Six messaging strategies for customer experience excellence
By Aurélien Dubot, VP of Marketing, Critizr
Over lockdown, consumers have increasingly turned to messaging apps to communicate with their favourite brands.
Fast, convenient and personal, it’s a trend that will endure, presenting brands with a challenge, but also an opportunity for a dynamic new type of customer engagement.
As physical stores start to re-open, what part will messaging play in the new customer journey? What are the best strategies for staying on top of this trend to add value to your business? How do you avoid the pitfalls?
Here’s my six point plan to make sure your retail business is message ready in 2021.
1. Get the message
In our increasingly digital world, phoning a business about a product or order is almost unthinkable.
Today it’s a messaging world, with millions regularly using text, social and other messaging services to communicate directly with the businesses they shop with.
As a starting point, businesses need to understand how important it is for customers to be heard and personally acknowledged, whenever they interact with a brand.
So as physical retail begins to open up, make sure your customer interaction strategy encompasses text, social media, WhatsApp, Google’s Business Messages and more.
If it doesn’t, your customers will feel disconnected and are at risk of going elsewhere.
2. Build human connections
The pandemic has shown how much we value human connections, with research confirming that people still want to deal with people when they shop.
Messaging apps are a great way to facilitate meaningful, real-time conversations between ‘your people’ – customers and staff.
So make it personal. Devolve messaging conversations to local, frontline teams as much as possible and empower them to act.
At store level, this creates powerful customer champions who can unlock emotional engagement, satisfaction and brand loyalty for the business.
3. Understand the customer journey
More so than ever, today’s customer journey is omnichannel, moving seamlessly from digital to physical and back again.
Plot this journey and understand where your customers are interacting with your brand, then make sure every single interaction counts.
Each touchpoint is an opportunity to bring your customers closer, with warm, personal conversations and expert CX management. On the flip side, there is a risk to your business and reputation if this process is badly managed.
So ask yourself: can our systems facilitate these customer conversations? Can we manage the channels and the volume, in real time? Technology can help you to meet this challenge and the needs of your customers.
4. Supercharge feedback
In a message-led environment, your business will be awash with customer feedback. Whether positive or negative, view each message as an opportunity for a customer conversation and CX improvement.
With complaints, often customers just want to know someone is listening. With messaging apps, staff can update, acknowledge and track these issues in real-time, and a 100% response rate is achievable.
Don’t neglect positive feedback either. It’s just as important to acknowledge compliments and suggestions, channelling customers towards online reviews and ratings.
5. Harvest customer insights
For customers, messaging is about the here and now. But they also provide businesses with useful data and insight at brand level.
This can help head office teams understand CX performance, exposing trends and broader issues to be fixed. There’s an opportunity here to also identify excellence at store and regional level, so staff can be recognised and good practice shared.
6. Open the doors to obsession
Over the next few months, every customer is going to count.
Messaging presents an opportunity to build a dynamic new wave of customer interaction for your business. But this is much more than just a response to changing consumer behaviour.
Think of it as a route to driving customer obsession across the whole business. There’s no shortcut to creating happy customers, but we know the brands that get it right are the ones that obsess over every stage of the customer journey.
Messaging is a compelling tool to drive this customer obsession across the whole organisation, empowering your people to create relationships that last and build market share, from the shop floor up.
Critizr Connection is Europe’s leading Customer Interaction Management platform.
Founded in 2012 and used by over 80 of Europe’s biggest companies, it is transforming the way businesses interact with their customers, take action, resolve issues and create stronger relationships across multiple channels.
