Intelligent Omnichannel Communication and Engagement

Include a section on your website for your customers to add comments, because the first thing a potential buyer wants to know today is what those who have already bought say, what their experience has been, their degree of satisfaction, whether or not they recommend the purchase. , etc. Answer some of the comments, create conversations (chats), so you will have a greater impact.

You can also offer communications with your company by email or messaging. The important thing here is to answer all or almost all communications and, above all, do so within a reasonable period. So you must analyze well if you can make this effort and if it is worth it.

Pay special attention to Social Networks: You must incorporate them into your ecosystem, but you must do it with a certain strategy and minimal planning. You must study them and decide which of them to start with. Then you have to connect your website with the chosen social network, inserting some specific publications and facilitating your potential clients to register on your page through a network user that they already have.

The main novelty that the new communication channels with the customer incorporate is that they allow conversation, that is, communication in both directions. This significantly increases the power of such communication, whether it is positive or negative, so we must manage it with special attention.

To do so, we must take into account the characteristics of each of the channels, their own particularities: we can use some of them to encourage customer participation, others to speed up problem solving and increase loyalty, and even some to promote our brand.

Now, we must develop and implement a common strategy for all channels, we must try to have them all under control and ensure that our responses are consistent, that the customer always perceives the same company.

Contact with the customer is essential, of course: listening to their needs first-hand, being able to tell them in person the special characteristics of our products and services, seeing the face they make when they listen to us, that is priceless.

But nowadays most of the interactions with our clients do not happen live, in person, but take place in the form of comments on a web page, or of a conversation with our automatic response systems, or even a “like” in a social network, etc.

That is why it is important to review your website on a daily basis, especially the customer comments section. There you will find what they say, what they think of your products, your services, your company.

In many cases, if you answer customer comments, a conversation is established, the «online chat», which today is a good substitute for personal or telephone contact.

Chat is used mainly as a virtual assistant in online stores, where it already replaces phone calls. In fact, many customers prefer it, as it allows them to answer their questions about the products by mobile phone, without having to call or interrupt the tasks they are performing.

Today online chat is more than just a conversation between two parties. Today you can navigate together, share your screen and even see in real time what your interlocutor is seeing. The result is a more interactive, more agile experience, which increases the number of purchases.

Social networks are today your main showcase and you should pay special attention to them, since most of the opinions of customers about your products and your company are turned into it today.

Now, listening on social networks is today a task that can be automated, it is not necessary for an employee to be looking continuously, you can set alerts with the name of your company or your products, so that you get a notice if someone mentions them.

It is a very good idea to respond to all positive comments, of course, because the customer will see that our company shows interest in their opinions. If the comments are too much, you can install an automated system that sends a thank you message. In addition, you should save as much information as possible for possible future analysis.

Regarding negative comments, it is necessary to be even more attentive and solve problems before they go viral and damage the image of your company. Once the crisis is over, it is necessary to analyze it and try not to repeat the situation.

Today there are many “communities” (blogs, forums, review pages) where users meet virtually and share information and experiences about companies, products and services. It is in these places where your potential customers will look for information to document themselves and decide whether to buy from you or not.

You should periodically review these communities and locate a special type of user: prescribers, who are customers who recommend any of our products and services or even our company. Also check your own website, as you may find some of them.

Create a space for these users within your website and invite them to form a virtual community to share their experiences and comments. Try to give them all kinds of facilities to do so, and even incentives, such as discounts on their purchases.

On the other hand, you can and should use the content of their contributions to improve as much as possible your offer of products and services and even to improve your brand image, correcting some possible errors of perception by customers.

Email is proven to be one of the biggest time wasters at work today. It is calculated that the percentage of time that is dedicated to its management is between 20 and 30% of the working day.

It is also estimated that slightly less than 20% of the messages received are important for work, that is, in addition to being time consuming, their usefulness is quite limited.

There are even workers who use the mail to transfer their tasks to a colleague, in a totally selfish way. The partner has to spend precious time simply turning down the homework assignment, let alone getting it done.

You should substitute all email-based information exchanges, looking in each case for the most appropriate alternative. Many times using the telephone is a better option, as we transmit the information by word of mouth, we make sure that the interlocutor receives and understands it, and we can resolve any questions on the spot.

Substitution can be done progressively, starting with the least important, least critical processes. You can also propose a collaborative system, for example in the cloud, and limit the sending of files as attachments to messages. Instead you can start by sending a link to the documents and then limit yourself to a notification, a statement.

It is very important that the mail is not the tool to manage the documentation. For example: How long does it take to find something that was mailed to us? We must use a Document Manager, which is specially designed for that.

In terms of security and confidentiality, email is one of the most vulnerable IT tools. Every day we hear news about email messages lost or read by the wrong people.

There are applications that allow you to filter all incoming mail, letting only what can really affect your business pass through and significantly reducing useless mail. Starting them up is very simple, just configure the filters according to your needs.

As for the messages that do reach your inbox, the important thing is to identify them appropriately: which are relevant, which are urgent, tasks to be done or personal email. Once identified, all those that are not useful must be eliminated and those that are useful must be tagged and archived. For this there are also tools that allow you, for example, to assign colors to the different types of messages, facilitating their management.

Finally, avoid feeling bad about not having your email inbox empty. You have to remember that the important thing, always, is to have the job done well.

You must evaluate if you want to reach new clients or strengthen your position with your current ones.

In the same way, you must decide whether to use your efforts to promote new products and services or try to make your best-known ones go even further.

For this you can and should use the information obtained by analyzing your action area, your target audiences and the strengths of your products and services.

A portal is today a fundamental element of communication, it is our face, the appearance of our organization, the first thing many of our users see about us.

In it we give all the necessary information about who we are, our products, our users, our way of working.

We can also give information about what our concerns are, our goals, our plans with blogs or newsletters focused to our educative or corporative content.

Finally, the type of design we choose, more static or more dynamic, with more or less images, with more or less text, in short, all the more formal aspects also provide a lot of information about us.

You can start with a Google Ads campaign, which is usually focused on a very specific objective and has a fairly high efficiency, since it gets many potential customers to know you in a rather short time. The only downside is that the price is also high.

In any case, it is necessary to undertake other actions, such as an email marketing campaign or promotion on Social Networks. We can also go to more traditional marketing, such as participation in events in our sector.

One of the best options to achieve good results in the medium and long term, it is best to work on the contents of your website, making them attractive for your potential clients and, above all, for Internet search engines. These are SEO (Search Engine Optimization) positioning.