As in our personal lives, good communication is essential for building strong professional relationships. Customer satisfaction is crucial for creating loyal customers and positive brand awareness. Not too long ago, there were only a few ways to communicate with current and potential customers. Now, the list of customer communication methods is robust. We understand that choosing the right strategies for your business may feel overwhelming, which is why we put together this article. Here are 4 in-depth ways to improve your customer communication strategy.
1. Send Email Messages to Your Customers
We know that email might seem a little outdated, but it is actually a great way to connect with your customers. They are accessible, convenient, and effective – especially now that people can access emails from their cell phone. Plus, there are many ways you can use email to communicate with your customers.
You can create a newsletter for your product or service and send it out on a regular basis to keep your customers informed. Another popular method of email communication is through automated emails. You can set up a series of emails to be sent in direct response to a user’s specific action. For example, you could create a “Welcome” automated email series to help get new customers acquainted with your brand. This series might contain 3 emails – the first to be sent 1 hour after sign-up, the second to be sent 3 days after sign-up, and the third to be sent 1 week after sign-up.
No matter what form of email communication you choose, you’ll need to make sure you have a list of confirmed email addresses to send your message to. Here are a few ways to easily collect customer information for your email list:
- Include an “email signup” sheet at the register station. This way, your staff can remind and encourage customers to sign up while they’re making a purchase. You can also collect customer information digitally to ensure no mistakes are made due to poor handwriting.
- Add an “email signup” banner to your website. You can also add a banner for “newsletter signups”.
- Place a QR code on the back of your business and rewards cards that leads to an “email signup” form. A QR code is a type of barcode that can be read digitally on any smartphone. Because they can be easily scanned with your phone’s camera, QR codes are a great tool for encouraging customers to sign up for your emails and interact with your business on their own time.
2. Utilize Social Media for Customer Communications
If you’re looking to spread a message to your customers quickly, then social media is the way to go. So many people around the world use social media to connect with their friends, family, and favorite companies. In fact, 44.8% of global internet users used social media to search for brand information in 2020. That means that nearly half of the people in the world like to use social media as a means of learning about brands.
Keeping that in mind, it’s extremely important that you stay active across all your social media accounts. You never know who you might reach on popular platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Pinterest.
3. Be Responsive and Communicate Quickly with Your Customers
This is arguably the best way to improve customer communication for your brand. You should provide your customers with quick, quality customer service solutions. Here are some of our recommendations to help your business improve customer communication:
- Add a Live Chat feature to your website. Live Chat and Chatbots are quickly growing in popularity because they provide your audience with instant gratification through quick response times and accurate information.
- Create a company-wide response plan. This should include information like expected response times to customer questions and standard answers for frequently asked questions.
- Learn from your competitors. Spend some time on competitor research to see what methods they use for customer communication. You may find new strategies to improve your customer relationships.
4. Don’t Forget About Print Communications
Although digital communication methods are extremely effective – and should not be ignored – you should also be sure to include print communication methods in your customer communication plan. Fliers, banners, mailers, and brochures are still viable means of customer communication. In fact, it’s crucial to have a mix of digital and print marketing strategies for your company in order to broaden your visibility and reach a larger number of people in your target market. We recommend starting small with one or two print materials that make sense for your brand and then evaluating the strategy after 3-5 months to see if continuing in that direction makes sense.
Adding these strategies into your communication plan will help to create many happy customers. It’s important that you prioritize customer communication for your brand and that you constantly evaluate the level of success each strategy brings you. Madison Corporate Group believes that only when our tenants are successful, can owners meet their goals. That’s why we go above and beyond to provide our tenants with exceptional resources – including in-house marketing support! Visit our website today to learn more about Madison Corporate Group, our resources, and our available properties.
