A solid customer communication strategy will help improve your relationship with your ideal customers and build lasting brand messaging. Therefore, it is unsurprising that brands constantly spend valuable dollars improving their customer service strategies.
However, some brands still struggle with building an effective customer communications strategy.
So, in this post, we will highlight six tips to build a killer customer communications strategy.
Read on to learn how to transform your customer service strategy and cater to your audience.
Why You Need a Solid Customer Communication Strategy
Effective customer communication will help you build a lasting positive rapport with your customers.
This need has led to the advancement of customer communication tools like Intercom and Intercom alternatives such as Zoho Desk, Viber, Live Agent, etc. These tools help companies manage their customer communications and build strong connections.
If you want to keep giving your customers a great support experience, you must invest in a killer customer communication strategy.
Here are more reasons you need to build a solid customer communication strategy:
Increased Customer Satisfaction and Retention
Your customers will stick around if you meet their needs and communicate with them on their terms. With so many customer communication and support channels available, it’s important to have a solid strategy that caters to all your customers. This means customers reaching out via email or social media should get equally good support. When customers are satisfied, they will stay.
Better Knowledge of Your Customers
Surveys, analytics and studying transaction histories are great, but nothing teaches you more about a customer than a good conversation. A good communication strategy will help you understand your customer’s needs and offer personal recommendations for their needs. It is also a great way to gain insight into how they view your brand, what needs improvement and how you can reach them better. When you truly know your customers, you can tailor your marketing and communication strategies to match their needs.
Good Brand Reputation
Word-of-mouth referral marketing is one of the most effective forms of marketing today. When you make your customers happy, they become eager to spread the word, building your brand reputation over time. When you consistently build a good customer communications strategy, your clients will be happy enough with your services and will be eager to share your brand with their friends and family.
6 Tips to Build a Solid Customer Communication Strategy
Studies show that 70% of customers will spend more money on a company that offers more seamless and personalized customer service experiences.
With a killer customer communication strategy, you can stand out from the competition, retain your customers and grow your business. Here are 5 super-effective tips to help you better communicate with your audience.
1. Prioritize Omnichannel Communication
Research shows marketers who use three or more channels to communicate with customers get more orders than those who stick to one channel. Providing multiple communication channels to your customers and letting them reach out via platforms they feel the most comfortable on is the first step in building a solid communication strategy.
When customers know they will receive excellent support regardless of the channels they use, it improves their overall experience with your brand. Not investing in omnichannel communication is leaving money on the table. The technology is affordable and accessible, so why not use it for your brand?
2. Meet Customers Wherever They Are
Picture this: a customer has an issue and reaches out via email. A support ticket is opened, and the customer has to wait for feedback from your team. This waiting period could hassle the customer, resulting in a bad experience, especially if the issue is critical.
On the other hand, if you have a live chat option available for urgent issues where the customer can get immediate responses and resolution, he will be more willing to stick with your brand. Redirecting customers to different communication channels for your convenience will only ruin their experience with your customer service.
3. Improve Internal Communications
Your customer communications strategy will only be as good as your internal communications. Different departments should be able to communicate, support each other and uphold the standards of your customer communication strategy across the board. If one department is out of the loop, the dysfunction could trickle to the customer.
You should install tools like Slack that help streamline your internal communications and ensure none of your employees miss a beat. When your employees are on the same page, it’s easy to create a seamless and collaborative process when navigating customer inquiries.
4. Promote Self-Service Options
Customers should have the option to help themselves when they can. Self-service customer service options make it easy for customers to fix issues independently without contacting a service agent. Some customers get upset when they cannot fix issues independently, so companies must always make this option available. You can easily set up self-service options like;
- Tutorials
- Knowledge base
- How-to guides
- FAQ information
To set this up, you need to assess existing customer interactions and see what issues and pain points your customers are constantly dealing with. This will help you create effective and helpful self-service options.
5. Personalize Your Customer Service
Customers love feeling known and seen by the companies they patronize. You should ensure your customer communications are as personal as possible. For example, ensure you use customer names and personalise them when sending emails. To kick things up a notch, you can invest in customer segmentation.
This strategy involves analyzing customer behavior and dividing your customers into different groups and personas so you can communicate with them effectively. Customer segmentation is an excellent way to tailor your communication to fit each customer’s persona, and this will help you personalize your customer service.
6. Stay on Top of Metrics
Keeping track of your customer service metrics will inform your customer communication strategy and help you determine the next steps. There are several customer experience metrics, so you must determine which ones are important to your business. For example, you can choose to track metrics like
- Customer satisfaction: this metric shows how pleased your customers are with your service
- Average resolution time: this shows how long it took for your service agents to fix a customer’s issue.
- First response time: this shows how long your service agents take to give the first response to a customer.
- Overall resolution rate: this shows how often your customer service agents resolve customer issues. A high-resolution rate implies a solid customer communication/service strategy.
Staying on top of these metrics will provide insight into what’s working and what isn’t, which will help you tweak your customer communications strategy. Be sure to analyze these metrics after a considerable period to be sure the numbers are authentic and not cosmetic.
Final Thoughts
As a marketer or business owner, setting your customer service team up for success gives you time to work on other parts of the business. A customer communications strategy will differ by industry and company. This means you cannot copy what another company is doing, as it may not be authentic to your audience and brand message.
Take the time to study your audience, learn their personas and craft a killer strategy that speaks to them directly. The six tips shared in this post will put you up to a great start and provide the framework to build an excellent customer communications strategy.