COVID-19’s impact on the way that online business is conducted will be felt for years to come. Customer communication management (CCM) strategies had to be adapted on the fly to adjust to new customer needs. Of course, the preference for these consumers had been shifting toward digital long before this, but with the earliest stages of the pandemic limiting consumers to mostly digital interaction with these businesses, there wasn’t much of a choice in the matter. There’s no denying that most organizations were able to provide an adequate pandemic response for their customers. However, as less and less restrictions are now being forced, it’s become increasingly obvious that a fine-tuned customer communication management strategy is essential to success for businesses.
As it stands, many organizations have proven to be unable to adjust their customer communication management strategies accordingly. As pointed out within the resource featured alongside this post, this can be detrimental to many organizations. Customers have always desired the highest quality customer communication management they can receive, but rarely received it, pre-pandemic and post-pandemic. This often leads to customers searching for new businesses to spend their money at. For businesses unsure, this would indicate that the quality of a company’s customer communication management is directly related to both the likelihood of losing existing customers and the likelihood of attracting new ones.
Understanding the need for high-quality customer communication management is one thing. It’s another to understand what makes up a sound CCM strategy. What do these strategies entail? The two main considerations these strategies make are personalized communication and privacy. The first has to do with the individualism customers want to experience. Not only does this impact their customization, but it also means businesses will need to deliver a unique experience per customer. This is where communication becomes abundantly important. With this communication comes a level of trust from customers. Their personal data is being shared, but they expect it to be held to a certain quality of safety by the organizations they are providing it to. Finding the balance between personalization and privacy can be difficult, but with the right communication platforms and the most robust security, it is possible.
These two attributes contribute greatly to a high-quality CCM, however there is more that organizations can do to provide value. For example, the interactivity provided to customers outside of the store. With finely tuned methods of communication such as live chat, customers have the opportunity to interact at an incredibly fast pace with actual representatives of a company regarding their requests or questions. In industries such as online retail, this can be an invaluable resource.
Most importantly, however, these high-quality customer communication management strategies must be able to adapt to new forms of omnichannel communication on the fly. This means customers should be able to interact with your company through channels like social media, a fleshed-out website and even text-message communication. With this level of agency, the customer is granted the ability to engage with your business in any way they choose.
Hoping to learn more about how your organization’s CCM impacts customer retention? Take a moment to check out the infographic shared alongside this post for more valuable information. Courtesy of Conduent.