It can get pretty confusing for companies to decide on the right communication channels, more specifically used for interaction with the customers. Your company might have a limited number of communication channels that are open for customers, but at the same time, your customers have their own preferences of channels as well. It’s hard to decide on the right one, which is why this article will compile essential digital communication channels and their purposes.
Communication Channels
As the name suggests, a communication channel is a mediumthrough which you can interact with one or many people. Whatever communication channel your company uses to communicate with clients, customers, employees, etc. that is the medium your company uses.
Consider an example of the Xfinity customer service department. Xfinity offers various mediums through which the customers can reach out to them for their queries. There areXfinity support forums, Xfinity Facebook Messenger, Xfinity Twitter account, Xfinity Reddit, etc. These multiple platforms present different channels for customers to communicate through about any of the Xfinity services, which are internet, TV, or phone.
Communication Channels for Customers
Your business should be choosing the best communication channels for their customers, making sure that their needs are not neglected. After all, the ability to communicate is a major contributor to any business’s success. Following are listed some of the best digital channels for communicating with customers.
Websites: Believe it or not, having a website is one of the most potent communication channels you can have at your disposal. Because once they are on–site, you are responsible for every single thing they see on your company’s website. This means that the company has to entice them to choose them over their competition.
How you can make that possible is by ensuring that your website has an excellent user interface and design, since most of the company’s credibility is based on that. You can gain your customer’s trust by showcasing product images, or customer reviews and testimonials. Adding in blogs, videos or personalized recommendations can also add extra value to your website. The content that is being shown on your website needs to send a message to the customers that purchasing your products will lead to a great customer experience.
Social Media: Everyone including the customers love being on social media because it allows them to stay up to date with their friends as well as recent trends and news.
Businesses can use this channel to demonstrate new products, engage with their target audience, and improve their customer relations. They can also receive insights on their progress with the customers; their likes and dislikes so that they can cater their products and content according to the customers’ needs.
Social media live chat can also be used to engage with the social audience and website customers on a single dashboard!
WhatsApp & SMS: Apart from using messaging apps for personal communication, using them for communication with customers is the new norm.
Large enterprise companies can use this channel of communication to inform their customers about new offers and deals, status updates such as order and delivery notifications, etc.
Live Chat has become an important communication channel for many online businesses. Your business should opt for live chat software that is customizable and caters to the needs of customer service agents.
For instance, if your company has international audiences, they might want to look into a live chat software that allows for automatic multilingual translation. Similarly, if payment is involved, then going for software with card masking capabilities is the best option. Whatever kind of industry a business is in, make sure that the communication channel caters to the customer’s needs in the best possible way.
Chatbots: Owing to the success of live chat as a communication channel, chatbots have also become essential in their own right. Chatbots are computer programs that are designed to answer the FAQs queries of the customers. Hence, they are incredibly useful and tremendous self-service support when live chat agents have their own queue to deal with.
However, when a customer’s query is too complex to be handledby the computer program, that conversation is taken over by the customer agent behind the live chat. The best part about having chatbots is that it lessens the load off customer support agents by taking in their job of answering repetitive FAQs.
Summary
In short, there are hundreds of communication channels available that can be used for interaction with customers. The goal isn’t to have as many communication channels as possible, rather it should be that these communication channels cater to all their needs in the best possible way. Although if your company can afford to have a wide range of communication channels, that is also a plus point!
