Your current customer communication is hurting your business, here’s why!

Customer communication is more important than ever. Unfortunately, a lot of companies are not able to engage their customers in meaningful conversations. Learn why that is, and what you can do to change that.

Customers will make or break your business. How your company interacts with customers will affect whether they will end up buying a product from you, return in the future, and what they will tell other people about you. That’s why every single conversation your company has with a customer is so significant.

In theory, most companies know that. In practice, however, customer communication is really not a meaningful dialogue between a business and a customer, but a one-way broadcast from businesses to customers. These one-way communications are not only off-putting for customers. They also hurt your business because disappointed customers will turn away from you.

Why is that happening, and what can you do to change that?

From one-way broadcast to two-way communication

“Buy this new car!”

“Get our special of the day!”

“Check out our voucher!”

This is what it typically looks like when businesses “talk” to their customers. They are not actually initiating a conversation, but instead just sending out messages. Answers are simply not expected. And if a customer does happen to answer to one of these messages, they are often sent to other channels, such as an app or a website.

From a customer perspective, this makes absolutely no sense!

Imagine walking into a restaurant to order food because you saw their menu posted outside, but an employee tells you that you have to go back outside and call them on the phone to order. This sounds ridiculous, and no restaurant would probably ever do that if they didn’t want to lose all their clients. But, strangely enough, that’s exactly what businesses are doing with a lot of their customer communication. And they are losing clients!

That’s why companies have to move away from one-way communication and move to two-way conversations.

Read how conversational design can take your business from awkward conversations to real interaction!

Engage in conversations on the channels your customers love

So, what’s the best way to improve your customer communication? By meeting your customers on the channels where they want to talk to you, and that’s messaging apps on their phones!

Currently, three billion people use a messaging app daily. As social beings people love to connect with each other, and chat-based messaging apps are ideal for that. It’s also increasingly how people want to interact with businesses.

75 percent of adults say they want to interact with businesses the same way they do with people, and 59 percent of consumers say that they want to make purchases on their phones.

Of course, it’s not enough to just send your customers the same type of one-way messages as before, just on a messenger app. You have to engage in a dialogue with them and offer them a seamless customer experience.

75 percent of adults say they want to interact with businesses the same way they do with people, and 59 percent of consumers say that they want to make purchases on their phones.

How to offer meaningful customer communication

There are several factors that can help you turn your one-way customer communication into a conversational experience for your customers.

Make sure you don’t rely on one single channel!

Customers are versatile, and markets are different, so be sure to offer them different ways to reach you on their preferred channels.

Conversational is everywhere!

Most people only think of customer communication AFTER a person has bought a service or a product. The truth is that conversations are important throughout the entire customer journey. So, make sure to offer your customers conversational channels all along their customer journey.

Scale your customer communication with chatbots.

Chatbots can answer up to 69 percent of frequently asked questions and save 30 percent in customer service costs. And: consumers love helpful chatbots.

When offered, 80 percent of customers prefer interacting with a chatbot. And using a high-quality chatbot leads to a more engaged audience, with 80 to 90 percent response rates.

Focusing on conversational interactions with your customers—especially when adding virtual assistants—will improve the customer experience, and lead to better results for your business.

In fact, conversational solutions can save you up to $ 300,000 per year and increase your conversions by up to 50 percent!

💡 Read on to find out how to improve your customer service with chatbots

The right tools for the conversational experience

Of course, it also requires the right technology to offer your customers such a seamless conversational experience. A lot of businesses are therefore hesitant to start customer communication on several messaging apps or implement a conversational chatbot.

Luckily, there are tools out there that bring you the advanced AI technology to make the customer experience seamless, but don’t require any coding skills.

How does that work, and how can you get started? Rick van Esch, VP SaaS Business at Sinch is sharing his insights on how to elevate your customer communication, and how you can start creating more authentic conversations right away.