Digital customer engagement tools empower small businesses to deliver on customers’ increasing expectations for efficient and informed interactions, even when operating with limited resources, says Jeff Epstein, VP, marketing and strategy, Comm100.
The pressures on small businesses are greater than ever. In addition to the challenges of the pandemic and regular business demands, small businesses are being held to the high standards for customer service set by their big business competitors. Being available to customers wherever and whenever they need assistance has become essential for winning customers’ trust and business, especially as the customer service experience has moved largely online due to COVID-19.
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Delivering this level of engagement can be challenging for companies working with leaner teams. But failure to do so can push customers to take their business elsewhere and even leave poor reviews that could turn other future customers away. To avoid this, many small businesses are leaning on digital customer engagement tools to deliver the personable, timely support today’s customers’ desire. However, to make sure these tools live up to their potential, businesses should specifically look for an omnichannel solution. Here is why:
Customer Support, Whenever and Wherever They Need ItÂ
Today’s customers expect to be able to communicate with companies through their pick of digital channels — email, social media, live chat, text, and more — prompting many organizations to establish multichannel customer service strategies. By setting up a variety of communication paths for their customers, these companies hope to make it as easy as possible for customers to have their needs met.
However, while a multichannel approach creates more opportunity for customer messages, it can be challenging for smaller teams to then stay on top of so many siloed touchpoints. For example, agents have to complete the time-consuming task of checking every platform one by one for activity since they are each managed through their own system. Even if the business uses a social media management platform like HootSuite to monitor their social accounts, there is still email, SMS, and live chat to check.
An omnichannel solution can help small businesses overcome this disconnect, aggregating the data from each of their channels into one centralized hub so that agents can then monitor them in one place. In addition to making customer messages easier to manage, having a streamlined interface saves agents significant time from logging into each platform manually. Plus, a dynamic omnichannel system can help agents stay on top of high volumes of inbound messages — which is expected, as customers continue to follow habits forged during the pandemic instead of appearing in person — by routing and assigning the messages based on their content. This way, businesses will not lose out on opportunities because they were not available soon enough to provide support.
Increased Connection Between Customers and Agents
When it comes to customer preferences, it is not always all about speed of service. While many customers want the instant gratification of a fast response, they do not necessarily also demand that the conversation be over as quickly as possible. Comm100’s 2021 Live Chat Benchmark ReportOpens a new window reveals that chat duration across industries increased by an average of 18% in 2020, demonstrating customers’ appetite for more meaningful conversations to resolve their requests.
Omnichannel engagement tools can again help in this regard by enabling agents to have more informed, and therefore more thoughtful, interactions with customers. The centralized interface compiles customer data collected across channels (e.g., invoice numbers, past questions or concerns about an order) into one place. This ensures agents do not have to spend time fishing for it when a customer contacts them, which can result in frustration and time lost on both sides. Small businesses should look for an omnichannel platform that also integrates with their CRM system. This is because they can reference relevant customer insights like purchase history to make more informed and personalized recommendations and increase the value of the transaction as a result. Additionally, having these insights readily available enlightens agents to any customer pain points, allowing them to work around those issues and deliver a positive experience.
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Alleviated Workloads for Employees
Digital omnichannel customer engagement tools benefit the agent’s experience as well. In addition to reducing stress over missing out on business opportunities because they cannot always be on-call to field customer messages, having quick access to relevant customer information frees agents up. They can focus on higher-value tasks (e.g., helping a customer solve their problem instead of losing time to figuring out what that problem is). Being able to partake in more engaging work also decreases the risk of employee burnout, which positions agents to tackle business demands, customer-related or otherwise better.
While some small businesses might see the increased standards for customer service as another hoop to jump through to catch up to competitors operating with greater resources and larger teams, digital customer engagement software makes this task a breeze. By equipping their teams with the right tools, small businesses can be more responsive and personable during customer interactions, resulting in more satisfied customers and more successful transactions.