovation and improved marketing, to strengthen brand engagement.
How to improve your customer communications?
Now that we have explained how important customer communication is, here are 6 ways you can improve your customer interactions.
1) Make communication a priority in your business
Customer communication includes everything from phone conversations to e-mails to sales proposals to social media. Thus, it is best to create communication guidelines - such as all customer calls and e-mails to be returned within 24 hours, and regular follow-up on customer satisfaction.
2) Use templates
Your organisation should make use of templates, for sales proposals, product descriptions, or sale listings, which can save time and improve the efficiency of services delivered. This allows you to provide thoughtful and relevant information to your consumer, rapidly.
3) Clean up your e-mail
Make sure your customer e-mails sound more personalised and humanistic as it enhances the customer experience. Adding courtesies such as “please” and “thank you” within your email with help in providing a more personalised interaction. Do not rush through your email and be mindful of information accuracy.
4) Improve your website
Your company’s website is the first interaction many consumers see. It can also play an important part in the sales process if it engages your customers properly.
It is important to note that your website needs to focus on what potential customers need to hear and not what you want to say.
The questions you need to ask are:
- Who will be visiting your website and why?
- What are their needs?
- How can you solve their problems?
Lastly, highlight the benefits your product or service offers to your potential customer.
5) Learn to use social media
Your main goal on social media is to cultivate a community of customers. It’s even more important to offer something of value to your potential customers: information, related links, images, and announcements from other businesses they might be interested in. If you create a presence that your customers will enjoy and value, they’ll keep coming back.
Finally, once you start, keep it up. An abandoned social media creates the impression that you don’t care enough to continue the effort to communicate with customers — and that’s not what you want.
6) Keep updated on new tech trends.
With technology constantly changing, it is crucial for any business within the digital marketing space to be updated with any new targets within technology and what the greatest needs of their customers are.
Improving customer communication requires an investment of time, energy and maintaining close customer relationships to give you a real edge over your competition. Thus, putting customer communication high on your list of priorities can pay off, in customer satisfaction and loyalty.
iTouch Improving Communication Needs!
iTouch Messaging Services provides many communicative services which can set you apart from your competitors and improve customer engagement. Businesses can make use of our Omni – Channel communication platform which provides multiple communication channels such as, SMS, email, active voice message and social media to improve customer communication and engagement.
For more information, contact us here
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