Why email has become the preferred channel for managing customer relations

Marked by the Covid-19 pandemic, companies have accelerated their digital transformation, whether in terms of tools or services used and/or marketed.

Among the hardest hit have been those in the retail sector, where the closure of shops has forced them to invest rapidly to ensure a fluid customer relationship. It's a strategy that's paying off, because in 2020, 29% of companies that chose to improve their customer experience saw a clear increase in their revenues.

To achieve this, more and more companies are turning to effective customer relations strategies and new communication channels, including social messaging, to encourage customer engagement. WhatsApp has over 1.5 billion users worldwide, and at Zendesk we have seen a 352% increase in support requests via this application.

Companies are now increasingly looking to implement customer-focused business approaches. This dynamic is underpinned by the arrival of messaging, which is at the heart of everything, not least because consumers are looking for immediacy in their dealings with a brand, just as they do with their family and friends.

But questions remain: what business opportunities do customer relations and the use of social messaging represent? What is the current state of use by companies?

The keys to successful customer relations

Companies that have taken the plunge in customer relations and now have the most advanced processes in the field believe that the maturity of customer experience operations is a decisive competitive factor in setting themselves apart from their competitors. Some are prepared to invest in these technologies over the long term, because they are confident of the results in terms of customer loyalty and growth. What's more, the most experienced companies are twice as likely to have a response time of less than an hour compared with those just starting out.

It also means giving agents the means to succeed in their missions and to make the customer experience more fluid. By giving them high-performance tools and appropriate training, they are no longer just one-off troubleshooters, but real strategic partners who help customers, and also help the company to understand the areas for improvement and progress in terms of customer experience to make interactions more fluid.

Thanks to digital solutions, the analysis and use of data can guarantee a degree of agility and adaptability at the heart of businesses. Valuable data to help companies understand certain purchasing patterns. Companies that base their strategic and commercial decisions on their data, and in particular data relating to customers, whether products, assistance or other, can more easily act quickly on the points of contact with customers and improve or rectify the parameters involved. Unfortunately, many companies are still unaware of these parameters or the information they lack, and this can have harmful long-term consequences.

The key is to talk to customers where they are. This goes hand in hand with the success of a seamless experience, because if customers find it difficult to get help or information about a product or service, the company could lose some of them as a result of dissatisfaction with the service or products. The increase in the use of chatbots and social messaging shows that companies are keen to engage in more dialogue with their customers, and above all that this is a two-way street, as customers are using these channels more and more.

Social messaging at the heart of conversational commerce

More and more companies are incorporating the notion of conversation into their customer relations. The number of these conversations is multiplied by the use of numerous channels. Customers are gradually abandoning the telephone and e-mail in favour of messaging and chat.

The emergence of these new channels, particularly social messaging, has opened up new opportunities for businesses. By communicating in a practical and fluid way, they give brands the opportunity to interact with over a billion users. It has also given brands powerful new roles and responsibilities that they are only just beginning to come to terms with.

Their strength lies in the fact that every time a customer interacts with an agent, he or she can go back to the previous interaction, thanks to the fact that the history is preserved. Agents, for their part, find their work easier because they can deal with several customers at the same time and access contextual information each time a customer contacts them via a communication channel, enabling a fluid, personalised experience.

This is the case with Back Market, which uses an omnichannel solution to centralise and automate the e-mail, telephone and chat conversations a user may have with the brand. Finally, since September 2020, the marketplace has been using the WhatsApp social network, integrated directly into the Back Market mobile application, to make the mobile experience even smoother for its customers. In just a few months of use, the results are clear to see: a response 5 times faster than by e-mail and a CSAT 5 points higher.

This is an opportunity for companies to add real value to the customer experience, create a federated community and even generate revenue through conversational commerce. Indeed, in addition to conversations around the service, the notion of payment in messaging applications is becoming an increasingly important part of the conversational customer journey. It's a way for businesses to secure the purchasing act more quickly and make it more fluid, since everything is done from a single interface: the chosen messaging application. But above all, it allows them to diversify their sales channels and increase revenues.

Even if the integration of social messaging into the customer journey is still in its infancy, companies that assume their responsibilities towards their customers will be rewarded.-to their customers will be rewarded with engagement, loyalty and, in some cases, advocacy from their communities. It is important to remain proactive in conversations with customers to reinforce consumer confidence in the brand.

Sponsored article. Expert contributors are authors who are independent of the appvizer editorial team. Their comments and positions are their own.