We already brought awareness to the importance of being where customers are. Not being limited to a single communication channel is almost a rule these days. Whether you are about to adopt a multi or omnichannel strategy, the process of choosing the right channels requires careful consideration.
Moreover, companies sometimes take their internal communication channels for granted likewise. The urgency of allowing customers to reach out easily might lead the company to forget how vital it is to have a stable internal communication structure.
Considering those aspects, we listed points to be taken into consideration when choosing the right communication channels for both the company and the customer support department.
Knowing Your Customer’s Communication Preferences
Studies point out that 25-years-olds and under have Social Media as their preferred means of communication for customer service. Those over 55 years old, on the other hand, prefer to grab the phone and call when they need support.
So here is the first question: do you know your customer’s average age, and where do they go first when they need assistance? The answer is your starting point to build an efficient strategy.
As soon as you know their preferences, you can pick the proper communication channels and later work on making them perform better.
What Kind of Communication Support Do You Offer?
As the owner of a business, you know it better than anyone else. Furthermore, you are well aware of the nature of questions that might come up around the products and services offered by your company.
Clothing retailers with webshops might have questions about sizing and shipping options. For a software company, the inquiries may be more technical and related to installing it. For the first one, a chatbot can fill the gap, whereas having live chat with a screen share option would be preferred for the latter.
When picking a communication channel, you might put those characteristics in perspective. For certain businesses, an email address and a phone line are more than enough. However, for the most technical ones, you must speak your public’s language and reach them on more straightforward means of communication, like live chat.
What’s more, depending on the company’s current goals, it might be time for a change. After years of using traditional communication channels, giving a try to different channels like Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp for Business can help reach a larger audience.
Learn More About Your Team’s Capacities
The use of each support varies depending on your company’s needs, and so does the bandwidth. For instance, you cannot answer two phone calls at the same time. On the other hand, a chat operator can reply to multiple chats at once. But do you have enough agents for both the telephone support and the chat service? Do they have what it takes to handle customers during the high season?
For this reason, we reinforce the importance of picking the right channels and ensuring there is a prepared and skilful team. It is a matter of quality over quantity here — it isn’t worth the investment if you have multiple channels, but the agents are incapable of keeping up with customers’ demands.
Communication is key, so always take the time to check in with your team to see if they struggle or need help with something. Prepare training from time to time and analyse your data in order to spot issues as soon as they arise.
Communicating Internally
Lastly, as we spoke about teams, have you took some time recently to reflect on how employees access information in your company? How can they obtain information about projects in development, and what are the tools they have to communicate? Is communication efficient when employees are working remotely?
According to research, 80% of workers want to know more about how decisions are made in their organization. They want to be aware of what is going on. Thus, a weekly meeting might be good to keep everyone informed.
Furthermore, creating a bond between your teams will help them increase their efficiency through communication. As soon as you better understand your team’s capacities, making better decisions for internal communication gets more manageable.
Independently of your final choice of channels, we have everything you need to optimize how you communicate with your customers. Check our products now!
