How Can Businesses Effectively Communicate with Customers?

Communication can make or break your company as it is at the heart of all human interaction and is the core of your business strategy. Communicating effectively with your customers can lead to increased sales, repeat business via loyalty and referrals to potential new consumers. Curate effectively communicating and useful content for your website with the help of our content marketing services in San Francisco.

And on the contrary, poor communication can lead to decreased sales, frustrated customers and ultimately result in a  negative reputation.

Mentioned here are the ways for businesses to improve their communications with customers and the apt platforms that can help with it:

These are the key points that help to improve your communication with customers, build brand loyalty, and increase sales. For expert guidance and support, do consult our top digital marketing agency in San Jose, San Francisco

• Being Accessible

Irrespective of the kind of business you do, eCommerce, start-up or service provider,  customers should be able to reach you on various platforms.

Digital technology helps to expand your reach to customers as they provide so much access available at their fingertips. Customers are now hoping to communicate with your business without having to make a huge effort or jump through hoops.

They always want options, so consider communicating with customers through as many platforms as possible like phone calls, email, social media, or an instant chat feature – a chatbot.

• Email Marketing

Being able to reach out to your database with one email is powerful. An even more powerful tool is being able to analyze this data, open rates and click-through rates.

The access to see not only who has opened the email, but also who has clicked on one of the links is vital for understanding your customers and also their needs. Apart from sending promotional materials to customers, you can also answer their questions and concerns via email. 

• Social Media

Social media is popular and is a method for communicating with customers. How you communicate on social media can make the difference between attracting customers and driving them away.

Just having a presence on social media isn’t enough. You should be responsive and measured in how to reply to a customer. Your communication on these platforms isn’t always private.

To keep track of queries that are coming through to your social networking accounts, platforms like Hootsuite allow you to manage your real-time communication. You can set up tabs for every account integrated into Hootsuite. Hence if someone sends you a question via a social media platform, you can answer in a timely manner.

• Chatbots

One of the newer forms of communication with customers is a chat function or also known as a chatbot. This allows customers to ask questions and expect immediate answers.

Chatbots save your time especially if a customer has an issue that needs resolving. You can set them up to have selectable issues with automated responses and it will help by guiding a user to where they need to go for help. You can then see their issue and check if they need a more direct response. The same process applies for general assistance also. 

• Get Everyone on Board

If your employees don’t follow suit, no matter how good your communication skills or what systems you put in place, it will count for very little.

Your employees should be polite, professional, and friendly while communicating with your customers. Most importantly, they must be responsive because you cannot allow customer queries to linger and go unanswered. Otherwise, you will risk driving them away.

You can consider providing training to make sure your employees understand your company’s communication standards and help in ways you want to improve. Conducting an assessment will help you understand employee communication skills and plan for extra staff if required. 

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• Make a Good First Impression

Good customer service can make or break a sale. A large part of this comes from the first impression you give your customers when they contact you. There are two ways you can do this:

Waiting Times

Phone, email, social media or live chat, the longer you make your customers wait, the more frustrated they’ll become. It creates poor customer experience and can lead to reputational damage via word of mouth.

You must have an automated system in place that sends calls to available support representatives. This reduces waiting times. You can also install a similar system for live chats on your website that informs a customer how long it may take to answer their question or get in touch.

Use Real Language

Whether on the phone or a chatbot, scripted language is impersonal and your customers will know if you’re using such responses with them. It can lead to a poor experience. So make sure you have real conversations and human language with your customers.

A few tips on language,

– Do not be defensive, instead, acknowledge the problem.

– Always be empathetic to your customers and understand where they’re coming from.

– Use positive language rather than negative.

– Do not use jargon because customers want to talk normally. Use simple and easy-to-understand language.

Bottom Line

Gaining an advantage over a competitor, especially in the communication space, is one way to ensure existing customers purchase from you again. Get the right content from our content strategy agency in San Francisco. We help to build effective content and provide you with the apt strategies for effectively communicating with your customers.