Making it personal

When it comes to customer communications, it’s a brave new world. The biggest change? Your customers are in charge. 

• They filter out messages that don’t seem relevant, including yours. 
• They’re savvy with technology, juggling the web, mail, e-mail, text, live chat and call-centers conversations, depending on what they’re doing and where they are. 
• They share their experiences via online reviews and social media channels; you can learn a lot by listening. 

How do you get people’s attention in this over-communicated, multichannel world? One at a time, it turns out. Which means you need smarter technology to engage them as individuals.  

It’s how you win new customers and build one-term profitable relationships. Whether your business has a few customers or millions. 

Insight 

To understand your customers and prospects better, many companies are having success with technologies like predictive analytics, data quality and customer profiling tools. With these tools, you’ll learn who your best prospects are, the buying habits of individual customers and how different customers want to communicate. 

Manage multichannel communications

Everything today is personal. Your communications should be, too. You need a multichannel communications strategy to be able to better target customers and prospects and engage them across all their favorite channels—web, email, text, mail, call centers. 

Use the insights you gained by analyzing data to personalize communications. Document composition software can ensure these communications are well designed and easy to understand. 

Use the right channel, based on the type of communication and individual preferences. You might promote a sale via email or mail, but confirm an order or shipment via text. Don’t miss call center opportunities. Knowledgeable reps can have more personal conversations when customers call―and drive sales and loyalty.  

Efficiency remains critical, of course. Production software can link every department involved in your multichannel communications―marketing, IT and operations―while streamlining production. 

Response analysis

Listen. And learn. Invest in technology that lets you track every interaction a customer has had with you, in real time, whatever the channel. You can learn how a particular customer responded to your last direct mail offer. Whether they tend to respond to emails but not direct mail. What they did when they visited your website.

You can use this knowledge to make your next communication even better. So call center reps know exactly what a particular customer might be interested in. Or, you might decide to follow up a direct mail piece with an email.

It’s called “next best action.” The results can be powerful. Because the best communications are ongoing, two-way conversations.