CX Beats: How SMBs can digitalize their customer communication
Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) can digitalize their customer communication by selecting two channels to start with, utilizing two-way communication features, leveraging communication automation tools beyond chatbots, and considering scalability and flexibility when choosing a communication platform.
Episode Transcript:
Sveta: Hi all! I’m Sveta, and I’m responsible for digital marketing here at Edna. Today, I’m very excited to have our first LinkedIn live stream. We are going to speak about digital communication. This is our very first session, but we hope to have a lot of such short discussions. Today, we have here Saurabh. He’s responsible for international marketing growth. Welcome to our first session.
Saurabh: Thank you very much for having me, Sveta. I’ll be glad to share my insights.
Sveta: Yes, I have one topic in my mind that we can discuss today, and this is about how companies integrate digital communication strategy and use different platforms like WhatsApp Business API, Viber for Business, and Apple Business Chat. You know, a lot of enterprises invest in customer communication and they strive to stay competitive and use different channels. But what can small companies do to stay competitive without investing a lot of money in that?
Saurabh: Right, so in recent years, we have been experiencing exponential growth when it comes to new digital text communication channels, especially in the post-pandemic era. More and more consumers have started using these channels to communicate with different brands, and that has created a need from the company’s side to create their presence on these channels. I think smaller and medium-sized enterprises understand this need and this trend. But there are some other factors which are holding them back from creating such a presence on these emerging channels. For example, small and medium-sized enterprises are not aware of how many different types of software they will need to create such a presence. Secondly, they are also not sure how much investment they need when it comes to having multiple customer service agents who are needed to take care of conversations starting on these different channels. But I think importantly, the main roadblock is these companies are not convinced about how these channels will positively affect their bottom lines. I think it all boils down to being unable to justify the expenditure or the investment they are going to do in deploying such new communication platforms and creating such a presence on these multiple data connection channels.
Sveta: I think there might also be one more concern about the cost of infrastructure, but in this case, companies can leverage cloud-based platforms.
Saurabh: Right, so actually you’re absolutely correct because cloud-based platforms are the answer for SMEs. But before we start selecting these particular communication platforms, I think we need to also look into some other important factors. First of all, having omnichannel communication is a myth, and rightly so, because there are very few companies in the world who have implemented a true integrated omnichannel communication presence. But I think SMEs shouldn’t be bothered with creating a presence on all these multiple channels from the get-go. They should at least shortlist and choose at least two channels to begin with. Having two channels offers them two advantages. First of all, there is always a secondary channel present, so if the primary channel goes offline, they can still get in touch with their consumers using the secondary channel. I think the second benefit is that the combination of two channels offers them a much bigger range compared to the single one. Another pointer is the trend which we have seen among the SMEs is that SMEs, whenever they start using these new channels, they are mostly using it only for doing one-way outbound communication campaigns. They just send promotional messages, and that’s it. I think that’s the biggest mistake which they are making because these new channels actually offer a two-way communication feature, so that companies can effectively engage with their consumers and they can handle them throughout their cell cycle. So conversational selling is an important beneficial factor when it comes to communicating with end users over these new digital text communication channels.
Sveta: Yes, I have a very good example about conversational selling. We have a customer, a leading car dealership chain, and they’re leveraging WhatsApp for customer communication. They offer not only car service requests on WhatsApp but they also provide an opportunity to book a car test, to reschedule a meeting with a sales representative. When we were comparing conversion rates on different channels we find out that on WhatsApp it was two times higher and it means that customers are satisfied with it. But one issue that I want to highlight here in this case maybe companies need to invest more in Customer Service agents because they need a person who will respond on messengers. What do you think about that?
Saurabh: I think using this text communication channel is not necessarily impacts or demands to have many customer service agents to take care of those conversations which are going to happen on these new channels unlike calling where one customer service agent engages one customer at a time. In all these new channels single agent can effectively converse with multiple customers at the same point of time. Also these all advanced communication platforms offer multiple communication automation tools which this company should take care, should leverage. Also I think another important factor which you are missing out is whenever these companies deploy a new channel that you need to proactively promote that channel among their customer base. So that customers are aware that there are new ways available for them to get in touch with the company. Right that also means in a way come at the starting point right or at the starting stages companies still can control how many chats are going to be happening on those new channels and that kind of culminates into control of how many agents are required at the initial stages when they start communicating on these new platforms.
Sveta: Also they can leverage maybe some automation tools I think. Maybe chatbots or something like that but I’m afraid it might be a little bit more complicated for small companies than for huge corporations
Saurabh: Yes you’re right. So whenever we say about communication automation that means most of the time people think that it’s about chatbots but in chatbots also there are a lot of different types of chatbots. There are some simple Chat Bots for example, script bots where there are predefined conversation flows and predefined responses for customer queries. And there are some advanced ones who leverage AI and natural language processing. So my advice is small and medium enterprises should start with the simple bot first and then build upon it. To do that they should select the most common conversation scenario and then expand it to more and more scenarios as their communication matures.
Sveta: I think another important aspect is communication automation is not just about chatbots. There are multiple communication automation tools are available or which are offered by advanced communication platforms like edna for example. Quick responses which agents can use to respond to the most common queries which they face from the consumers on day to day basis. Also another example is let’s say a distribution logic right where incoming threads are distributed automatically among different agents based on their specialties. I think the companies should go beyond chatbots and start leveraging these new automation tools as well .
Saurabh: yes yeah, thank you for your suggestion. Well they have a lot of truth. I want to mention here that customers using mobile devices. Mobile smartphones all the time and high-speed internet is a must today. So customers are expected to be contacted on these messengers you know. For small companies it’s a good chance to be at least noticeable without huge investments.
Sveta: We promised to keep our sessions short so I would like to ask you please sum up everything and maybe you can highlight some top tips to follow
Saurabh: Sure so here are the highlights of our short conversation. Firstly don’t aim for omnichannel connectivity. We can start from at least two channels from the get-go and then build up build upon it and expand your communications through multiple channels. Second don’t just stop at doing outbound one-way communication but also do leverage two-way communication features available on these new emerging channels and to utilize the conversational selling model. Third is communication automation is not just about chatbots but it’s way beyond it. So there are multiple communication automation tools available on most of the advanced communication platforms like Edna and to take use of it. Last but not least one is when it comes to selecting a communication platform please pay attention to the scalability that platform offers. Because you want to have a gradual approach and grow step by step. And the second is the flexibility offered by these platforms because it’s important that you also leverage your existing legacy infrastructure systems and software.
Sveta: So I think that’s a wrap. Thanks a lot for this insightful discussion and see you later. Bye