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Whether you run a one-person startup or a multinational company, there’s one thing that all businesses have in common, and that’s their reliance on customers. No customers – no business, it really is that simple. As obvious as that sounds, it is a useful reminder of why the way businesses communicate with their customers is so important.
It is useful to review your communications with your customers regularly to ensure that your reputation isn’t being damaged and that you aren’t losing customers and potential sales as a result of your customer communication.
Here are some ideas to help improve your business’ communications with customers, and as a result, achieve increased customer retention and sales:
Provide a Seamless Service
Excellent business to customer communication should be professional, knowledgeable, and seamless. While achieving this may feel like a mammoth task, it is much simpler than you may imagine. Creating a cohesive, streamlined approach is the key to offering excellent customer service.
Many businesses use customer relationship management (CRM) tools to achieve enhanced customer service. CRM software enables businesses to ‘join up’ their customer-facing communications via a dashboard that details the customer’s previous contact with the company. Therefore, if a client contacts the business regarding a past query, they do not need to re-explain their last conversation to the call handler. Instead, the call handler can immediately see all the information that they need to deal with the customer’s issue quickly and efficiently.
Live chat functions on your website are another useful way to ensure your customers receive a high level of customer service. Live chat platforms enable your customers and potential customers to ask any questions they may have about your product or service 24 hours a day, seven days a week. A live chat function is a useful tool for converting customers that may be undecided on whether to make a purchase, and also demonstrates that your company values customer experience, and is always ready and waiting to help. If you aren’t familiar with them, live chat functions mean that even when you aren’t able to personally answer your customer’s queries, there’s a bot there ready and waiting to help. Based on the content of the question, the bot can suggest useful links to answer your customer’s query. Thanks to the sophisticated way that bots now work, your customer should have their query answered in no time at all after being directed to the answer. Live chat means that you don’t have to stay awake all night waiting for customer queries to come in, and your customers get the information they need to buy from you whatever time of the day or night they are shopping.
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Offer Engaging Content
Just as your communication when providing customer service needs to be of a high standard, the same is true of your marketing communications. To achieve the best return on investment (ROI) for your marketing efforts, it is crucial to provide your customers with content that is engaging and will compel them to act. First and foremost, your marketing communications need to capture your customer’s attention and encourage them to find out more. Email marketing campaigns, in particular, need to capture your customer’s attention quickly; otherwise, they will blend in with the rest of their inbox, and languish unopened. To increase your open rate for email marketing campaigns, it is essential to use good email subject lines to grab your customer’s attention and make them want to open the email to find out more.
As well as content for email marketing campaigns, how you communicate your message is crucial in all of your marketing communications. Providing content that brings value to your customers is a useful way of communicating with your clients and offers them the opportunity to engage further with your business. Content marketing is an increasingly popular way of achieving increased engagement with your customers and can drive sales by communicating new uses for your product. For example, if your business manufactures chocolate bars, communicating recipes for cakes or milkshakes which use your chocolate bar as a key ingredient, will engage your customers and encourage them to buy more chocolate bars.
Considering the best ways to communicate with your customer, and how you can provide them with the most engaging content is crucial for driving sales forward. Whether it is providing impeccable customer service or enticing marketing emails that scream out to be opened, communication is a consideration at all stages of customer contact and an essential way to increase sales.