The Sunday Mail
Cresencia Marjorie Chiremba
“Good Communication is just as stimulating as black coffee and just as hard to sleep after” – Anne Morrow Lindbergh
In today’s business world, the customer’s voice is gaining more attention than before. It is high time that organisations take time to listen to their customers and monitor the way they communicate to this very important stakeholder.
We have often heard that effective communication is a two-way process between the sender and the receiver. While this is true, I also believe that effective and true communication in any situation is whereby both the parties involved are able to listen to what is not being said.
Gone are the days when where answering support requests was the order of the day. Companies are now expected to come up with better communication strategies that ensure loyalty and satisfaction. Businesses are using customer communication in their customer journey as a form of competitive edge.
Effective communication strategies can only be developed when the company is able to understand the right communication type for its customers. The customer base keeps changing, but this is not a big issue to organisations that have mastered the art of listening to what their customers are saying because they can easily understand the customer behaviour and offer products and services that they rightfully need.
The right customer communication has proved to influence customer satisfaction, retention, loyalty and revenue. Organisations must therefore have a well-formulated customer communication strategy for use when interacting with its customers.
Here are some of the best practices to use in communicating with customers:
1. Use omnichannel
Before a company decides on a channel to use for customer communication it should consider these three aspects: Where are the customers? Why do they want to communicate? How do they want to be contacted?
Companies that are absent on every channel that their customers are on, risk losing out on conversations that are capable of bringing in potential sales. The only way to avoid this loss is by investing in omnichannel communication such as text, email, phone, social media platforms, chatbots and websites.
These multiple mediums of communication help in being present where your customers are at. For instance, if the target group is between 18 and 35 years, the best way to communicate with them is through Tik Tok and Instagram, because that is where they are mostly active on and you would rarely find them on email and text messaging.
Whenever customers call, it is for different reasons like assistance in product usage, systems upgrade on the existing features and plans and or making a complaint. It is important that the company take note and understand these pain points and the channel used by the customers to get in touch with them. This information will help to synchronise communication like when it comes to reviews, they are likely to be posted on the company website while questions to do with campaigns will be posted on social media pages.
Nonetheless, companies should not just use their own mediums of communication when they want to contact their customers instead; they should make it a habit to ask their customers how they want to be contacted. This helps them to know and use the customers’ preferred choice of contact or rather medium of communication.
2. Regular customer feedback collection
When companies want to improve their customer experience and customer service, they look for customer feedback. The way the company communicates with its customers and the feedback it gets says a lot about the organisation and its values. Getting feedback helps organisations to handle failures and drawbacks by coming up with strategies to improve where there are gaps. Overall communication skills are honed in when there is regular feedback about the organisation and its offerings. Thus, feedback is a gold mine.
3. Clear and coherent communication system
A streamlined cross-functional communication eliminates confusion when handling customers enquiries. As customers we get frustrated from being bounced from one department to another, repeating our problems to different people within the same organisation. This uninformed customer service gives a poor customer experience especially when one is trying to get customer support. In order to avoid this hiccup, companies must just develop an internal communication system that is clear and coherent. A well-built system tends to help increase response time such that customers can quickly get the necessary information and assistance without any delays or excuses.
4. Personalise Communication
No matter the advantages posed by artificial intelligence human beings will always prefer dealing with other human beings because it feels more relatable. Machines do not provide that human personal touch, but rather they make one feel like just a number. When you personalise communication, you set the tone for a business which can lead to brand loyalty.
Use the customer preferred contact channels and personalise communication on issues like discount provision, targeted suggestions, support services and follow ups. Not all customers give you the same amount of business neither do they have the same level of loyalty to you. These differences in customers also means that you treat them differently. For instance, the reward programmes can be tailored to suit the amount of business you get from different customers and the only way you can do it is through personalisation.
**Cresencia Marjorie Chiremba is a marketing enthusiast with a strong passion for customer service. For comments, suggestions and training, she can be reached on [email protected] or on 0712 979 461, 0719 978 335
