All brands strive for the loyalty of their customers.
But is your business doing a good job?
To deliver a seamless experience, companies employ technological advancements, AI, and machine learning. On the other hand, customers cannot imagine a single brand not having an omnipresent customer service that uses all the latest customer support trends.
Yet, there are brands like that, ignorant to the benefits that technological advancements can bring them. Necessary to say, these brands lose more than $62 billion annually due to poor customer service.
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Your Bad Decisions Have Consequences
Not investing in technology that supports your customer support will drive your customers away.
Nextiva reports that:
- 27% of Americans report “lack of effectiveness”, which includes delayed responses and issues not resolved in time, as their number one frustration with customer service.
- Lack of technical support of your customer service turns it into a Chinese Whisper game. 44% of consumers say they often receive the wrong answer from customer support representatives. 72% of consumers say that having to explain the same issue to different customer support representatives is a sign of bad service.
- Technology can make your customer service more organised and help you leave no queries without a response. Without it, you won’t able to keep track of the growing number of queries, leaving some customers without a response. Because of such negligence, 79% of consumers report that their queries were ignored.
On the other hand, the more technologically advanced your customer support becomes, the better service you’ll deliver, bringing your business closer to your customers.
Where Do You Start?
To bring you closer to your customers, you should start with your marketing strategy.
Today, when a business goes digital and implements more technological innovations, it has an inevitable effect on not just customer service, but on sales and marketing as well.
Digital marketing is one of the strategies that 83% of businesses successfully apply to promote their brand. In terms of customer support, digital marketing allows your business to become omnipresent on a variety of channels, which your customers expect from you.
Moreover, digital marketing innovations have a great impact on customer relations, contributing to better engagement and satisfaction rates, as well as sales and brand recognition.
What are these innovations?
Let’s take a closer look.
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Chatbot Applications
Consumers are familiar with chatbots. According to InvespCRO, 67% of consumers reported using customer support chatbots several times, and 95% believe customer support can draw major benefits from chatbots.
So, we’re not going to deny the utmost importance of chatbots for customer success. However, you can take the application of chatbots a step further, using it for your digital marketing efforts.
My mind just blew up when I saw a chatbot on Game of Thrones’ Facebook page. I could talk to it like to another fan of the show, asking it questions and sharing my concerns over who died in the latest episode (spoiler alert for those who’ve just started watching):
While fans use it mostly for entertainment, it was a major marketing move for the show to promote the last season. Since so many fans complained about a show killing off their favourite characters, they created a whole chatbot experience around it.
Needless to say that GOT’s chatbot marketing efforts brought them a nomination for a Shorty Award in the Humor category.
What else can you do with a chatbot to bring you closer to your customers?
If your business operates on an international market or is about to go international, chatbot localisation is essential. “According to our survey, 67% of foreign-language-speaking customers leave the business that doesn’t have multilingual customer support”, says Paulina Drake, a customer support manager at The Word Point.
Indeed, the demand for multilingual customer support has been growing for the past several years. Big companies, like Whole Foods and Sephora, already introduced multilingual chatbots on Facebook, having them deal with the most popular queries and sending tickets to customer support representatives:
Localisation is crucial for customer success. Your customers expect you to deliver a seamless customer support experience, and you want this experience to be as comfortable for them as possible. Offering at least a chatbot in their native language will boost engagement and contribute to a better relationship with your customers.
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Inviting Customers to Interact with Content
The demand for interactive content is rising as well.
93% of marketers agree that interactive content is more effective in educating buyers than static content. On the other hand, 91% of consumers prefer interactive content over static content.
Digital marketing is good for sharing interactive content online. However, if you use a variety of platforms, some of which don’t support interactive content, there’s a chance that your investment into it won’t pay off.
How can you prevent that from happening?
You can engage your customer support into sharing interactive content with your customers as a part of an answer to their queries. This is what Banquer, an online financial education platform, did to promote their interactive video “Can You Destroy the Debt”:
The company shared this through customer support as a part of their digital marketing campaign. Since this video can only be accessed on YouTube, extra effort was needed to make sure that all their customers have access to it.
Interactive content brings a lot of value to your customers. Sharing it with them through all your channels will bring your business closer to your customers, so this marketing effort is worth the investment.
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Streaming
Over the past year, the trend of online streaming and going live has conquered the marketing world.
US consumers spend nearly 40 hours a week watching online streams. The growing popularity of online streams forces companies to take more interest in online streaming platforms, like Twitch, and live stream features on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter:
Image credit: Instagram
How can streaming bring you closer to your customers?
And what does customer support have to do with it?
There’s a growing trend of doing online Q&As on Instagram and Facebook, which you can engage your customer support into.
This can be especially beneficial during ongoing marketing campaigns, whenever customers have questions about upcoming products, shipment, or pre-ordering. You will end up with not only a more motivated target audience, but with more effective customer support as well.
Including customer support into participating in your digital marketing efforts will contribute to better customer engagement, build trust, and boost sales.
Concluding Thoughts
Your digital marketing efforts have an immense impact on customer satisfaction. And, contrary to what you might believe, digital marketing trends can be integrated into customer support, which will show that your marketing efforts are structured and coherent.
As you can see, there’s more than one way to apply a chatbot, and there’s more than one way to share your content, and your customer support can be a huge contributor to your marketing efforts.
Just give a try. And don’t forget to share your experience with us!
Want more digital marketing advice, help or strategies? Check out one of our most popular marketing guides:
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- Instagram Post Reach: How to Reach More People With Your Instagram Posts
- The Facebook Ad Algorithm
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- Priming in Marketing: Advertising Psychology 101
