Companies communicate with their customers in so many ways these days. They send e-mails, polls, publish information on social networks and their websites, call, chat or send SMS. All of these forms of business communication are not well received by the customer when they occur or are even effective. What is essential to their success is that every company really finds out how customers want to communicate with them and how to keep track of it all.
How do your customers prefer to communicate?
Effective business communication methods can change depending on the industry, the customer segment or the problem. Here is a starting point to determine what is best for your clientele and how to analyze these interactions:
votes
Where Is It Effective: It works best with baby boomers and the Generation X demographics that are used to communicate over the phone. It is also an important tool when an urgent message needs to be delivered to solve a problem or that a more personal discussion needs to be conducted. How to test it: Can you reach your customers by phone? If you leave a message, remember?
Where Is It Effective: It works best with Generation X demographics, which consider e-mail as their primary form of business communication. It is used when frequent fragments of information or statuses must be provided. How to test it: There are many email marketing tools that will tell the user if this message has been opened and interacted with. In total, a company can then determine which emails are the most effective form of business communication.
Social Networks
Where it's effective: It works best with Generation Y or the millennial demographics that feels most comfortable communicating on social media platforms (sometimes anonymously). How to Test It: When a company publishes something on social networks, do customers respond? Are customers commenting on their experiences on social networks?
Text
Where Is It Effective: It works best with Generation Y and Generation Y who would prefer to use texting on their phones as their primary mode of communication. How to test it: Ask prospects and customers if they will opt for this form on their phone. If the company gets a good answer, it should be tested.
Discuss
Where Is It Effective: When customers visit a website, many generations X and Y prefer to chat with someone (send SMS to a website), and then call. They do it because they can perform multiple tasks and consider it less intrusive than a call. Millennials are more comfortable communicating with discussion robots on a website or on social media. How to test it: Put a chat service on your company's website as a means of communication and see if anyone uses it!
Investigations
Where is it effective? One of the biggest problems with surveys is that, typically, only two types of clients respond to it: those who are very happy and those who are very dissatisfied. It's hard to get the opinion of those customers who fall somewhere in between. How to test it: Put a short survey of two questions at the disposal of customers and see how many people respond or if valuable information is collected.
Finally, the only way to determine the most effective business communication is to test it with your customers and see how they react. Similarly, when customers initiate communication with your organization, determine which forms they use most frequently and for which issues.
From a practical point of view, the most difficult part of business communication is that most companies must be able to talk to their customers in all of these ways, to follow each of these communications and draw conclusions. This takes an integrated set of software that can give the company a real-time insight into what's really going on with the customers. This will allow the entire company to be on the same page, which is essential to offer the best customer experience.
Reissued with permission. Original here.
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