Keeping up with the ever-increasing number of communication channels is a challenge for any business. Every new means of communicating creates opportunities and headaches, which underlines how important it is to have a clear strategy for consumer communication.
This piece will lay out some of the problems in customer communication today, like fractured engagement, before dealing with the challenge posed by technology. Then, it will examine some specific cases where one method of customer communication might be better than another, as well as tackle conflict in customer communication. Finally, it will look towards the future of communication and its role in user experience.
Table of Contents
Fractured Engagement
As ever more money is spent on an ever-growing list of ways for businesses to communicate with customers, a large chunk will be wasted. Why? As channels proliferate, businesses that don’t manage their customer communication efficiently will lose much of the information their customers offer. As Nextia CEO Tomas Gorny lays out in a 2019 MIT Sloan Management Review article, much of the money spent on engaging with customers can fall prey to the ‘fractured’ nature of today’s customer communication landscape.
How and why is customer engagement fractured? One sense is on the consumer side, and the other is on the side of business. Consumers expect to be able to choose how they engage with a business: over the phone, or through email, text, chat, social media, or an app. They frequently use multiple methods, and expect a quick response no matter which they use. Those multiple inputs can lead to confusion on the business side, and dissatisfaction for the customer.
Assuming a company keeps up with all the latest means of communication that their customers prefer, if they fail to integrate customer communication on their end, things will remain fractured. This is a costly mistake, because each time a customer communicates with a business, they provide valuable information. Each new channel multiplies the amount of information, and if a business fails to capture and integrate it so that it can be easily retrieved, they may well leave money on the table while upsetting customers who slip through the cracks.
Enhancing Communication Through Technology
Technology offers some solutions to the problem of fractured engagement, although each method needs to be used in the right way, at the right time. For example, a direct voicemail delivered to a client can be powerful, either as a marketing approach or to address a concern. Companies such as Drop Cowboy offer this service, along with text messaging capabilities. If used correctly, technology can help a business manage their customer communication more efficiently, which can help them better serve customers, improve their reputation, and save money.
For example, a well-integrated customer communication system will generate data about a business’s clients. That data, when analyzed, will provide insight into their preferences and concerns, information which can, in turn, help shape strategy in the future. Marketing can also be better targeted based on what a business learns from the data its customers provide.
Furthermore, technology can also provide customers with more ways to help themselves, enabling them to choose when and how they want to engage with a customer service representative. Finally, internal to the business, technology can help staff become more effective in their communication with customers, which has a range of benefits.
The Power Of Voice
Good strategy around communication is important, but no individual channel should be ignored at the expense of all others. Take in-person communication as an example. The increasing use of text-based communication has led many to think it may replace much of the need for in-person or voice-based communication. Research has shown, however, that not only is in-person communication still very effective; your own perception of which channels work best may not always be reliable.
A 2017 Harvard Business Review study on the efficacy of in-person communication versus email found that a request made face-to-face was 34 times more likely to succeed than one made by email. The study’s authors asked 45 participants to ask ten strangers each, or 450 total, to complete a survey. The participants used the same script, but those asking in person were significantly more likely to get a positive response than were those asking via email.
The study’s authors also noted something else: participants thought in-person communication and email communication would be equally effective. As Vanessa K. Bohns, the author of the HBR piece, explains, participants felt equally strong about the ‘trustworthiness and legitimacy of the action they were asking others to take,’ whether they did so face to face or via email. They failed to understand what those receiving the email saw—’an untrustworthy email asking them to click on a suspicious link.’
One thing this makes clear is that businesses need to remember that while the intention behind a message matters, what customers make of it is even more important. The study also suggests that the method of communication has an impact. There is further research to suggest that phone calls can instill some of the same personal connection that in-person communication does. While phone calls differ from in-person interactions in important ways, they lack the same opportunity for participants to see non-verbal cues for example, and they still seem to tap into some of the same positive associations.
Phone calls in a business context may not have all the same benefits that personal calls do, but effective communication over the phone for customers who want it makes up an important part of any business’s communication strategy. Technology does help here, as more and more tools are available that allow a business to customize and control their phone calls to better serve their needs. Call Cowboy is one example of a service that lets a business use the phone more effectively.
Communicating Loyalty
Any successful customer communication strategy will involve a range of approaches, but what they aim to accomplish is just as important as the means through which they do so. Cultivating customer loyalty is a key goal for any business. One key promise of the increasing number of channels through which customers can communicate with a business is more responsive customer support.
Preventing excessive ‘fracturing’ is an important thing to keep in mind. If a customer communicates with a business through several channels, once via phone, once via email, again through a chatbot, etc., but each time they feel like the business doesn’t know who they are, they’ll feel undervalued. Such an experience hardly instills loyalty.
If, on the other hand, a business integrates its different channels of communication so that customer service representatives know when and how a customer has been in touch in the past, they can make their customers feel valued. This will encourage them to feel more loyalty to the business.
These concerns will impact businesses, small and large alike. More and more large businesses rely on a recurring revenue model. By 2025, Gartner predicts 20% of business to customer revenue will be generated this way. The same forces that have led to increased subscription revenue are also encouraging more competition, which will make it increasingly difficult for businesses to maintain customer loyalty. To be successful, businesses need to work to stay ahead of what their customers want, and they certainly can’t afford to discourage customer loyalty through poor communication.
Dealing With Difficulty
The importance of customer loyalty points to one of the key roles of customer communication: resolving conflict. Keeping some effective conflict resolution tactics in mind can help on the level of individual interactions, as well as in larger scale planning for how best to organize a business’s customer communication strategy.
Customers most often get in touch with a business when they have a problem, not to tell them they’re doing a great job. At the same time, plenty of companies have built their brands off of how well they handle customer complaints, like Apple with its reputation for dealing with failures in its devices. In turn, as companies grow increasingly focused on offering responsive service, customers grow to expect an increasingly higher level of attention.
As with the example above about email communication, intention and reception are critically important in dealing with customer complaints. What matters is how a customer is receiving something, not just the intent behind it. Making sure a customer feels heard is critical. Even offering a solution too quickly can make someone feel as though they’re not being listened to, and might be perceived as disrespectful. So, first an apology and recognition, then a solution.
In a similar vein, it can help for the person speaking with the customer to take their side in the conflict. While it might seem counterintuitive to encourage some members of a business to side with the customer against their own coworkers, acknowledging a mistake and understanding the frustration it makes someone feel can help make them more amenable to finding a mutually beneficial solution, and to continuing to work with the business.
No matter what, staying calm is critical. Returning a customer’s anger back at them will not help anyone involved. For the angry customer, a pleasant, professional response may well lead them to change their own tone. At the very least, it’s more likely to make them feel heard, which can, in turn, improve their impression of the business going forward.
Once a customer has been heard and their issues have been acknowledged, it’s worth going back over what they expected and how those expectations have or haven’t been met. Often, conflict can arise over mismatched expectations.
Expectations also play a key role in making sure that a customer is satisfied the ultimate outcome of the process. Making sure to give a customer a specific timerfame in which their issue will be dealt with helps allay their concerns, and can improve the overall impression they have of the business. Be careful, however, to make sure that the given time frame is achievable. A great deal more damage can be done by setting and then failing to meet customer expectations.
Finally, a business that shows it is willing to do whatever it takes to make things right for the customer is more likely to maintain loyalty even when things go wrong. Keeping someone happy when all is going smoothly is one thing, but going above and beyond to solve a problem, particularly if a mistake has been made, can make the difference between a regular and former customer.
What To Look For Going Forward
Expect the focus on customer communication, and the customer experience in general, to only increase in the coming year. One research suggests that customers care about the experience they have when interacting with a company, and they’re willing to pay a premium for it. Customers are also significantly more willing to share their data, and all the value that comes with it when the company in question provides a good experience.
The same research shows that companies don’t have a lot of chances to get it right: one in three customers said they would not do business with a company again after a single bad experience, even if they had previous positive experiences.
While there’s a tendency to focus on how these expectations are changing across generations, customer experience matters to everyone. What might be seen as new but desirable to an older generation is deemed a given by Gen Z customers. This only further solidifies the importance of customer experience, with customer communication undergirding it, going forward.
Most importantly, the research shows that while technology can make remarkable things possible when it comes to customer communication, it is not an end in and of itself. Put another way, technology isn’t the solution; it enables a business to find solutions. This is important internally and externally as new technologies can drive how ready a company’s employees are to tackle the problems coming their way.
Enhancing customer communication going forward will require a strategy that embraces new technology, while ensuring that the user experience it helps deliver is a positive one. No matter what trends crop up in 2021, focusing on consumer communication seems like a safe bet.
