Engaging your customers effectively: the art of communication
In his latest article in a series on creating compelling customer experiences, Tiago Lopes explores the aspect of customer communications, and looks at how to keep your outbound correspondence and inbound channels engaging and informative without becoming overwhelming.
In my previous articles, I have emphasised the importance of enhancing digital engagement for brand recognition and customer loyalty, particularly for the digital-first market segments. I’ve also covered the emerging trend of adopting product-based composable UI architectures for swift and cost-effective digital transformations.
However, all these efforts will be in vain if your customers are not aware of or don’t actually use your digital channels.
Effectively engaging with your customers demands a mix of proactive outbound communication and receptive inbound interactions to cultivate enduring relationships and deliver unparalleled customer experiences.
Outbound Communication
One of the most effective and straightforward methods is to send regular push notifications. Deep links in mobile apps, emails and SMS bring customers closer to digital channels.
This should be done consistently but cautiously to avoid inundating users with meaningless emails and alerts. Personally, I find receiving a notification once a week to be acceptable; it serves as a reminder of the brand and can be highly engaging, especially when the content of the interaction is substantial and significant to me.
To ensure that your content is of a suitable quality, you must consider it through two dimensions: firstly, through personalisation, as everyone appreciates feeling special; and secondly, contextualising based on customer needs, service use and any service problems. In essence, communicate with your customers regularly (but not excessively) in a contextual and personalised manner.
Another strategy to attract customers is by disseminating marketing content broadly across online channels and social media, preferably with appropriate links. Besides generating many leads, it also enhances visibility and brand awareness, fostering a sense of trust.
However, it’s crucial to reiterate the need to cater to the digital-first market segment at this point. Advertising on the internet and social media is affordable and easy to manage, but content should be carefully chosen for each available platform. Whether it be on Instagram or TikTok, YouTube or Facebook, audiences can differ slightly or greatly. Spending time analysing data insights is therefore crucial to understanding the best marketing messages to connect with users and the most relevant platforms for each segment.
Inbound Interactions
CSPs can often view inbound customer interactions as just another operational cost, but can also seize them as opportunities to engage with customers who have a need or problem to solve. When they successfully resolve customer issues, they improve brand perception, increase loyalty and potentially boost revenues.
For telcos, chatbots seem to be the right answer when seeking operational cost savings, however they have also tended to be limited in utility to a predefined list of use cases. The recent boom in AI chatbots provides users with a faster customer experience but in some cases can be hampered by problems with interpretation, due to the nature of the user (e.g. older, less technologically savvy) and their inputs, or the type of problem they’re trying to solve – in any case, complex customer issues unable to be solved by automated processes should still be escalated to a human operator.
When aiming to enhance customer experience, whether using human agents or chatbots, CSPs should promote human-like customer interactions via digital channels. It’s also an excellent opportunity to hear directly from customers about their problems and implement corrections or other product features that prevent them from arising again.
CSPs must also be prepared to facilitate inbound interactions across multiple channels, allowing customers to report their problems or submit their queries via their preferred channel. Therefore, live chats, email and messaging services such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp should all be accessible to customers.
In conclusion, communication is paramount. CSPs should:
- proactively engage with customers on a regular basis; and
- seize the opportunity to show they care whenever they are approached by customers, via one of the multiple channels available for interaction.
In his next blog, Tiago will explore how product and service catalogues are a key success factor for customer engagement.
