Customer Interaction: The Complete Guide to Interactions Management

Customer interactions and customer
experience: How are they linked?

The expectations that the customers have with a brand are continuously changing. They now demand more attention, seek more professionalism and expect speed and convenience at all times. With the bar being continuously raised, businesses can no longer take customers for granted. They need to provide a great experience at each customer touchpoint to retain their business. With the ever growing competition, customers are more than happy to make a switch if their expectations are not met.

How the businesses interact with their customers and prospects holds the key to providing better customer experience. Here are some logical outcomes of having quality customer interactions:

• Build customer loyalty

  Customers want to know that the business appreciates them. Their queries are answered promptly regardless of what channel they use to interact. The business proactively reaches out to ensure customer happiness. For example: A veterinary clinic sends a follow up text a couple of days after an appointment enquiring if the health issues of the pet are resolved.

• Repeat business

  When a customer is made to feel important, they reward the business with their loyalty and even repeat business. Repeat business not only helps you grow your revenue but also opens the doors for upsell or cross-sell.

• Revenue growth

  83% of consumers are willing to refer after a positive experience. And 84% of consumers trust the recommendations of others over other forms of marketing. Referrals from happy customers go a long way in boosting your revenue.

Inefficient customer Interaction channels

A few decades back, it was normal to make a trip to stand in line at a service counter just to ask a question or have an issue resolved. Fast forward a few years, a phone call made this task much easier and faster.

Today phone calls are on their way to becoming obsolete too. Here are some reasons why:

• Phone calls are inconvenient

  When customers call businesses, they need to take a pause from what they are doing and dedicate time to make the call. The experience may be less than perfect if they have to wait on a phone queue to speak to a live person. Oftentimes this wait may be long and the call may get disconnected causing further customer frustration and a bad customer experience.

• Drain on resources

  If a business relies on phones for managing its customer interactions, they need to make sure that there is enough staff to man the phones. Unlike all other customer interaction channels, the agents on the call can only attend to one customer at a time. No multitasking.

• Difficult to track customer interactions

  Key to good customer interaction management is maintaining a customer communication log. This log helps to learn about all the prior customer interactions so that customers can get a personalized experience. It is difficult to keep track of interactions over the phone unless the agents document the conversations manually.

Modern customer interaction tools for the new-age customer

To win in this new world, businesses need modern tools to acquire, engage and retain customers. Today’s consumers actively seek out mobile and digital channels to deliver the level of real-time results and engagement they expect. Convenience and instant gratification are now the cornerstones of digital experience. Take for example smartphones - it is impossible to deny that smartphones have entirely altered online engagement.

Here are some key modern customer interaction tools to engage and delight the new-age customer.

• Webchat

  The tiny but powerful website widget on your website allows you to engage with visitors immediately. For customers it means access to customer support in real time. For other visitors, it means getting their questions answered quickly to aid their research to help them take faster decisions. Different type of webchat (or website chat) options in the market include:

• Live chat

  When it comes to convenience, nothing can beat the experience of getting questions answered quickly via a live chat. The website visitor gets answers to their questions while they are on the business website. You can continue doing what you are doing (drafting a business proposal, answering your emails in a loud office or enjoying some family time) and still continue to chat with the business.

• Chatbots

  These AI-driven minions help you answer standard questions from your website visitors like ‘What are your hours?’ and ‘where are you located’. This not only helps website visitors get answer questions instantly but also frees up your support team to answer other pressing customer queries.

• Text-based webchat

  Let's say a question comes in from a website visitor after business hours and is something that your chatbot is not trained yet to answer, text-based webchat comes in really handy. You can respond to your website visitor via text messages later when you are back in office or even from your mobile app during your commute home.

Webchat ensures that you do not miss a single message and gives you the opportunity to respond to your website visitors wherever they are. An ideal scenario involves all these variants working together to provide your customers and prospects with a great experience.

How to develop a successful communication strategy

How customers feel about a company is dependent on the sum total of all the interactions they have with the business. Did the company meet my expectations each time I contacted them? Did I get the same level of attention and help irrespective of how I reached them - messenger, chat, text etc?

Businesses should put a customer communication strategy in place as a start. This would determine how employees communicate with customers regardless of the channel. But before that can be done, some research needs to be done. You need to:

• Understand your audience
  It all starts with an understanding of the characteristics, pain points and interests of your customers. This forms the basis for some ground rules like - how many times is it okay to communicate with them? Tone of voice - business like or more personal. What type of communication would they like to receive and not.
• Set your objectives
  What are you hoping to accomplish in your business’s communications?
  Is there something you have been unhappy with that you want to improve? Figure out clear objectives to make your strategy focused.
• Be clear about metrics and goals
  How will you know if your communication strategy was effective? Can you set benchmarks and goals along the way to help your business achieve success? By asking yourselves these questions, you will have a better handle on what “success” means and what your goals are.
• Create a communications guide to set a standard that employees at all levels can refer to. A communication strategy also ensures quality assurance to improve customer relations at every level.