Back in the day, communication with customers wasn’t as important as it is now. If you want to have a successful business in 2023, you need to work on building great communication with your customers and do so on multiple channels.
This is what modern customers expect from the businesses they work with. They want to be able to reach them through various channels. And unless you can provide omnichannel communication, it will be impossible to create customer satisfaction and retention or make a profit.
There are several communication channels you could use, but here are the ones you can’t go without.
Social media
Social media is arguably the biggest communication channel across the world and it’s used for personal and professional communication. Active social media users have passed the 4.55 billion mark and if you want to be sure you’re using the right communication channel, you can’t go wrong with social media.
Social media platforms are usually more popular with younger generations such as Millennials and Generation Z, but you can find people of all ages on these platforms. And not only can social media be used as a powerful communication channel, but it’s also a very effective marketing tool.
There are some steps you can follow to create an effective social media marketing strategy, but for now, let’s just focus on communication. On social media, you can communicate with your customers via direct messages, comments on your posts, reviews left on your pages, and more.
When it comes to social media communication, it’s very important to know which platforms you should be active on. For example, B2B businesses need to be on LinkedIn, which is the only social media platform that is for business purposes only.
On LinkedIn, you can grow your network and have meaningful conversations with your customers and people from your industry. If you want to make the most out of this platform, you can automate certain tasks with a tool like LinkedHelper. You can visit their official website to find out more about how this tool can help you master the game of LinkedIn.
Customer service
We can’t talk about customer communication channels without mentioning the main one people think of when they want to get in touch with a business. Customer service is the direct communication between your business and your customers.
The customer service you offer can be the deciding factor of whether or not your business succeeds. Here are just some of the reasons why you need to ensure your customer service is top-notch:
- Retain customers. Businesses today don’t compete as much over who has a more high-quality product or service. Rather, they compete over who treats their customers better. If your customers see that you’re treating them well and are willing to go the extra mile to help with any issue, they will keep coming back to you.
- Build brand loyalty. Across the globe, 96% of consumers say customer service is an important factor in their choice of loyalty to a brand. When your customer service team is good at their job, they can represent the image, values, and mission of your brand in a way that resonates with customers.
- Bring in customer referrals. When your customers are happy with your business and loyal to a brand, they are much more likely to refer their friends and family to your company. Customers usually share positive experiences they have with a brand with people they know.
To ensure you always provide amazing customer service, you can use customer service software. Depending on the tool you choose, you can have a helpdesk, knowledge base software, a live chat tool, a phone center, and much more. All of this will help you meet your customers’ needs more efficiently.
While some may consider email to be an outdated communication channel, it’s still used by both B2B and B2C businesses as one of the primary communication and distribution channels.
Email is cost-effective, brings great ROI, and provides you with a simple way to maintain relationships with customers. However, the most important thing is to understand when an email should be used and when the issue would be better tackled through a different communication channel.
Email is a great communication channel when you don’t need an immediate response. You can use it for regular correspondence, sending out newsletters, marketing purposes, and much more. It’s also a great choice when you need to sound more professional or leave a trace of your communication.
But you need to avoid sending too many emails and going back and forth when the issue could be solved with another communication channel such as a phone call or a video conference.
Final thoughts
Not all of your customers will have the same needs and preferences, so if you use just one communication channel, you’re excluding a large part of your customer base. The channels we listed here are just the basics of what you need, and the more channels your customers can use to get in touch with you, the better.
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