4 Ways to Build a World-Class Customer Experience Through Mobile Messaging

It’s been 40 minutes and you’ve repeated yourself on the phone three times to three different people before realizing you’ve been rerouted to the Philippines. Mahal Kita.

Great customer experiences are a way of life and intrinsic to your brand’s DNA. It’s not a project or department – every individual in your organization is in the business of CX.

Customers ask us all the time how to conduct customer service over mobile messaging. It’s a brand new channel of communication for most businesses, and we have the experience to help you win.

Here are 4 ways to help you build world-class customer relationships over mobile messaging channels:

 

1. Be Personal  

It’s 6 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to keep a current one (IPSOS Loyalty). That’s why it’s important to build personal, friendly relationships with your customers.

When responding to a customer on Sonar, always introduce yourself by name. For example, instead of:

How can I help you?

Try:

Screen Shot 2016-03-22 at 10.34.36 AM

The first example lacks any form of personalization. The latter humanizes your brand and creates a conversational experience between two friends.  

Referring to customers by their name is easy, simply add “First Name” and “Last Name” information to your customers, like below, and have it saved for all future requests: Screen Shot 2016-03-22 at 10.39.25 AM

 

With Sonar, you can also import an entire .CSV file with customer names and email addresses and start referencing your customers’ names even more easily.

Remember to keep formality levels slightly higher than the customer who is messaging you. If your customer wants to be casual, be casual. If emojis are present, emoji back. Your customers will appreciate your personal approach and think of you as a peer or friend. As a result, you will receive more favorable responses and more positive engagement.

 

2. Be Responsive

65% of 1,000 consumers surveyed said they’ve cut ties with a brand over a single poor customer service experience (2014 Parature State of Multichannel Customer Service Survey). One of those experiences often includes receiving no response when offered an instant messaging solution.

If you can’t respond to your customers, chances are you’ll lose them even if you offer a great product. One way to prevent this from happening is by setting up Away Messages. Your away messages help you set expectations for customers by auto responding to customers who text outside your office hours.

With designated office hours and Away Messages outside of those, you’ll coach your customers on when they can expect help. This will leave you with fewer upset customers when you get into the office in the morning. Away messages can also act as a buffer until you’re ready to step in and help your customer make positive progress. If the request is urgent, get your customer to the right person on your team by using the “Assign” feature so that the person most equipped to help the customer.

Eat dinner and sleep in peace knowing your customers are being responded to. Set up Away messages that are colloquial in nature, like “Gone for the day. We’ll reply first thing tomorrow!”

Equally important to letting your customers know you’ll respond later is actually getting back to them in a timely manner. Filter unreplied messages and sort customers from old to new to help those who have been waiting the longest. In Sonar, a red dot will appear highlighting any customers who haven’t received a response from your team. Click the “Close” button to mark a customer as served.

Sometimes, especially for a frustrated customer, talking is easier than typing, make your customer experience even more seamless by setting up call forwarding. This allows you to keep your personal phone number private as well!

 

3. Be Fast

Setting up canned responses allows you to respond to customer requests quickly while maintaining a personal approach. We designed a way for you to access your pre-crafted canned responses by typing “##” into the text field which populates all of your pre-written templates.

You can personalize messages with embedded user properties with fallbacks like “{{first_name|there}}” so you can provide tailored answers to questions. Customer information can be organized in properties for later reference. Keep information of a given customer in properties so you can give very tailored answers to their questions.

For example:

“Hey {{first_name}}, it seems like you have a {{account_type}} account.”

During office hours, set up Desktop Notifications or the Slack Integration so you’re alerted about every request that comes in and Close customers who have been taken care of so you can focus on those who need help.

 

4. Be Smart (Measure Metrics and Manage Costs)

U.S. brands are losing approximately $41 billion each year due to poor customer service rep management (NewVoiceMedia Study). Offering excellent customer service isn’t cheap, and to offer great customer service at scale, it’s vital to manage your workforce appropriately. To help, we’ve built powerful analytics features that allow you to measure hourly activity, measure customer service agent performance, and minimize lost revenue. 

Use Sonar’s Campaigns feature to send out messages asking people to rate their customer service experience on a numerical scale and we’ll sort out the responses into a graph and give you an good sense of how your Customer Support team is doing. It even allows you to follow up with unhappy customers and try to improve their experience and ask happy customers to write positive reviews.

 

Conclusion

Customer service and the customer experience will have a major impact on the reputation and bottom line of your organization. While positive customer experiences can have great results (increasing customer acquisition, retention, brand loyalty and advocacy), one customer experience gone wrong can lead to the end of even the longest customer relationships.

We believe the best customer experiences come from providing the best communication on the channels customers prefer. For more advice on creating enjoyable customer experiences, send us a text: 

+1(510) 270-4147

Communicate With Your Customers Using Mobile Chat

www.sendsonar.com

Email: contact@sendsonar.com

 

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