Looking at news outlets across America, the threat of a recession is being theorized, analyzed, and debated. Whether or not an economic slowdown occurs is out of the hands of small businesses (SMBs). Just in case, smart SMBs look for new ways to enhance efficiency and improve customer communication.
Technology is a valuable ally when it comes to communications and efficiency. The right tech tools help SMBs keep better track of customers, speed up response times, and eliminate repetitive communication tasks that are essential but time-consuming. Additionally, these tools demand fewer budgetary and human resources. To enhance communications efficiency without hurting the customer experience, companies must maintain a laser focus on the fundamentals of effective communication and look for ways that technology augment them.
Fundamental 1: Communicate How Customers Want
A recent survey by Cloudli revealed that 93% of consumers who want to support SMBs do not just want to call. They also want to option to text. However, many businesses rightly have concerns about how to implement text messaging. If a business has an existing landline, it needs a different solution for text to improve customer communication. This often results in additional costs, and communications then silo in two different platforms.
Tech Solution: Bring Everything Together
For many businesses, the best way to solve for customers’ preference for text is to incorporate SMS as an extension of voice communications. To enhance efficiency, businesses integrate voice and text into the same platform, so communication silos eliminate. SMBs achieve this cohesiveness by replacing landlines with cloud communications solutions that include voice and text capabilities. This is often through an app. This solution eliminates the need to maintain multiple subscriptions to separate services. Additionally, it results in substantial cost savings on monthly communications.
Fundamental 2: Know the Customer to Improve Customer Communication
Zendesk research revealed that 71 percent of consumers expect great customer service from SMBs. And great customer service makes great business sense. This same survey found that 94 percent of consumers will take positive action (like buying more or recommending to a friend) when they have a good customer experience with an SMB. These are the customer behaviors an SMB needs to cultivate when times get tough!
The key to providing great customer service is to know the customer and anticipate their needs based on their preferences and most recent interactions. However, keeping the entire team in the loop on every customer interaction is not scalable or possible if a business is relying on random notes and recollections.
Tech Solution: Brain Power Backup
To make great service personalized, scalable, and repeatable, a customer relationship management (CRM) tool is essential. A CRM does not need to be complicated or expensive. It can be as simple as leveraging a shared platform where a persistent record of all customer communications displays in one place. Also, the user records and schedules notes and follow-ups.
The most important things to consider when assessing a CRM tool are that it is easy to use and accessible to everyone on the team. That way, when a customer calls, the person answering the call instantaneously knows who the customer is and sees the past communication history. Also, the user sees any applicable notes on that customer, inferring why they might be calling. Having this contextual information front-and-center enables anyone on the team to provide efficient, prompt service, resulting in a better experience. This in turn, drives repeat business, positive word-of-mouth referrals, and less wasted time!
Fundamental 3: Prioritize Responsiveness
Did you know that 62 percent of phone calls to SMBs go unanswered? It’s true, as reported by 411 Locals. And according to Destination CRM, 80 percent of those callers won’t bother leaving a voicemail, meaning every day, SMBs miss out on potential new customers or repeat business. There are times when a team member is simply unavailable. Sometimes they are with another customer, out of the office, or outside of business hours. What’s an SMB to do to improve customer communication?
Tech Solution: Leverage a Virtual Team
Rather than trying to always answer the phone, SMBs should strive to keep customers engaged until someone can responds.
When prioritizing responsiveness, the first question to ask is, what calls need to be answered right away? It is difficult to determine this as the phone rings and it is not clear who is calling or why. AI-powered virtual assistants act as tech-enabled gatekeepers to alert an SMB to calls that need to be answered urgently and those that can be addressed another way.
When calls go unanswered, the best thing to do is keep that customer engaged until someone picks up the phone. This is another benefit of bringing voice and SMS into the same platform. Text auto-reply functions let the customer know when to expect a callback, convert a voice call into a text thread, or even direct the caller to an alternate information source like a website, if appropriate. Most importantly, the caller is not left wondering whether their call is important to the SMB. Instead, they receive immediate follow-up that brings them into a conversation with the business. And, because the conversation remains ongoing, business staff have fewer follow-ups to conduct.
Regardless of economic drivers, businesses should always focus on optimizing the customer experience. When an SMB prioritizes the fundamentals of effective communication, technology becomes a tool that gains efficiency and enhances how the customer perceives the business.
