Are You Where Your Customers Are?

How do you connect with your customers? One way is you drive the customers to you with breadcrumbs and trails. Traditionally these include promotional snail-mail, print media, digital advertising, re-targeted ads, email campaigns, banner ads and all other forms. The goal is to encourage customers to take an action by presenting them with CTAs – Call To Action such as “Call Now in 20 minutes”, “Find out more” and similar. The other approach is to be available where your customers are. Let ‘s explore more on this one.

Today consumers are all over the internet – websites, social media, messaging platforms, text, calls and latest conversation assistants such as Alexa, Allo. Powering the digital channels as conversational platforms is the need of the hour. Rather than displaying ads with CTAs on these channels, wire them up with active messaging bots where the consumer can directly start a conversation, be on stand by to assist as needed or provide all the material for self exploration.

Most CTAs drive consumers to the website, a form on website collects contact information, service required, along with time to schedule a call or visit. The CTAs can be transformed to real-time consumer engagement channels. Let ‘s walk through a few digital channels and consider options to customize the platform to offer better experience.

Facebook Page Messenger

Enable a customized chatbot for the Facebook Messenger, in order to provide consumers with immediate responses. These responses can be manual or automated based on context, intent and knowledge-base. The manual queries route them to the right business agents (Loan Officers, Insurance Agents, Lawn Care Professionals, Lawyers…)by making the chatbot location aware. When the consumer starts a conversation, you have their profile and conversation history for immediate and future reference. A consumer may chat in real-time or be engaged in conversation for extended period of time, and eventually sign up for services. A pause or going away is not a permanent abandon.

Website

Having a chat pop-up on website is very common practice. Do these work? A great value add and feature extension to “pop-up” chat widgets is to list your services, pricing and ability to schedule and appointment, along with option to “Talk” to an available professional if interested right away! Cut down “sight-browsing” and finding answers for consumers and get them directly yo decision making. Another advantage, if the consumer abandons and returns after few days you may decide to pre-populate history if the consumer is identifies as a return user. The consumer may leave a question and contact information if they want to be contacted.

Twitter and YouTube

Posting content and relevant tips & tricks is great to reach to new customers and also staying engaged with existing customers. It also provides a channel to get recommended, shared, gather comments, feedback and tagged, thus growing the digital footprint. On such channels it is great to display contact numbers for call or sms. Process the call/txt through an automated work flow to route and connect the consumer with the right agent. Alternatively you can direct them to website and have the website chat widget personalize the flow based on what site the consumer arrives from.

Search Engine Results

The contact information displayed for Google search results –  wire and enable the email, phone to be bot powered. Make it easy for consumer to connect with an agent or learn more about your services and pricing by cutting down any intermediate clicks, data collection and/or other unclear landing paths.

No experience is complete without a conversion. The consumer looking for product and service is time-crunched and is looking for an easy, clutter free, accessible experience as possible from all the options available on the internet. Getting the consumer to engage very early in the process helps the business learn what works and what is not greatly appealing. Businesses can quickly A/B test, send out promotional programs and also deliver event or theme based experience one one or multiple online channels. Based on the audience and demographics the business can decide to automate as much or as little as the consumers personal preferences.

Today it is not just about providing a good price for the service, it is more about the complete engagement experience right from the start. There is no longer one strategy that works its magic to every case, “One-Size-Fits- All” does not work. Reverse the approach– Reduce and cut down the outgoing calls and reaching out to consumers. Don ‘t call them when they are busy! Do Not Annoy the consumer – you risk losing them permanently! Be where your consumers are, when they are ready to explore your services and products. Help and assist them real-time when they ask for it. Have your agents ready when consumer seeks for their interaction and time, and not when the agent is free to make warm calls.

Automate not to replace Agents, automate to make it easy and convenient for your consumers to reach to the right agent when needed. Connect, Engage and Automate the interactions with consumer to best suit your business and unique differentiated offering.

For more articles on Chat and Messaging solutions, explore our blog or reach to us with comments/feedback and questions here .