Never underestimate how crucial it is to master customer communication in your business. As a business owner you might think that keeping your pipeline full, having the best website, designing the best product or winning the most awards is the most important thing but believe me, if you don’t talk to your customers in the right way then they will be off, quicker than a bottle of milk left in the sun and their reviews will be just as sour.
I’m not just talking about what you say and how you say it, although this is the golden chalice to being able to woo a customer back time and again, increasingly it is all about WHERE you say it.
My preferred communication channel is…
I found myself getting really irritated the other day after I’d texted someone to ask a question and they called me back. Arrghhh, they switched communication medium! How dare they? What they didn’t realise, much as I love speaking with this particular person, was that I texted rather than called because I needed an answer quickly as I was in the middle of cooking dinner for the family, loading the dishwasher, unloading the washing machine, taking a photo of dinner prep to post on my vegan foodie insta channel (@theveganmenu_), checking my work emails and personalising a card for a poorly friend…
As if I didn’t need eight arms as it was, now I suddenly had to connect my Airpods, avoid dropping them in the dinner, risk losing the card personalisation I’d already set up, miss the perfect insta photo of dinner and probably burn it as well! None of that was the caller’s fault of course but the whole episode got me thinking. This is what makes brands excel at customer satisfaction and retention now. Their innate knack of having omnipresent comms channels available to customers at just the right time and in the right place.
Bad communication means bad customer experience
I had, and this is no exaggeration, a panic-attack-inducing communication stream with a well known retailer recently. Four out of three items I ordered were either the wrong colour or had parts missing, rendering them impossible to build. The way the retailer handled my query meant the issue dragged on for a fortnight and they somehow made me feel like I was in the wrong! To this day, they have still been unable to correct their errors due to an entirely broken communication system. They were unable to communicate with me effectively to understand the nature of my problem, each time I got in touch to check on progress the new operative could not look back at information I had previously provided, plus their internal systems prevented them from fixing the problem as there were too many departments unable to act autonomously. They were probably too busy reeling from the news that their much-loved iconic printed catalogue was going to be axed instead of pumping some of the recouped revenue into their CRM system. The result? I deleted their app and will never shop with them again, nor will my family. Horrendous. No-one wants that!
Great customer communication equals great business
Conversely, brand not to be confused with a popular rainforest, repeatedly meet me head on in exactly the right place on their app, website, phone etc., anticipate what my problem might be, and fix it with almost no questions asked, every time! Because they make customer interaction easy.
If you are a business owner, you simply must talk to your customers, buyers and clients WHERE they talk to you (app, email, Messenger, WhatsApp, smartphone customer support hub etc.). Each of those systems must link into a foolproof CRM system so that whichever channel your customer arrives from – any of your operatives (even if they are a bot!) can quickly and effectively resolve their query, extra points for a smiley emoji at the end of the chat.
This, is the way to create communication mastery within your business and your customers will absolutely LOVE you for it.
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