数据处理
Drawing Up An Omnichannel Customer Experience Strategy
In the past, the only point of interaction between businesses and customers might have been a customer walking into a brick-and-mortar store. However, customers nowadays engage with businesses in myriad ways before and after making a purchase.To delight your customers at all such touch-points, you’ll need a customer experience strategy that accounts for their characteristics and preferences, and leverages the right tools, to facilitate a truly omnichannel customer experience.Let’s examine what a customer experience strategy is, how to derive such an omnichannel strategy for your business, and the tactics to execute for customer experience excellence.Explained: What Is a Customer Experience Strategy? (And Why Omnichannel?)A customer experience strategy is a plan for improving the quality of customers’ interactions with your brand. While it may seem like a series of isolated steps of “do this” and “do that,” each step should work hand in hand to deliver a superior customer experience at every touch-point.That’s because customers are especially finicky these days, and may choose to avoid patronizing businesses that fall short of their expectations. Such withholding of expenditure is costing businesses US$4.7 trillion globally, as a 2022 Global Consumer Trends Report by Qualtrics XM Institute shares.And then we have the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.Over the last two years, we’ve seen how it’s caused major supply chain disruptions and sparked off the Great Resignation. Because of supply and labor crunches, businesses need an omnichannel strategy that incorporates technology to improve the agility of their customer experience operations, while facilitating a stellar experience for customers.How to Derive an Omnichannel Customer Experience StrategyA customer experience strategy has to be carefully formulated according to each business’s unique circumstances—you can’t “borrow” one business’s strategy, apply it to your own wholesale, and expect the same results. To derive a successful omnichannel customer experience strategy, you’ll need a thorough understanding of issues such as:How customers interact with your business,Their satisfaction with such interactions, andThe friction they experience at such touch-points.Combined, these insights shed light on how well your business is serving customers thus far and what could be done differently.When gathering intelligence on customer satisfaction with your business, it’s worth hearing from customers themselves. Appending a survey link to your customer service reps’ email signatures is a simple yet highly effective method of obtaining customer feedback. You can also engage independent “mystery shoppers,” who act like customers to gain first-hand experience of the customer journey for evaluation later on.6 Tactics for an Effective Omnichannel Customer Experience StrategyAs you tailor an omnichannel customer experience strategy for your business, these six tactics are especially worth exploring and incorporating:1. Understand Your Target AudienceYour target audience's perception will inform all aspects of your operations, from product development to marketing—and of course, customer experience.Work to obtain essential background information on the people in your target audience, including:Gender, age range, and other key demographicsTheir goals and aspirationsTheir needs and pain pointsIf your target audience is especially broad, group them according to certain shared characteristics. By doing so, you can make more targeted improvements to the customer experience among different segments.2. Train Your Customer-Facing StaffWhile automation has paved the way for administering efficient customer service by a chatbot, customers may still have to interact with a human staff or two during the customer journey. Hence, train your customer-facing staff to provide helpful service that satisfies customers’ needs.This includes leaving customers with a positive impression of your business. If a customer service rep converses with a customer in a terse or even rude manner, the customer may feel offended and take their business elsewhere—even if their matter is ultimately resolved.Impress upon your customer service reps that although they may be serving countless customers every day, creating a single negative experience is sufficient to break a longstanding customer relationship with any of them.3. Optimize Your Customer DataYour business likely possesses significant customer data, ripe for mining for valuable insights and shaping your marketing campaigns. However, such data might come from different sources. As a result, you may encounter repeated data points that need to be filtered out before you can start analyzing your data properly.Using a Customer Data Platform helps you take in data from multiple platforms, automatically clean out redundant data, and then build comprehensive profiles of your customers. Through such customer data optimization, your business will be able to better understand your customers (as per tactic #1 above) and shape the customer experience accordingly.4. Tap on Artificial IntelligenceArtificial intelligence (AI) technology may sound daunting, but adopting it in your business can be a breeze. In this regard, conversational AI chatbots are especially effective for leveling up user experiences.Making use of natural language processing, natural language understanding, and machine learning, conversational AI chatbots discern the intent behind a customer’s question to smoothly deliver an appropriate response. This is even if the customer hasn’t used keywords normally associated with a certain request.As a result, conversational AI chatbots trump non-AI, rule-based chatbots, which have to stick to a tight script—any deviation in the situation and the rule-based chatbot will flounder.5. Personalize Your MarketingAs KPMG’s Global Customer Experience Excellence Research 2021 confirms, personalization is a driving pillar of brand loyalty. Businesses that incorporate personalized content into customer touch-points are those that can elevate the customer experience and generate more sales.For instance, if you’re running an e-commerce store, tap on product recommendation engines to track customers’ browsing activity and recommend related products for their consideration.You can also use the same browsing data to engage in retargeting campaigns with users who have demonstrated interest in your products. These users are more likely to value such ads than users who have shown no interest in your offerings thus far (and who may hence find your ads irrelevant).6. Use Omnichannel Communication ToolsFor a superior customer experience, look to offer customer support on customers’ preferred channels instead of making them jump through hoops to contact you.With plenty of instant messaging applications out there, from WhatsApp to Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and more, managing support conversations on multiple channels can be a challenge. However, omnichannel customer service software such as Mobile Service Cloud can streamline the support workflow by consolidating all conversations in an omnichannel inbox.Your customer service reps can then chat with customers on any supported channel of the customer’s choice, while effortlessly collaborating with colleagues for the prompt resolution of queries.Delivering an Outstanding Omnichannel Customer Experience Starts With Laying Out the Right StrategyImproving the customer experience is a never-ending process of experimenting with new tactics, monitoring their results, and then optimizing them for greater performance. Before taking steps to boost the customer experience, it pays to flesh out an omnichannel strategy that considers:The needs and behaviors of your customers,Opportunities for improvement, andThe available omnichannel solutions enhance the customer experience at every touchpoint.LIKE.TG’s Mobile Service Cloud software is especially suited for rendering effective omnichannel customer service. It offers customers convenient access to support on their preferred channels, while your team collaborates behind the scenes in a centralized inbox. Use Mobile Service Cloud to increase support satisfaction among customers and execute your omnichannel customer experience strategy to perfection.Learn more about Mobile Service Cloud and how it complements your customer experience endeavors.
Top 5 Skills That Every Marketing & Sales Professional Needs in 2030
This has left many of us in the Marketing Sales community wondering where we go from here. How will our profession change in the decade ahead? And more importantly, what can we do to remain competitive in the job market and effective in our work?We recently spoke with two long-time experts in the Marketing and Sales field: Mark Appel, Chief Marketing Officer at LIKE.TG, and David White, Director of LIKE.TG in North America, who gave us some tips on how Sales and Marketing teams can gear up for the future.The Human Factor Is the Key to Winning the Future“If I look at all the roles within the Marketing team now, I think they will all continue to exist, but I do think that the emphasis will shift to other things as a result of technology becoming even more important,” says Mark.Technologies will soon completely take over many routine tasks like forecasting, developing sales channel strategies, post-sales follow-ups, and admin. Thanks to data-driven technologies, which will help businesses align more closely with their markets, the lines between Marketing and Sales will become increasingly blurred. Marketing will become more sales-driven, even as Sales becomes more reliant on marketing.These developments mean we’re all free to focus our attention on different ways of adding value. And this is where our uniquely human qualities, such as creativity, curiosity, empathy, people, and communication skills, are going to make all the difference.“Sales professionals need to evolve continually. They need to look at responsibilities and positions that can’t be replaced with artificial intelligence or machine learning or an API call,” says David.Considering the integral role new technologies will play, the best Marketing and Sales pros will be the ones who master specific skills or what we call “hybrid” skills: balancing tech skills with uniquely human skills.Top 5 “Hybrid” Skills for Sales Marketing in 2030It might sound like we’re talking about cyborgs or things out of a sci-fi movie. But, these hybrid skills mixing tech and human capabilities, are real and only going to become important moving forward.Here are five hybrid skills that should be at the top of all our professional development plans right now:#1. Technical SkillsFuture Sales and Marketing professionals will need to adopt new systems and adapt to them quickly. At a minimum, they’ll need to be at home using enterprise software such as a CRM. Yet, the field is rapidly expanding to include other technologies that will soon shape our everyday work lives, from communications to analytics and how we create and manage campaigns.All of this makes it crucial for Sales and Marketing teams to know about APIs, software integrations, web development, and new tooling. These technical skills will become as essential in the future as product knowledge and soft skills.#2. ConsultingAs order-taking becomes fully automated, your value as a salesperson will lie in your ability to serve as a partner and advisor to your customer.Customers expect sales professionals to be knowledgeable, provide a great customer experience and help match their needs with the business’s products and services.“If you’re in Sales, you’ve got to do some reflections and bring some added value to the table. Simply communicating product features will not be enough,” says David.#3. Digital Presentation SkillsVirtual meetings are here to stay—even after the pandemic. Sales professionals need to polish their digital presentation skills and learn to use virtual meeting technologies to their advantage.To ensure the right skills, organizations need to offer training on everything from creating a Zoom-friendly presentation to setting up the right lighting conditions for your video calls.#4. Creative Data AnalysisAs our jobs become increasingly data-driven, data analysts will climb to the top of the job market. But the data analysis of the future will be more of a creative role than it is today.According to Mark, “The trick will be learning the right things from all this data. And that requires creative analysts who know which data they need and how to extract meaningful insights from them.”The ability to recognize buyer behaviors and target customers at precisely the right moments will become a highly sought-after skill that is beneficial for future-proofing your customer journeys.#5. UX/CX ExpertiseAs products become increasingly commodified and standardized, offering a unique experience is the only way companies can stand out in the future.“The companies that will win are the ones who offer their customers the smoothest onboarding, who offer proactive service, and who are easy to contact… That means delivering a best-class customer experience,” says Mark.For Sales and Marketing teams, this will mean listening more closely to our customers’ feedback—needs, pain points and thinking of creative ways to address them.Focusing on Where We Add the Most ValueWe can all look forward to plenty of exciting tech-driven developments in the years ahead. Yet, our real competitive advantage will lie in the human skills that no robot can ever replace. This will only become more important as the major trend towards increased product personalization reaches new heights.Now and in the future: curiosity, expertise, and strong customer relations skills are among your strongest tools.
Adopt a Relational Approach in the Retail & eCommerce Industry
Based on customer feedback, 90% of customers stated they leave a brand following a bad experience. Investing in CX and customer relationships must be a priority.At LIKE.TG, we believe that a shift from a transactional to a relational focus is your CX strategy's best course of action.This article will discuss the difference between transactional and relational business, and the kind of shoppers that embody each type. Also, we’ll explore some great examples of a relational approach that organizations can apply to be more customer-centric.What Is a Transactional Business Approach?A transactional business focuses on the volume of point-of-sale interactions and getting the customer over the finish line. Only minimal contact is required after-sale or conversion.A transactional business approach requires less emphasis on building a relationship between the company and its customer.How Do Transactional Shoppers Behave?The transactional shopper focuses on finding the best price and value. While relational shoppers are more cautious, transactional shoppers are motivated by securing their dream bargain. They aren’t interested in forming a long-term relationship with a company as they may not repurchase products from the company.However, these shoppers are 100% focused on getting the right deal and happy to negotiate and shop around. They enjoy haggling, researching, and comparing specs and prices of products or services that companies offer.Transactional shoppers respond well to exclusive offers and incentive-based promotions. And they’ll be the ones first in the queue for any good sale.What Is a Relational Business Approach?A relational business approach is about establishing a long-term connection with the customer. This, in turn, leads to repeat sale transactions and increased loyalty.Once the initial sale or conversion has happened, the company will regularly contact the customer, build rapport, deliver customer support, and encourage advocacy.How Do Relational Shoppers Behave?Engaging and converting a relational shopper requires a soft approach at various touch-points. They need to be reassured before they are won over. They want to feel valued and be part of a two-way conversation with people they trust and who understand them for the long haul.Relational shoppers don’t enjoy the buying experience in the way that transactional shoppers do. They worry about making the wrong choice in their purchases and aligning themselves with a brand that doesn’t fit with their goals and values. These shoppers value brand identities, it's about communicating your brand story effectively to your customers.A solid brand identity will forge connections between companies and their customers. Companies need to instill a good branding strategy to be successful brands. Relational shoppers may require more time and effort to convert, but they are more likely to become repeat customers.What Are the Benefits of a Relational Business Approach?The move to a relational business approach offers some interesting, and lucrative opportunities for brands. Here are some of the key benefits for businesses that boost their CX strategy with a relational business approach:An edge over your competitors.Increased lifetime value from each customer, including opportunities for cross-selling and up-selling.Improved customer service.Increased customer retention and loyalty.Opportunities for creating advocates, getting great customer reviews, word of mouth recommendations, etc.The ability to get to know your customers, offer more personalized service, and meet their needs as they evolve.Valuable customer insights that can drive better product development, improve customer journeys, boost commerce sales, and build trust and commitment.Great Examples of a Relational Business ApproachWith the benefits of adopting a relational business approach in mind, here are great examples for organizations to apply in their business:Send a welcome email with a special offer following the initial sale or conversion.Provide a customer experience that prioritizes adding value and developing meaningful relationships.Develop a buyer journey for a better user experience. Examples include facilitating social sign-ins, offering the choice of mobile wallets, or building a portal where all the customer information is centralized, secure, and accessible.Provide self-service tools to help customers get information and support whenever they need it.Offer added-value services at little or no extra charge. For example, free alterations services for clothing.Deliver an onboarding program or provide a new customer with personalized resources.Build a loyalty program based on their preferences.Send a newsletter with personalized content based on their interests.Encourage engagement and converse with your community on their preferred social media platforms.Celebrate milestones such as their first anniversary as a customer, or their birthday.Ask customers to fill in a feedback survey or speak to them directly to gauge how happy they are with your brand and what more you could do to help.The key to long-term success for businesses starts here. Organizations must prioritize developing a sustainable approach that will deliver the ultimate customer experience and help achieve their business goals.
Why Unify Customer Data (And How a Customer Data Platform Can Help)
Would you prefer to buy from:A business that addresses you by name and knows exactly what you like, orA business that treats you as a faceless customer and has no clue about your preferences or interests?It’s the first business, we’re guessing.Customers have no shortage of businesses to shop from, and the businesses that can offer a personalized experience are the ones that will gain their favor.Just take it from customers themselves: in a Next in Personalization 2021 Report issued by McKinsey, the management consulting firm found that 72% of consumer-respondents expected businesses they bought from to:Recognize them as individuals, andKnow their interests.Similarly, 71% of respondents expected businesses to deliver personalized experiences.To personalize the customer experience, you’ll need to extensively understand your customers through unifying your customer data. This involves feeding your data into a customer data platform (CDP), which then combines the data to produce a holistic view of each customer.Through analyzing these customer profiles and feeding them into the other platforms in your tech stack, you can then serve up the bespoke experience that customers seek. Read on as we shed light on the importance of unifying your customer data, and how a CDP can help do so.3 Reasons to Unify Your Customer Data1. Eliminate Data SilosYour business may already have a large amount of data on your customers. However, if these data points are scattered across various platforms, then capitalizing on them becomes a challenge.For a start, your marketing team will need to extract the data from the different platforms. After that, it has to review the data to sift out repeated and redundant data points.It’s only after the data has been cleaned that it is ready for use. In a time when businesses are expected to be nimble, such tasks only slow you down.By unifying your customer data, you break down the data silos in your business, which then helps you:2. Create Comprehensive Customer ProfilesWhen you have your customer data all in one place, combining data points to create customer profiles becomes a breeze.For instance, perhaps you sell sneakers, and Customer Colin first landed on your store’s homepage through a Google search. He signed up for your email newsletter, sharing his email address with you in the process.Customer Colin didn’t open the first email in your welcome email campaign. However, he opened the second one and clicked a link to your store page. From there, he bought a pair of Converse sneakers to be delivered to his mailing address — which you now have a record of.All this activity can be tracked to create a comprehensive compilation of the personal data that Customer Colin has shared with your business, as well as his activity on your channels. Repeat this for your other customers, and you’ll have data-rich profiles on how customers discover and interact with your business.3. Provide a Personalized Customer Experience on All TouchpointsWith a detailed understanding of your customers, you can then create a VIP customer experience on all touchpoints. For example, we’ve seen:A global online travel agency save users’ hotel searches on its website, so it can suggest other nearby hotel properties to returning users,A popular online fashion retailer in Southeast Asia recommend related products based on users’ order histories, andA financial portal in Singapore serve targeted Instagram ads to users of its website.Providing a customized experience helps you address customers’ pain points quicker, where the solution could be using your service or buying your products. This can in turn translate into higher conversions and sales for your business.What Customer Data Points Should You Look Into Unifying?While your business can come into contact with customer data from multiple sources, you’ll want to unify your “first-party” data.This is data on your customers that your business has collected, as opposed to customer data that you’ve acquired from a third-party source (such as “second-party” and “third-party” data).First-party data includes:Personal information, such as a customer’s first name, last name, birth date, and mailing addressContact details, such as email address and mobile numberWebsite activity, such as the web pages viewed and links clickedE-commerce history, such as products browsed, order history, and promotional coupon useImportantly, you’ll need to be able to identify which data belongs to which individual when building your customer profiles. This is what makes first-party data the gold standard when you’re unifying your customer data, unlike non-personalized second-party and third-party data.How Can a Customer Data Platform Help Unify Your Customer Data?When unifying your customer data, you’ll need to store all your customer data in one place — which is where a CDP comes in.This software automatically cleans and aggregates customer data obtained from various sources to create profiles of your customers. When you pull up a customer profile in your CDP, you’ll get a bird’s-eye view of your data on that particular customer, which you can then use in your marketing efforts.The comprehensiveness of your customer profiles depends on the amount of data you’ve fed to your CDP. Accordingly, the more platforms you integrate with your CDP, the richer your profiles will be. For example, the CDP in our Mobile Marketing Cloud platform uses APIs, webhooks, and CSV imports to flexibly connect with your business’s other platforms and unify your data.Your CDP will also update your customer profiles on the fly. This ensures that you get an accurate snapshot of your customers’ online behavior at any point in time, to maximize the effectiveness of your marketing.Why Not Use a Data Management Platform or Customer Relationship Management Platform to Unify Customer Data?Apart from CDPs, data management platforms (DMPs) and customer relationship management (CRM) platforms also collect and store customer data. However, they aren’t the most ideal for unifying such data.A DMP compiles and organizes data into large data sets, such as “users who live in the United States,” “female users,” or even “female users who live in the United States.” While these data sets can be useful for certain purposes, such as ad targeting, their data is anonymized.In other words, you’ll know that the users in a data set share common characteristics, but you won’t be able to find out anything else about a certain user in that data set. Not the most helpful when you want to build profiles on individual users.CRMs do a bit better in creating separate customer profiles. Using a CRM, you’ll typically save records of each customer’s interactions with your business, such as meeting history, support conversations, and won and lost deals (and the reasons for these).However, CRM data often needs to be manually entered. This leaves room for human error or even omission if a staff member forgets to key something in. Different people also have different ways of taking notes, and such non-standardization of data can make it difficult to get a consistent picture of your customers.Data Unification Made Easy With Mobile Marketing CloudWhen utilized in the right way, customer data can be a crucial asset in helping your business understand its customers and deliver personalized experiences. This calls for investing in a powerful CDP that unifies your customer data and presents actionable insights for future marketing campaigns.LIKE.TG’s Mobile Marketing Cloud is designed for seamless customer data unification. It accepts data points from a wide range of platforms and uses them to build clean, comprehensive profiles of each and every customer. After that, the platform’s marketing automation workflows leverage your customers’ previous behavior to deliver the most appropriate next interaction.Mobile Marketing Cloud’s built-in mobile messaging channels also effortlessly connect you with your customers on their preferred channels to facilitate greater goodwill toward your business. Explore Mobile Marketing Cloud to learn its data unification capabilities and how it can help your business take personalization to the next level.
Digital Marketing Trends for 2022
With data being more important than ever, being able to organize, categorize and segment the data your business holds not only makes your job easier, it’ll also allow you to achieve exponentially more. So what are the key marketing trends for 2022? Read on to find out!OmnichannelThe days of being able to focus your attention on one or two channels and ignore others are well and truly over. More than ever, consumers are comfortable researching and shortlisting potential purchases across multiple channels. That means you need to provide a consistent approach across every channel they’re likely to use in order to make their experience with your brand as seamless as possible.If you’re wondering why this is so important, it’s simple. Your competitors will be working to create a consistent omnichannel experience for consumers. If you don’t do it as well, if not better, you risk losing customers to your rivals.Hyper-personalizationThe power of personalization will become ever more important in 2022. Consumers are familiar with being targeted based on the products they view and the actions they take online, but they’re also used to lazy, loose segmentation that doesn't take into account their individuality. Delivering very specific marketing campaigns to individuals will become more important than ever as broad personalization is no longer good enough to stand out.Crucial to the ability to hyper-personalize will be marketing automation –more on that shortly –but a Customer Data Platform is a marketer’s friend and will allow you to process vast amounts of data into usable customer profiles, ripe for pinpoint targeting with relevant products or services.Marketing AutomationKey to being able to deliver on your personalization ambitions in 2022 will be marketing automation. The ability to automate workflows and audience segmentation will allow you to market in very specific ways to your audiences.Creating efficiencies as digital marketing becomes more and more complex is essential to delivering ROI on your campaigns without loading your business with extra staffing costs.A Customer Data Platform, or CDP, takes on much of the heavy lifting of automating campaigns and segmented audiences effectively, leaving you free to ensure the content you’re creating is likely to drive conversions.AI marketingBeing able to deliver on consumers’ expectations is a key element of marketing in 2022. Consumers are used to being able to contact brands 24/7 and get the answers they need at the press of a button. AI solutions allow brands to continue the conversation with consumers long after their human teams are tucked into bed.Machine learning adapts and learns from previous conversations to interact in more useful ways with potential customers and pulls information from a variety of sources to answer customer questions without the need for scripting. Adopting AI technology now will also pay dividends for the future, as the more it’s used, the more powerful it becomes.Conversational CommerceA strong omnichannel strategy that moves consumers down the funnel but neglects the final stage of a purchase is, sadly, a fairly familiar experience for most consumers. Being able to order and pay from whichever platform you’re using at the point you’ve decided to make a purchase reduces abandoned carts caused by cross-platform frustration.Being able to, for example, ask product-related questions on WhatsApp and then buy directly from a link in the conversation via a bespoke payment platform makes for a frictionless purchase experience that removes unnecessary barriers to conversion and reduces the likelihood of lost sales.Owning your audienceEver since social media platforms arrived on the scene, marketers have been using them to promote goods and services. As the platforms began to mature, they created their own ad-driven business models, alongside the associated algorithmic penalties for not lining the platforms’ pockets with ad spend. From that point on, your social audience was rented.It’s likely you’ll have a destination website and data that you own on your customers or prospective customers. Creating campaigns that target audiences you own should be a priority for 2022. But how do you reach them? There are a number of ways, but few (social channels included) are as effective as SMS and email marketing.With a 98% open rate, SMS is one of the most effective marketing tools in your arsenal. Similarly, email represents ROI far more than any social channel. Creating a weekly newsletter, for example, will help you to reach customers who are happy for you to contact them and ready to engage with the content you’re providing them with.LIKE.TG’s Mobile Marketing Cloud solution offers an array of tools to make automating your marketing and staying on top of these key marketing trends simple. We’d love to talk to you about how we can streamline your marketing efforts in 2022 and beyond, get in touch and let’s talk.
Build A Customer-Centric Business Model For Tomorrow
The New Generation of Consumers: Gen ZsToday, the majority of online and offline customers consists of Millennials and Gen Zs, with Alphas on their way. By 2026,Gen Zs will have massive spending power, outgrowing Millennials.This generation is raised by the Internet, social media, and technology. They are practically born with a smartphone in their hands —it's no wonder customer expectations are very high. According to research,85% of Gen Zs see online shopping as an experiencerather than a transaction.You’d be surprised by the buying motivations of Gen Z. This new generation of customers chooses products that help express their individuality. Personalization is key: Gen Z customers are willing to pay more for targeted products for their individual needs. Moreover, they look beyond products and services, researching the company's values and social causes. Gen Zs won’t buy products and services from brands that don't practice what they preach.Growing up with the Internet, Gen Zs are accustomed to having information at their fingertips. This generation prefers using non-company guidance (such as Google Search, YouTube, or Reddit) to resolve their issues independently, even if they have the option to contact customer service. Interestingly, they even turn to social media for financial advice.The Customer At The Heart of Your BusinessWe must realize that customer expectations are ever-changing. Customers only buy from companies that align with their values, offer a great experience, with products and services targeted to their individual needs. For many companies, this is not easy to achieve.To build a customer relationship, you need to focus on what the customer wants and needs and how he or she prefers to interact with your business based on customer feedback. Becoming customer-centric requires a 180-degree change in how your entire company thinks and operates. Every employee should put the customer at the heart of your business.This shift is more than just offering personalized customer service or sending tailored offers. You have to understand and help customers throughout their entire journey, building and cultivating a long-term relationship with them. Forrester expects customer-centric business models to yield at least 700% ROI over 12 years, resulting in businesses optimizing long-term business goals and sustainable growth.How To Create a Customer-Centric Business ModelAs mentioned above: becoming customer-centric is not easy nor fast. It’s a transformation journey. First, you have to stop thinking inside out and think like a customer. What are their wishes? What do they want to achieve? Then evaluate how your company can implement these thoughts into action.Here are five tips to start your business transformation:1.Get to know your customers.To become customer-centric, you have to focus on the type of customer relationships that you want to provide and understand what they want and need. Get in touch with them, listen, and ask for feedback. With these valuable insights, you can further optimize your company's business strategy. You might even get new ideas or extend your service, enhancing your customer experience.2.Build an authentic brand.What does your company stand for? What is your company's mission? Is this reflected in all your communication? Evaluate your brand strategy and ensure customers resonate well with your brand. Shared values are the basis for a great relationship. Express your values on your website, on your social channels, and in conversations with employees and customers.3.Be transparent.Sharing your values is step one, but acting on them is step two. Ensure your organization believes in what it stands for and acts upon them. Show your customers what you are doing and why you are doing so. Be transparent about your pricing and terms and conditions. It might be worth embracing automated and live chat platforms as customers are looking for information and support anywhere online or offline.4.Offer proactive, personalized service.In every relationship, communication is vital. Ensure customers get the service they expect: whether is self-service or assisted service. See every contact as a relationship-building opportunity. Engage with customers one-to-one and help where you can, as soon as possible.5.Commit yourself.A transformation won’t work if you don’t commit yourself. You’ll have to get the entire organization involved. Develop a strategy with achievable goals. Unsure on where to start? Our advice: start small and work your way up with your team with the right solutions.Customer Service as a Starting PointYour customer service team knows your customers best. Transforming your business into a customer-centric company starts with customer service. They are the ones interacting most with your customers. They can express your values and be the face of your brand. We believe this transformation will reshape customer service into a revenue-generating discipline.
How to Easily Digitize Insurance With Smart Solutions
Personal and Automated CommunicationThere is still a lot to optimize in the customer journey of insurers. We notice this in discussions with various parties in the market. Insurers receive many consumer questions and strive for frictionless communication. They want to be active on their customers' preferred channels and thus guarantee an optimal customer experience.Improving communication with consumers in an efficient way requires automation. Our advice: automate what you can and want to automate, but keep the personal touch vital for your customers. With smart communication solutions, switching between automation and personal communication is easier than is often thought.Optimize Communication Across Every ChannelThe customer journey with insurers often starts online. Here, a consumer searches for the insurer or adviser that suits them. Then, they will contact you. For example, by registering on the website, telephone, WhatsApp, SMS, or chat. On one hand, the channel that the consumer contacts through depends on the consumer's preference. On the other hand, it depends on which channels the insurer offers. Research which channels are preferred by consumers and make sure you are there.Chatbot for Optimal Customer ContactDo many consumers use chat to make contact? A chatbot is a smart way to optimize your customer contact. Consumers get answers to their questions faster and easier. Many large insurers have already built a chatbot together with LIKE.TG. In this way, these insurers seize technological opportunities to transform traditional business processes.A good example is a user-friendly chatbot from a.s.r.. By implementing this chatbot, 85% of the website users found an answer to their questions. In addition, the NPS of a.s.r. increased by 40 points.Digital Insurance ContractThe next step in improving the customer journey is adding digital conversion moments. For example, is your (potential) customer looking for contact via WhatsApp? Then, of course, you want to bring up insurance during the conversation. It's handy if you can share a digital quote or payment link in the same channel. This way, you make it easy for the customer and bind them directly to you.A simple and smart solution for this is digital signing. This allows you to sign quotations, contracts, and documents immediately legally. This gives both parties a faster certainty and a better experience. In addition, you save a lot of costs on, for example, labor hours and materials. One of our customers, Maandag®, benefits from the experience with digital signing. They no longer send contracts and documents by post but digitally. According to research, professionals and customers enjoy signing and sending contracts digitally. Everything goes a lot faster now.Customer Data CentralDigital conversations also provide significant cost and time savings in portfolio management. An important advantage of digital communication is that you can centrally store and combine the conversation history and customer data. You have the option to put all customer service and marketing data in the same customer data platform. For example, you can save which preferred channels a customer has, or you already have the correct data ready when a customer starts a chat or conversation. The customer doesn't have to provide all the data again with every contact with the insurer. You can improve the customer journey and switch seamlessly between automated and personal communication with the data. In other words: the pursuit of frictionless communication is becoming a reality.Smart Integration With Existing ToolsCan you combine existing data from existing systems? Yes, we can integrate our communication software into existing systems. LIKE.TG's solutions are suitable for all organizations, regardless of size or volume. This way, you automate part of the process, and your employees no longer have to retrieve information in different tools. This saves valuable time that they can better spend on customer contact. Long and expensive implementations are also a thing of the past. In addition, cloud solutions are easy to use.An Optimal Customer Experience for Your CustomersAllow customers to arrange their insurance in a secure digital environment, but keep the personal touch. Embrace the available technologies and improve the customer journey every step of the way. Digitization becomes the solution for an optimal customer experience.
How to Scale in Southeast Asia With WhatsApp Business
Being home to approximately 677 million people, Southeast Asia presents fertile ground for businesses to unlock new growth opportunities. When venturing into the Southeast Asian market, however, your business needs to be strategic in choosing the platforms to cultivate a brand presence on. After all, you don’t want to stretch your resources too thin, only to derive marginal improvements in brand awareness or reputation.In this regard, WhatsApp is a strong contender. By now, you would have likely heard of this chat channel. In fact, you may already be using it to keep in touch with friends, family, or colleagues. But WhatsApp isn’t just a well-known C2C platform: it also offers a business-focused solution, known as WhatsApp Business, for businesses to connect and interact with WhatsApp users.In fact, if you intend to scale your business’s Southeast Asian operations, then WhatsApp may just be the key to accelerating your growth in the region. Read on to find out more.Tap on a Top Channel in Southeast AsiaThe convenience of accessing the Internet from a mobile phone has driven a mobile-first approach to the way people obtain information from, shop, and interact with businesses online. And Southeast Asia is especially mobile-mad, with there generally being more mobile connections than there are people in the region.According to strategic marketing consultancy Kepios, for example, the number of mobile connections in Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines in January 2021 represented 145.5%, 125.6%, and 138.2% of these countries’ respective populations.WhatsApp also enjoys high usage in Southeast Asia despite the rising number of chat apps at consumers’ disposal. In the 2021 edition of its Social Media Report, audience targeting company GWI named WhatsApp the top platform in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore, among other countries.Businesses that want to scale need to have a presence in their target audiences’ channels of choice. Hence, for succeeding in South East Asia, it isn’t enough for businesses to build a mobile-friendly website and declare that they are “now on mobile.”With WhatsApp being one of the most popular mobile platforms in Southeast Asia, businesses vying for a slice of the Southeast Asian market will also need to establish a presence on WhatsApp. Doing so should not be an optional afterthought.3 Ways of Using WhatsApp Business (With Examples)1. Accept Customer OrdersIt isn’t uncommon for businesses to put up online order forms on their websites. Going one step further, you can replicate the order workflow on WhatsApp, and open a new avenue for receiving customer orders.Through a series of simple commands such as “order” or “confirm,” or through keying in numbers that correspond to various items, customers will be able to specify the items they want and in which quantities. If your business offers delivery, you can also tap on WhatsApp’s location-sharing feature to accurately obtain the customer’s delivery location.This is exactly how pizza chain Pizza Hut Malaysia has implemented an automated WhatsApp pizza ordering system.Customers first initiate a chat with the business’ official Pizza Hut EasyOrder system on WhatsApp. The system then guides them through a series of questions that help customers:Place their order,Schedule delivery or self-pickup at a specified time,Provide their location if they have opted for delivery, andPay for their order through various online payment methods.While most of the ordering process takes place via text chat, Pizza Hut Malaysia’s ordering system also strategically sends images of the available pizza toppings to facilitate the purchase decision.Alternatively, if the customer decides not to proceed with the order, the ordering system will send the customer a coupon code the next day to try and rescue the sale.2. Provide Quick ServicesApart from helping businesses accept one-off orders, WhatsApp Business can also provide businesses with a channel for providing subscription-related services. This process can be largely automated, reducing the extent of manpower needed to assist with customer subscriptions.In Indonesia, telecommunications provider IM3 Ooredoo offers a service for customers to manage their mobile plans through WhatsApp.Customers simply need to launch a WhatsApp chat with Indira, which is IM3 Ooredoo’s digital assistant. The WhatsApp service then detects the customer’s mobile number to confirm that they are an IM3 Ooredoo subscriber. Afterward, the customer will be able to launch the relevant mobile plan service they need, such as:Topping up their credits,Buying new packages, orPaying their bills.However, if IM3 Ooredoo’s WhatsApp service determines that the WhatsApp user is not an existing customer, then the user will be directed to either buy a SIM card with the business, or learn more about its offers and store locations.3. Offer Customer SupportWith WhatsApp being a text messaging platform, customers will find it intuitive to chat with a business to ask about its services or get help with an order.For example, insurance provider Etiqa Insurance offers Singapore customers the option of obtaining live chat support via WhatsApp:Through this platform, customers can seek clarification on general matters, or issues relating to specific insurance policies they have purchased.As your business’s customer support team responds to queries, you may find that some questions can easily be resolved using templated responses. If so, you can set up a chatbot in WhatsApp Business to send automated replies to such frequently asked questions.Then, if a customer has a question requiring human input, your customer support solution can automatically transfer the conversation to a customer service representative. Your representative can then pick up the discussion from where the chatbot left off, for a seamless customer experience.Get Started With WhatsApp Business—the Southeast Asian Market AwaitsReady to leverage WhatsApp to scale in Southeast Asia? Then you have two main options.The first option is to download the WhatsApp Business app. Unlike the consumer version of the WhatsApp app, the WhatsApp Business app allows businesses to create a business profile to display their address and website on their WhatsApp profile. Businesses can also save templated replies for responding to messages more conveniently.The WhatsApp Business app may be suitable for small business owners who want to use the app solely for replying to customer queries, either by themselves or by a single customer support representative. This is because businesses can have only one active user account on the WhatsApp Business app at any one point in time. The WhatsApp Business app is also not capable of supporting more sophisticated workflows, such as chatbots that can accept customer orders or assist with quick services.For such situations, businesses will need to procure access to the WhatsApp Business API. The API provides powerful features, such as automated messaging, team collaboration, and chatbot integrations, for businesses to scale their service offerings on the WhatsApp platform.LIKE.TG is an official WhatsApp Business solution provider, offering API access in competitively-priced bundles for businesses of all sizes. Once you’ve integrated the WhatsApp Business API with your customer contact platforms, you’ll be able to configure your WhatsApp chat workflows and launch a powerful new channel for driving customer engagement and sales. Get in touch to learn more about our WhatsApp Business solutions today.
Provide Seamless Operations For Your Customer Engagement
Happy customers are returning customers. And returning customers may even become brand ambassadors!I'm sure you've employed the best solutions to engage with your customers. But do they deliver a good customer experience? Are these solutions smooth and hassle-free? Is the user experience you're offering truly seamless, both for your customers and your employees?Why a Seamless Customer Experience Is ImportantTechnology should make life easier, not complicate it. Perfectly well-crafted solutions can be in vain if your customers can not appreciate the effort.Customer expectations are high and even the most technologically advanced solutions can annoy your customers when your different applications and solutions aren't linked and don’t ‘talk’ to each other. Your solutions end up being their own little islands. The customer is then forced to row their boat from one island to the other whilst growing exhausted and annoyed.Even your employees will start to feel frustrated when their internal experience is anything but seamless. Multiple logins, inaccessible data, and solutions without clear ownership can cause friction and slow down operations. Everybody wants to be able to offer the optimal customer experience, but if (legacy) software prevents the customer journey from going smoothly, it will be frustrating for all parties involved.How to Create Seamless Customer EngagementHow can you ensure that your operations and processes run smoothly and seamlessly? Let's have a look at how to create a frictionless experience for your customers and employees.Seamless Customer ExperienceA seamless customer experience is, simply put, a frictionless customer journey. Customers have high (technological) expectations of businesses and when these expectations are not met, the customer will experience this as friction. Ask yourself these questions:Do I communicate with my customers on the channels they prefer to use?Is our business available when customers most need us?Are my (digital) processes automated for self-service?Is my UI mobile-friendly?Is it easy for my customers to find important information?Is my communication personalized?Do I offer solutions that my customers are familiar with?Do my solutions require work from my customers?To create a seamless experience for customers, it is important that you meet or even outperform their expectations. A mobile-friendly or mobile-first approach will make your business approachable and automating processes online will allow your customers to self-service. Customers will have a positive experience with your business when the solutions you offer require minimal effort from them, are easily navigable, and are available on platforms and channels that they are familiar with.Seamless Employee ExperienceA seamless experience for your employees means smooth operations and processes that will make their job easier. Your employees' solutions should work for them, not against them. Ask yourself these questions:Do my employees need multiple logins to access all systems necessary to do their job?Is all knowledge stored in one place?Are data and data analysis easy to access?Are all software solutions owned by different providers?Is the support for the (software) solutions well organized?Do the (software) solutions have clear ownership within our business?Do I know enough about the security of our solutions?Do my (software) solutions adopt new innovative trends? Do they stay on top of the technological developments?Do the solutions increase the quality and speed of work?To create a seamless experience for your engaged employees, the (software) solutions must be integrated. Ensure that all (customer) information and data is available where needed. Let different solutions tap into the same knowledge base to prevent miscommunication and loss of knowledge. Make it easy for your employees to access the software they need to be able to do their job and ensure that the support for these solutions is fast and easily accessible.You can achieve this by either syncing existing solutions from different providers to each other (via open APIs) or finding a provider that offers an all-in-one package.Our VisionAcross all sectors and at companies of all sizes, technology departments must identify and deploy innovative IT solutions that meet today’s business needs while anticipating the challenges of tomorrow. Use cases and specifics may change from one business to the next, yet all technology departments share the purpose and goal of creating, simplifying, and streamlining complex digital processes.IT and technology decision-makers must find solutions that meet the customer expectations and improve employee experience without creating more work for the humans that deploy, maintain, secure, and repair them.Wish to learn more about seamless operations and the importance of a consumer-led technology estate? Have a chat with us today.
Conversational Channels Are No Longer Optional
Customers aren’t email addresses, or phone numbers, or WhatsApp handles. They are discrete individuals, making different choices. Whether it’s inbound or outbound, real time or time shifted, people’s communication preferences span a rainbow of moods and modes. Because they’re not thinking channels—they’re thinking goals.And what do customers need to reach these goals you might ask? They want to communicate on the channels they already use in their daily lives. Whether that’s via WhatsApp, SMS, Apple Messages for Business, or even through voice calls. Nobody wants to download another app to get in touch.Each channel comes with its own strengths, and most customers use more than one channel. Send automated updates via SMS. Let a chatbot respond on WhatsApp Business. Or swing in an agent when the conversation needs a human touch. The goal is to keep the conversation connected as a user switches between platforms. This is known as omnichannel messaging.So how do you choose which channels are the right fit for your business? Let's discuss the conversational channels LIKE.TG's cloud-based Business Messaging API currently covers.WhatsApp BusinessWith 2 billion users, WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging channels on the planet. WhatsApp Business API allows you to interact seamlessly with your customers in real-time whilst using the rich media features that the channel provides.Facebook MessengerNow separate to the main Facebook mobile app, Facebook Messenger has some subtle differences to WhatsApp Business despite both being owned by the same parent. Facebook Messages tend to be closer to email than WhatsApp’s real time chats. With a more social aspect than WhatsApp, there’s also a high proportion of bots, with hundreds of thousands of companies using AI to answer common questions and kick off conversations.Instagram MessagingBy enabling Instagram Messaging, businesses are able to provide 1-on-1 customer care and have personalized conversations with consumers that reach out to them via their Instagram Business Profile, Stories or Shop. With over 1 billion active Instagram users, Instagram Messaging provides businesses a great opportunity to provide customer care and drive sales.Apple Messages for BusinessApple Messages for Business adds value to your omnichannel messaging strategy. How? It’s threefold: the profile of the Apple user, the way it integrates with other Apple apps, and its rich features and entry points. Its advantages include higher-value conversations with higher-value customers. In Apple Messages for Business, all conversations are started by the customer, reaching out to your business. And once they do, Business Chat users are at an advantage: fewer websites offer it as an option, funneling more customers into your space if you offer it.SMSThe original mobile notification channel, SMS has been around since 1992—and is perfect to send customer service updates and delivery advice. It’s a native channel that 1.5bn people still use every day—meaning it’s unlikely to go away any time soon. It lets you communicate reliably with every phone in the world—and there are more of those on Earth than there are people! Of course, you may be using it already—but unless it’s integrated into your broader engagement strategy, it’s not delivering its full potential.RCSRCS —Rich Communications Services— is an unfamiliar acronym to consumers, but millions use it every day without knowing: there are 430m active users. Unlike others, it’s not so much an app as a set of protocols that companies can build messaging apps on. Google Messaging App is one of these. With a large audience and less market recognition, RCS is an interesting addition to any omnichannel messaging strategy.Google’s Business MessagesEnable consumers to chat with you directly from Google Search, Maps and across your owned channels with Google’s Business Messages. It offers you a great opportunity in guiding and supporting customers when they need it, anywhere, anytime. With direct access from Google Search, Maps or across your owned channels, you can deliver helpful, timely, and rich experiences to your customers, across the entire customer journey.ViberAnother app with global reach is Viber. A new name to many in North America and Western Europe—which is the whole point: it’s common in countries outside these markets, including over a billion monthly users in Eastern Europe, Russia, the Middle East, and parts of Asia. It offers businesses two services: Viber Business Messages and Viber Chatbot. Viber Business Messages works for outbound messages like (opted-in) promotions and offers. For customer service, Viber Chatbot lets you answer user questions automatically and pick up the conversation after, switching to a human agent if needed.And More Conversational Channels to Come.LIKE.TG’s API for conversational channels offers you the opportunity to connect with your customers on their preferred channels. It's an essential asset to growing your business online.Attract customers with marketing messages, keep them in the loop with service notifications, and update them at every step of the customer journey. The API lets you engage more deeply across media, with one-to-one chats that solve queries and answer customer service issues.You can start small- even with a single channel- and add others as you scale. And as new conversational channels emerge, they’ll be added to the API, ready for you to integrate into your own processes
5 Examples of Relationship Marketing Done Right
What Is Relationship Marketing?Relationship marketing is a business strategy that builds and nurtures long-term personal connections between your brand and your existing customers, increasing engagement, satisfaction, and loyalty.With increasingly expensive customer acquisition costs, customer retention is one of the most critical factors in a company’s success. According to Semrush, the probability of selling to an existing customer is between 60% and 70%, whereas the likelihood of selling products or services to a new customer is only between 5% to 20%.Relationship marketing is a force multiplier. How? Quality customer experiences deepen the trust and devotion customers have for your brand. Many companies strive to offer a great customer experience but also, need to ramp up their customer retention strategies. Interacting with repeat customers through ongoing conversations creates bonds that competitors struggle to break. The result: Long-term customers who increase your customer lifetime value (CLV), customer retention rate, and even generate new leads.Let’s dive in and showcase five businesses that are hitting it out of the park.Here Are 5 Relationship Marketing Examples1. GrabGrab started out as a ride-hailing app but has since created a viable ecosystem in Southeast Asia covering transport, food, supermarket, and package delivery, offering plenty of available jobs to their partners. Grab gave opportunities for drivers to earn additional income via using its app platform. For example, Grab helps new drivers by giving them mobile phones with a payment plan, and the team reaches out to these drivers to explain its app, WhatsApp, and Google Maps services. This ensures their drivers are equipped with the knowledge that they need.Customers are everything to Grab, and the company goes beyond to serve its customer needs and enhance its partners' experiences. Grab continuously cultivates its partner driver's relationship and enables drivers to earn additional revenue than the average taxi driver. Like-minded consumers are inspired to support a brand like Grab that concretely demonstrates its values.2. StarbucksStarbucks helped make getting a cup of coffee what it is today. Starbucks is a cultural icon as it is a business, showcasing its ubiquitous cups in social media posts on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. For example, Starbucks’ tagline on Pinterest reads, “Inspiring and nurturing the human spirit – one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time.”Starbucks sends frequent emails to their customers, informing them of exclusive offers and new beverage launches. They also share customer content and interact with them on their social channels. Their tight-knit community often lines up before sunrise for the chance of obtaining their latest holiday-themed cup or specialty beverage.3. GEGeneral Electric (GE) is a multinational conglomerate whose tagline is “Building a world that works.” GE has set itself apart from traditional energy companies by positioning itself as an innovator, thought leader, and sustainable technology company. In addition, GE has focused on employee participation and compelling storytelling to craft an identity as a global content marketer.Their GE Reports website is an excellent example of content marketing, including podcasts, articles, videos, and infographics that help build strong relationships with customers. They achieve their goal of informing and educating their shareholders and the public about relevant topics through curated content for segmented markets.4. American ExpressAmerican Express (Amex) has successfully mastered the customer journey. Its strategic marketing campaign approach encompasses account applications, onboarding, engagement, cross-selling, and referrals, making it one of the most successful credit card businesses today.Their account opening process is customer-friendly and straightforward, taking only 30 seconds to complete. New customers receive bonuses via direct mail, including discounts and travel perks. In addition, their multichannel “Share the Love” referral program (promoted online, on social media, and via email marketing) is strong, granting the referring party 15,000 bonus points.5. Circles.Life To capture the elusive millennial market, Circles.Life disrupted the telco industry in Singapore and began offering consumers mobile services without long-term contracts. This approach (unorthodox for telecom carriers) proved wildly successful, improving customer satisfaction, engagement, and referral business.Despite not having a brick-and-mortar store, Circles.Life leverages social media platforms to engage and convert customers. Their marketing team also relies on these channels for social listening and enhanced customer engagement such as actively gathering reviews and product feedback and launching new products based on the customer's valuable inputs.In addition, Circles.Life's referral program has been the most effective channel for customer acquisition as over 40% of their transactions are due to referrals via word-of-mouth. Every Circles.Life customer has a unique referral code that can be shared with friends and family.Benefits of Relationship MarketingNow that you’ve seen the inspiring relationship marketing examples, let’s discuss some of their benefits.Higher Customer RetentionRelationship marketing turns potential customers into happy, loyal customers who often buy products and services from companies. Studies show that fully engaged customers spend 23% more than unengaged customers. Cultivating loyalty with existing and new customers is key to your business's success.Increased ReferralsHappy customers want their friends and families to get acquainted with their favorite brands too. 92% of consumers trust referrals from people they know, and customers referred by a friend are four times more likely to buy.Even in this digital age, word of mouth is priceless, and you should treat any customer who refers their friends or family to your business with utmost satisfaction.Improved ROIReturn on investment is a key performance indicator (KPI) that often determines a marketing strategy's success or failure. Increased retention drives customer acquisition costs down, making more marketing dollars available for long-term relationship marketing efforts.Increased Competitive AdvantageIf you think everyone has realized the value of relationship marketing, think again. There are still vast opportunities to use this powerful tool to gain a foothold in a very competitive marketplace. Building quality relationships can help you stand apart in the sea of sameness, cementing long-term success.A proactive, personal approach to customer service goes a long way in terms of customer retention.Enhanced Brand ReputationHappy customers are your most important asset. Satisfied customers often use social media platforms to talk about their experiences with companies, both good and bad. Inspiring your customers to sing your praises enhances your brand reputation, leading to new customers and repeat sales.Ready To Get Started With Relationship Marketing?LIKE.TG’s Mobile Marketing Cloud enables you to reach your customers on their favorite mobile channels, sending hyper-personalized messages that resonate and spark engagement.Mobile Marketing Cloud is an omnichannel marketing platform built specifically for B2C marketers. It provides the user-friendly tools you need to create smart audience segments and dynamic workflows for hyper-personalized mobile campaigns, kick-starting your relationship marketing strategy.
Developing a Last-Mile Fulfillment Experience That Delivers
A package may have traveled a long distance to reach its intended recipient. Possibly even halfway around the world! But the journey isn’t over yet. The package is now at the second-last stop of the way, and it’s up to your logistics business to safely take the package to its final destination—namely, its owner’s hands.Enter last-mile fulfillment, which is the process spanning this final transport trip. It’s an essential component in e-commerce, where people shop online and expect their orders to reach them in perfect condition.Your logistics business will need to adopt the right strategy and tools to prove itself as a reliable last-mile fulfillment partner for e-commerce. After all, as Statista shares, retail e-commerce market volume in Southeast Asia is forecast to only grow over the next few years. In this guide, we explore what last-mile fulfillment is and how you can improve your last-mile fulfillment processes to:Improve customer satisfaction,Facilitate a better business relationship with retailers, andReceive a healthy stream of delivery jobs as you ride the e-commerce wave.What Is Last-Mile Fulfillment?Last-mile fulfillment refers to the last step of the delivery process that gets a package from the retailer to the customer.In a typical e-commerce fulfillment process, a customer first orders an item from a retailer. The retailer arranges the customer’s item to be packed and perhaps even flown in from abroad. After that, the package is sent to a central distribution center closest to the customer.At the distribution center, the package is assigned to a logistics company, which tasks one of its delivery personnel with transporting the package. The delivery personnel picks up the package and delivers it to the customer to fulfill their order. This is the last step in the delivery process, hence where last-mile fulfillment comes in.What Could Go Wrong During Last-Mile Fulfillment?So many things. The main concerns during last-mile fulfillment include packages being delivered late or even going missing before delivery. Such scenarios could happen due to myriad reasons, such as:Unexpected delays in delivery schedules. For safety reasons, delivery personnel may need to temporarily halt delivery during poor weather conditions. Traffic jams can also impede delivery (traffic in Indonesia and Thailand is known to be notoriously congested, for example!)The delivery personnel having difficulty finding the customer’s location. This could happen if the customer had mistyped their delivery address or if the customer’s neighborhood has a confusing layout or lacks signage.Having insufficient delivery personnel to deliver orders. If your logistics business doesn’t have enough delivery personnel to keep up with demand, you might be unable to adhere to delivery schedules.No one being home to collect the package. The result is a wasted trip for your delivery personnel, who will also need to return at a future date to re-attempt delivery.Customers have high expectations for delivery. They want their orders to arrive in pristine condition and to arrive fast. Possibly even on the same day or the next day at the latest, for groceries and essential household items.If your logistics business is unable to deliver (pun not intended), expect many unhappy customers who will express their dissatisfaction to the retailer. Retailers want their logistics partners to handle high order volumes and tight delivery timelines. So when they get wind of how your logistics business is failing in last-mile fulfillment, they may not want to continue engaging you for delivery jobs.The result? Your revenue takes a hit.How to Improve Last-Mile Fulfillment: 4 Ways1. Hire More Delivery PersonnelIf a shortage of delivery personnel is affecting your last-mile fulfillment performance, then the clear solution is to hire more.A popular option is for businesses to crowd-source their delivery personnel on an independent contractor basis instead of putting them on full-time payroll. For instance, Amazon’s Amazon Flex program allows anyone with their vehicle to take up ad hoc package delivery jobs for Amazon on a flexible schedule. Similarly, Grab engages independent delivery partners to deliver freshly prepared meals, groceries, and even documents.Through such a crowd-sourcing arrangement, logistics businesses can rapidly adjust the size of their delivery personnel base according to the number of delivery jobs received. Having such a skill is vital during major shopping periods where orders—and hence the demand for delivery—will predictably spike.2. Invest in Smart TechnologyBesides beefing up your human resources for last-mile fulfillment, leveraging smart technology can also help you deliver orders more effectively.For instance, tap on transport management software platforms that help logistics businesses optimize delivery routes and maximize the number of orders delivered within a particular schedule.These platforms may also include built-in communication features for businesses to contact delivery personnel on the go. This way, if a person monitoring traffic conditions in the business’ headquarters becomes aware of a traffic jam, they can inform affected delivery personnel ahead of time and re-route them to maintain timely delivery.At the same time, the logistics business can use a customer engagement solution—such as Mobile Marketing Cloud—to send an automated message to the customer that their package is delayed (but still on its way!)Alternatively, customers may want to make proactive inquiries into the status of their package or change the date of delivery. An intelligent conversation platform like Conversational AI Cloud can provide a 24/7 self-service portal for customers to manage their deliveries anytime and from any location.Last but not least, look into e-signing software to digitally take customer signatures for deliveries. By doing so, you do away with the tedious handling of physical delivery documents.3. Explore Alternative Fulfillment MethodsInstead of sending packages to customers’ homes, why not deliver them to a central location that’s convenient for customers to head to? Not only making the last-mile fulfillment more efficient, but it can also prevent the headache of bringing a package to a customer’s address—only for no one to be around to receive it.For example, smart parcel locker systems are gradually becoming commonplace. These are lockers typically located near a cluster of residential blocks, in which delivery personnel can deposit individual packages. Afterward, customers can retrieve their packages by keying in a unique access code or scanning a QR code associated with their package.Alternatively, work to establish collection points at merchants near residential areas, such as convenience stores. Your delivery personnel can drop off packages with these merchants for customers to pick up at their leisure. The customer may also choose to purchase something from the merchant simultaneously, creating a win-win situation for all parties involved.4. Prioritize Your Communication With CustomersTry as you might, not all deliveries will go as planned. You may need to inform customers of delayed delivery due to unforeseen events, or customers may want to reschedule delivery. This is where maintaining an open customer support channel can help smoothen out such last-mile fulfillment complications and leave customers happy with their delivery experience nevertheless.With Mobile Marketing Cloud, your business can proactively send delivery updates to notify customers of when they can expect to receive their packages. These messages will be saved in Mobile Marketing Cloud, and can also be synced to our Mobile Service Cloud customer service software to facilitate any subsequent customer service conversations.Mobile Service Cloud then allows your business to engage customers on their preferred communication channels, such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram Messenger. Regardless of the preferred channel, all support messages will be consolidated into an Agent Inbox for ease of management by your customer service team.Conversational AI Cloud also integrates with Mobile Service Cloud to unlock powerful conversational AI features for automating responses to common queries 24/7 (especially delivery status questions from eager customers!) Then, for queries requiring more human support, there is a smooth handover to Mobile Service Cloud, which seamlessly connects customers to a customer service representative for specialized assistance.Last-Mile Fulfillment May Take Place Last, But It Should Not Be An Afterthought.No matter the number of miles a package may have clocked in its “travels,” they all count for nothing if the package ultimately fails to reach the customer. As the party in charge of last-mile fulfillment, you don’t want your business to be the weak link that causes a well-executed supply chain to crumble.Even if your logistics business is faring well at this time, it pays to invest in enhancements for greater scale in the long term. Consider upgrading your last-mile fulfillment tech stack with Conversational AI Cloud, which adds a layer of artificial intelligence to your customer service processes.When you incorporate Conversational AI Cloud into your operations, you gain deeper insights into your customers and their common delivery-related inquiries. Using such data, you can work on providing information that preemptively addresses such concerns, and foster a more delightful customer experience. You can also look forward to rendering smart and timely responses to frequently asked questions, while freeing up your staff to attend to more complex customer queries.Explore how Conversational AI Cloud can improve your business’ last-mile fulfillment experience today.
The Future of Customer Service Starts with Multidisciplinary Teams
What Are Multidisciplinary Teams?Multidisciplinary teams originated in the healthcare industry — as School of Design Thinking notes, they can be defined as,"A group of health care workers who are members of different disciplines — each providing specific services to the patient. They coordinate their services and work together towards a specific set of goals."Whether you’re in the public or private sector, B2B or B2C — multidisciplinary teams can help break down silos and support customer-focused employees to create more enhanced and cohesive customer experiences.Professionals in customer-focused multidisciplinary teams benefit from unique perspectives and expertise of different departments — including those in sales, marketing, customer experience, and customer service.In this article, we dive into the value of multidisciplinary customer-focused teams in more detail and show you how to get started with them.1. Why Should You Care About Multidisciplinary Teams?From sales and marketing to customer service — there are multiple departments and professionals involved in creating a supportive and engaging customer experience.But when these teams don’t communicate effectively and align themselves towards a common goal, both the customer experience and overall success of a business suffer. One of the best ways to break down these organizational silos and create the kind of customer experiences consumers crave is to focus on creating multidisciplinary teams. Each person brings his or her diverse expertise and unique perspective on fulfilling customers’ needs to the table and exceeding customer expectations.In addition, such a team correlates with customer perception — customers typically perceive your company and the people who work for you as a single entity, not a “sales rep” versus a “customer service rep”.2. What Are the Benefits?By breaking down silos, each professional can work together to shape and create a responsive, engaging, and supportive customer experience that reflects every individual customer’s needs at every single touchpoint. As B State notes, when everyone shares the same viewpoints, skills and experiences then creative and dynamic thinking will atrophy.Each professional from each team can offer a ton of actionable, additional insights into customers — what they want, what they value, and what their biggest struggles are. For example, marketing professionals can take insights from other team members to attract new prospects at the earliest stage of the customer journey. While customer service professionals can better pre-empt customer needs and problems based on live chat and customer support, providing faster and more effective resolution.3. Why Multidisciplinary Teams Matter in the Eyes of Your CustomerAccording to Helpscout, 63% of customers expect businesses to have a prior understanding of their unique needs and expectations. While each team that deals with or directly targets customers has its own understanding of customers and what they want and need — this information can get lost in translation with siloed working.A research from Salesforce shows that 76% of customers expect consistent interactions across departments, but 54% state that they feel like sales, customer service, and marketing teams don’t share information. When important customer information isn’t shared, a consistent and streamlined customer experience gets disrupted.Besides, based on customer feedback, HubSpot reports that 70% of consumers believe that departments should work together to meet their needs. For example, if customers have a question about upgrading a subscription — they would prefer the customer success team to connect them to sales, rather than reaching out to them by themselves.Multidisciplinary teams address this expectation — as professionals can quickly and effortlessly share customer information and work together to ensure that the right team member can handle the issue or query.4. Tips to Start Working with Multidisciplinary TeamsTo help make a multidisciplinary team a success, you need to begin with clear guidelines that are customer-centric. These should include:Clearly stated shared goals and metrics – focusing on the customerA shared understanding of roles within the team and how these roles will impact one anotherStatements around working practices, schedules, and preferred channels — different professionals will likely be used to approach these differently.The Way to Meet Customer Expectations: Multidisciplinary TeamsBy breaking through silos and enriching customer insights — multidisciplinary teams can go a long way in enhancing customer experiences and customer satisfaction. Additionally, by creating a streamlined customer experience and bringing new perspectives on how best to serve and support customers, multidisciplinary teams are well-placed to meet customer expectations.The rise of multidisciplinary teams is one of the customer service trends covered in our whitepaper on future customer service trends. Curious to learn more? Read our whitepaper here.
How to Get More Leads With SMS and Email Marketing
A lot of businesses don’t use SMS and email marketing to their fullest potential, as they don’t always use the right techniques to improve the open- or conversion rates of their marketing messages. Once you know how to get started with the conversion optimization of your SMS or email marketing campaigns, you will be able to significantly increase your conversion rate and utilize your marketing channels to their full potential.Conversion Optimization for Mobile MarketingConversion optimization for Mobile Marketing is the process of testing and experimenting to improve all possible facets of your campaign. This can be the headline, subject line, the text in the message itself, the audience you’re sending it to, the time of day, and more. Everything that your message encompasses can be subjected to optimization.If you want to start optimizing your messages, it’s best to do so in a structured way. With a good structure, this ensures that you can learn from these results later on and that you don’t just start testing things based on gut feeling.6 Steps for Conversion Optimization1. Establish a Mobile Marketing BaselineTo find out whether a new version of your message performs better, you first need to know how it has performed in the past. Establish a marketing strategy to compare the results of your new messages. This will help to increase your conversion rate optimization (CRO).Be sure to note any relevant results like the number of recipients, time of day, day of the week, time of the month (e.g. did you send the message around pay-day or just before when everyone postpones spending money until their paycheck arrives?), open rate, click-through-rate (CTR), amount of conversions (note: specify what a conversion is for you), conversion rate, and anything else of importance.2. Analyze Results and ImproveTo learn how your message can be improved, it’s important to analyze the results. What parts of your message are not performing as well as they could? Is the open rate lower than expected?Or are people opening your message, but not taking any further action based on the contents of the message? Your analysis will tell you which parts of your message can do better and will help you to formulate your goal.3. Determine Your GoalIf your open rate is low, your goal will be to start improving that. If there are multiple parts of your message that you would like to improve, start with identifying the most important one. If, for example, your open rate and click-through rate of the message’s contents are low, it would be better to first work on the open rate.After all, no one is going to see your improved content if no one is opening it in the first place. So, determine your goal and let that direct your focus towards the thing that needs improvement most.4. Form Your HypothesisBy now, you have a pretty clear idea of what you need to improve to reach your goal. But how are you going to do that?You need to form a hypothesis about what you think would work better than the message you have now. You may already have some ideas about things that might work based on previous experiences. Or you may have no idea where to start.You can start by evaluating some email/SMS marketing best practices and see whether these would fit for your business. You will only know whether these are suitable for you once you start testing, but it gives you a solid starting point.5. Set Up the TestOnce you have done the analysis, determined your goal, and formulated your hypothesis, it’s time to set up your test. The best way is to do an A/B test. An A/B test compares version A (the original version) to changes made in version B while all other conditions are kept the same.If you send the test to a big enough group of recipients and all conditions (e.g. time of day, day in the week, type of audience, etc.) are kept the same, an A/B test will let you conclude whether the results can be attributed to the made changes or whether they happened due to chance.This depends on your sample size. You need to send it to a large group of people to be able to determine whether the results you achieved are significant. You can use a sample size calculator to determine how big your sample needs to be so you can be sure that the result you’re getting is due to the changes you made and not due to chance.If you’re working with LIKE.TG’s platform, use the Address Book app to randomly divide your recipients into two marketing groups. Make two separate campaigns, one for version A and one for version B. Keep everything in the campaigns the same except for the element you want to test.Set up your message, implement the changes in version B, randomly add one of the recipient groups to campaign A, and add the other to campaign B. Send your message, and wait for the results to come in.The sample size indicates the size of the group of people who are going to receive your message. The size of this group and the number of conversions you’re getting determine the significance of your test.Significance refers to whether we can rely on the made changes to have generated these results, or whether we can’t rely on the changes, but see that the results were simply due to chance. What this really means is that we want to be able to say: we can be 95% sure that the changes we made will improve our conversion rate.6. Analyze the ResultsOnce your test is finished, you can analyze the results to determine whether the results confirm your hypothesis. Keep sample size and significance in mind so you never draw conclusions based on effects that resulted by chance.For example, if all conditions besides the test variable were the same and version A was sent out to 2000 recipients and had 3 conversions, and version B was also sent out to 2000 recipients but had 60 conversions, it’s safe to say that version B has performed significantly better. If you want to be sure about the significance of your results, you can always use a significance calculator.When you have analyzed the results and implemented the changes, the entire process can start again to keep improving and improving.Get Started With Mobile Marketing CloudFor the most effective mobile marketing campaigns, you need the right marketing tool. Mobile Marketing Cloud by LIKE.TG, offers solutions for your campaigns, landing pages, marketing automation, and data collection that will enhance your strategic marketing efforts.We have been able to severely increase the performance of our messages by running A/B tests. You can do this too by following the steps we explained above. Make sure you keep improving your messages to get the most out of your marketing for your business and to be one step ahead of the competition by staying on top of your results.
Avoid Losing One Third of Your Customers in One Day
Knowing this, the first thing you would expect retail brands to do is to start getting their customer service in order... wouldn’t you? After all, customer service is the department most likely to make the quickest, most positive impact, on your Customer Experience (CX) — and prevent up to 70% of customers from leaving along the way. Sounds too good to be true? Let’s see.Brands Are (Still) Losing the CX BattleDespite the fact that 80% of companies expect to compete mainly based on CX and 84% see an uplift in revenue/profits when they improve it, companies’ CX improvements keep on stalling, year after year.Brands that want to excel in their CX should focus on emotion. In every industry, companies with a good customer experience will have a greater influence on customer loyalty to the brand and achieve the CX differentiation from other companies.So, What’s Going On?While consumer expectations keep on rising (probably due to the Amazon Effect), many brands are struggling to get a grip of customer experience. They struggle with defining CX, prioritizing, and connecting the right internal departments. Some senior management teams are still skeptical and want more proof of ROI before they get serious about CX. Some brands find it hard to get a single view of the customer across multiple channels— systems and data can be a pain. Others say they struggle to map customer journeys across channels.But let’s take one step back. Here’s a question for you:What do you think is the most important part of designing a great customer experience?Knowing What the Customer Expects“Customer expectations are being redefined every day and the ability to meet basic expectations is table stakes”- Dutta Satadip, Global Head of Customer Operations, PinterestThe ability to meet basic customer expectations is table stakes when you want to compete on customer experience. So, what are those expectations?We all talk a lot about emotions, positive experiences, seamless experiences, personalization, and so on, but if we take a look at PwC’s Future of Customer Experience survey, a pattern emerges.Nearly 80% of surveyed consumers say that speed, convenience, knowledgeable help, and friendly service (and easy payment) are the most important elements of a positive customer experience. Likewise in the Asia Pacific, customers remain attached to a high emotional value to human touch for a positive customer experience.And, when we started researching online shoppers and their expectations back in 2014, we found exactly the same. When it comes to customer service, customers want it fast, friendly, and effective.What People Value Most in Their Customer Experience (PwC):SpeedFriendly ServiceKnowledgeable ServiceConvenienceEasy PaymentWhat People Expect From Customer Service:SpeedFriendly ServiceEffective ServiceFrom here, it should be quite easy to connect the dots.Where Customer Service and Customer Experience ConnectIf you want to make serious headway in CX, start getting your customer service up to scratch. Let service work on meeting customer expectations— today.The best start is to get service conversations under control, and start meeting industry targets with four Customer KPIs:Speed to respondEffective in solving customer issuesFriendliness of your service teamAvailability of your customer service teamAfter that, you can define Operational and CX KPIs. But that is another story.Before we go, let’s revisit our opening stat:32% of customers will leave your brand after just one bad experience.And what is the single biggest reason people have that bad experience? Yes, it is customer service!
Top 5 Marketing Tech Stack Essentials for 2022
Some marketing teams rely on one to four trusted tools in their marketing tech stack, while others have as many as 21 or more. And the more tools your team needs, the more time they’ll likely spend testing different tools to identify the best ones. Your team may also incur more costs in the process as not all tools can be used for free.To save your marketing team such time and financial costs, we’re going to share our top five recommended tools for adding to your marketing technology stack in 2022.What Should Marketers Consider When Developing Their Marketing Tech Stack?Different marketing teams have different modes of operation, so you can’t give your marketing team another business’ marketing tech stack and expect it to work just as well. Instead, you’ll need to tailor your marketing tech stack according to issues such as:What is your marketing strategy? For example, which multiple channels does your business use to market itself? And which channels do your customers regularly use? You’ll want the tools in your marketing tech stack to integrate well with these channels.What challenges is your team facing with your existing marketing workflows? Look for tools that can help smoothen out these points of frustration. In particular, tools with automation capabilities can be extremely beneficial for getting repetitive tasks done on autopilot.What is your budget? Needless to say, your chosen marketing tools have to fit your budget for acquiring new technology.Can the tools in your marketing tech stack talk to each other well? If you need to send data from one tool to another, it’s worth checking if these tools have native integrations that create a seamless data synchronization.Here Are the Tools You’ll Need in Your Marketing Tech Stack for 2022A well-developed, robust marketing tech stack can help marketers execute more effective campaigns while reducing the costs incurred in the process. Scroll our list of recommended marketing tools to kick-start the development of your own marketing tech stack!1. An Audience Research ToolSuccessful marketing starts with first understanding your customers. You may have already created customer personas that describe your customers’ backgrounds, desires, and pain points. But where are they spending their time online? Without this information, you could end up blindly launching campaigns across many channels and still fail to connect with the majority of your customer base.This is where an audience research tool comes in. It provides insights into the social media accounts that your customers follow and the websites they visit, among other data. Armed with this vital intel, you can hone in on specific channels to develop campaigns for—because you know for certain that you’ll find your customers there.According to a 2022 Market Research Trends report by Qualtrics, 67% of businesses surveyed expressed greater interest in acquiring new specialized market research technology. Will your business be one of them?Recommended audience research tool: SparkToro2. An Omnichannel Marketing ToolAfter learning your customers’ favorite channels, it’s time to market to them on these channels. With an omnichannel marketing tool like Mobile Marketing Cloud, you can build targeted marketing campaigns to engage customers on their preferred mobile channels—be it WhatsApp, SMS, email, or something else.Here are the before-and-after differences when a business adds an omnichannel marketing tool to its martech stack:Before using an omnichannel marketing tool:Marketing teams have to manually execute campaigns, introducing lag time into the process.Marketing workflows are fragmented across separate marketing channels.Customers are subjected to generic marketing campaigns that may not suit their tastes or address their pain points.After using an omnichannel marketing tool:Marketing campaigns launch automatically upon being triggered, helping your business to capitalize on marketing opportunities without delay.Marketing workflows on various channels are consolidated into a single platform for ease of management.Customers receive marketing communications tailored to their preferences and enjoy a more personalized customer experience.Recommended omnichannel marketing tool: Mobile Marketing Cloud3. A Customer Data Platform (CDP)Your business may have collected a significant amount of customer data in the course of its operations. But you may have difficulty making the most of such data if you’re unable to determine which data points belong to which customer. This in turn makes it challenging to tailor your marketing campaigns according to your customers’ needs and interests.You wouldn’t be alone in facing such issues. In the February 2022 edition of The CMO Survey, fellow marketers also reported wanting tools for tracking integrating customer data across touchpoints. However, fewer than 40% of them were sure they had found such tools.Well, we’re here to reveal the ideal solution—namely, a customer data platform. This software helps unify your customer data across different touchpoints and build comprehensive profiles of each customer who has interacted with your business. Analyzing these profiles, you’ll gain a clearer understanding of your customers and how to market to them for higher engagement and conversion rates.Download your guide to Customer Data Platforms here to increase conversion by unifying your online and offline customer data.Recommended customer data platform: Mobile Marketing Cloud (which also has a customer data platform built in!)4. A Website Content Management SystemHaving an online presence is virtually mandatory these days. And despite the power of social media, nothing beats having a website where you have full control over your brand presentation.Enter the website content management system. This software provides a dedicated online space for you to showcase content related to your business, such as a resource blog, e-commerce pages, and video tutorials.And as you market your business’ offerings, guess where your marketing campaigns will likely point to? You got it—it’s your website content management system, which can host the landing pages you’ve created for your campaigns.Recommended website content management system: WordPress5. A Social Media Management ToolWhile running social media campaigns on multiple platforms at once, you’ll quickly find logging into each platform separately to be a chore. A social media management tool removes such hassle by letting you create and oversee your campaigns on various social platforms in one place.Apart from that, social media management tools typically offer other useful features such as:Content scheduling to automate the publishing of posts at any time of the dayA content calendar for convenient visualization of upcoming campaignsComprehensive analytics for reviewing campaign performance across platformsRecommended social media management tool: Sprout SocialAssemble Your Dream Team of Tools for Your Marketing Tech StackJust like how handymen can’t work without their toolbox, marketing teams need the right tools if they are to deliver impactful campaigns. And no matter your industry or business size, you’ll find an omnichannel marketing tool like Mobile Marketing Cloud a worthy addition to your marketing tech stack.Mobile Marketing Cloud’s built-in customer data platform integrates with a wide range of platforms to extract and streamline customer data into detailed customer profiles. Using these profiles, your marketing team can tap on Mobile Marketing Cloud’s advanced yet intuitive marketing automation capabilities to craft hyper-targeted campaigns.Mobile Marketing Cloud is trusted worldwide by brands that have improved their customer experience and conversions after deploying it in their business. Adding Mobile Marketing Cloud—and the other tools we’ve recommended above—to your marketing tech stack, your marketing team will be well placed to drive the growth and sales that your business seeks. Explore Mobile Marketing Cloud here to learn more about the roles it can play in your marketing tech stack.
4 Types of Chatbots to Consider For Your Customer Service
It all starts with the question, "What is a customer service chatbot, and why do I need one?" Digital adoption has led to the development of a customer service chatbot that is automated and can carry out simple and repetitive tasks to address basic customer questions at various touchpoints.It's crucial to improve your customer service consistently and with chatbots, you will be able to build a robust customer support experience on your site and mobile app.According to Businesswire, 66% of survey respondents in Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Japan, and Korea are aware of chatbots, with 85% of them having used chatbot services in 2021. Using a customer service chatbot ultimately helps businesses save time, reduce the support volume for the customer support team, and improve the customer experience. Let's find out more about the 4 types of chatbots for enhanced customer service:1. Scripted ChatbotsOne of the more common chatbots used by customer support and marketing is scripted chatbots that can carry out simple conversations with customers. When a user sends a customer service query, the chatbot will reply with a predefined script. If the conversation goes beyond the chatbot’s scripts, the bot can request more detailed information and connect the customer to a live customer support agent that can help.Scripted chatbots are popular for small- to medium-sized businesses that don’t typically receive complex questions from their customers. Although these types of chatbots have limited capabilities, they can help resolve common requests, such as return and exchange requests, and guide users through the customer journey. They can also be quickly added to your website to reduce the time and labor costs of your customer service department.2. Conversational AI ChatbotsArtificial Intelligence (AI) has been used in multiple types of chatbots for several years now. However, conversational chatbots are much more advanced, combining AI technology, machine learning, and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to provide a great customer service experience.NLP chatbots can actually “understand” a customer’s questions and responses and make it seem like the customer is speaking to a human being. With these advanced technologies, the bot processes the words used in each sentence to analyze the context and better understand the question. Then it can apply this knowledge to resolve the query.Unlike simplistic types of chatbots, conversational AI chatbots operate based on context, not just keywords, so they can understand human conversations, even with typos that other bots might miss. These types of chatbots usually record each conversation to improve the capabilities of AI-powered chatbots, so every conversation is better than the last. Many organizations use conversational AI chatbots to boost their CX strategies.3. Menu/Button-Based ChatbotsAs implied in the name, these types of chatbots offer several options for users to choose from, usually as a menu or series of buttons. Once the user chooses which option best suits his or her question, the bot then offers another set of options, and so on until the query is resolved or passed on to a customer service representative.Due to their simplicity, menu- and button-based chatbots are some of the most common types of chatbots out there. These bots typically use a shared knowledge base to answer predefined queries or help users navigate a website. However, once a request becomes more complex, the chatbot is unable to proceed any further.When using these types of chatbots, organizations should program them to provide multiple options to contact their customer service team with further questions in case a customer’s query isn't resolved right away. This can help avoid any disappointment or frustration on the user’s end.4. Keyword-Based ChatbotsKeyword-based chatbots identify keywords and phrases in a query to match them with a pre-written response. These types of chatbots can be easily configured to respond only with content from an approved knowledge base, creating a more consistent customer service experience through automated messaging.However, these types of chatbots are limited to predefined keywords and phrases, so if a user misspells a word or uses more natural language, the bot will not understand the query. Keyword-based chatbots are highly dependent on context, hence organizations will need to update the chatbot’s responses as their products and services change.Use LIKE.TG’s Chatbot Builder For A Great Customer SupportToday, customers expect a quick resolution to their problems, and the 24/7 availability of chatbots makes this possible for any organization. Customer experience is a crucial part of your business’s success, thus investing in the right tools to support your customers is essential.We offer multiple types of chatbot tools to support varying levels of customer service and improve customer satisfaction. From scripted chatbots to our Conversational AI Cloud, you can find a chatbot that provides 24/7 responses to your customers with a scalable service solution that grows with your business.To learn more about using chatbots to enable the full conversational commerce experience, contact us today.
Six Things Customer Service and Retail Brands Get Wrong About Customer Loyalty
When you talk to one of our Customer Service Experts, they will probably introduce you to our 'Three Principles of Great Customer Service':To reduce customer churn: meet customer expectations and solve problems in one friendly conversation.To build loyalty: continuously reduce your customer's effort throughout their shopping experience.To optimize customer experience: actively gather and share knowledge about customer needs and expectations across your company.With a strong, commercial business logic, these principles help team leads manage stakeholder expectations about where customer service should (and shouldn’t) be focusing on. They help identify where service can add the most value. And where it can have a maximum financial impact.As you might expect, the word loyalty comes up a lot in those principles. Here are six beliefs we think everyone should know about customer loyalty.1. Customers cannot actually be 'loyal' to a brand“From the perspective of consumer psychology, the notion of customer loyalty makes almost no sense” — Philip Graves, author, Consumer.ologyIn this report, consumer behavior expert Philip Graves explains that in psychological terms, being loyal is just not something you can apply to humans and brands.Loyalty is an emotional restraint that keeps humans within the ‘safety of the herd’. When we don’t act in accordance with social ‘rules’, we feel shame and guilt. Without shame and guilt, loyalty cannot exist. And no one should ever really believe that consumers feel so emotionally bad at leaving your brand that they will experience shame and guilt.So, while customers can indeed keep on using your products and make repeat purchases, this is not actually ‘loyalty’. Graves believes that repeated use is basically about how good your product is.All this is worth keeping in mind. The word loyalty will not disappear from the business lexicon any time soon, but it is always good to be clear on what we are actually talking about.On that note…2. Loyalty is best broken down into two separate segmentsMost people think of loyalty as one single big thing. But if you are serious about impacting it, and want to employ the right strategies to do that, it is best to think about loyalty in two distinct segments:Positive loyalty gains: reasons people stay with your brandDisloyalty (also called ‘churn’): reasons people leave your brandOnce you split loyalty into these two segments it becomes easier to manage, and communicate about loyalty. It also helps you look at certain claims with healthy skepticism!3. Poor customer service is the biggest cause of disloyalty (churn)Source: Customer Contact CouncilWhile online shoppers purchase your products or services from your brand, they most often leave because of poor customer service.Yes, it’s true. Customer service is typically the single biggest contributor to brand disloyalty. This is why the most fundamental role of customer service should always be to prevent customers from leaving.The first priority of your team should be to address speed, friendliness, and effectiveness in meeting customer expectations. Without this in place, your marketing department could be fighting a losing battle.4. Satisfaction and high spending are not indicators of loyalty"Between 60 and 80 per cent of customers say they are ‘satisfied’ or ‘very satisfied’… just before leaving" — Harvard Business ReviewMany retail brands see customer satisfaction as a great indicator of customer loyalty. But as Frederik F. Reichheld, the inventor of NPS (Net Promoter Score) established himself many years ago, satisfaction is not an indicator of loyalty. This does not mean that satisfaction is unimportant to measure. Satisfaction measures a customer’s attitude towards their latest interaction with your brand — nothing more.Oh, and your highest-spending customers are probably cheating on you, too. Many retailers believe that a high average spend is an indication of brand loyalty. But as this McKinsey study found, close to half of spending of disposable income by a company’s best and happy customers goes to other retailers in the same category. Meaning: your high-spending customers are not necessarily loyal.The lesson to take from these examples is:Correlation is not causation. Be wary of making connections between actually unrelated data.5. 'Delighting' customers will not get you loyalty gainsExceeding customer expectations will bring you a lot, but probably no increase in loyalty.Source: Customer Contact CouncilPlus, by aiming to ‘delight’, you run the risk of raising expectations for their next interaction with you, which will make them harder to meet. Instead, in service, focus on understanding and meeting basic expectations — this is both tough enough in itself and offers an excellent return on investment.6. Reducing customer effort is the clearest way to make loyalty gains of allThe bottom line is that, above everything else, customers want their shopping made easier — and customer effort and loyalty benefits are insanely correlated.The image below shows the differences between customers experiencing low effort throughout the journey vs. those experiencing high effort.Source: Customer Contact CouncilFrom all the data we have seen, reducing customer effort is the most beneficial thing a retailer can do to meet customer needs — and generate loyalty benefits.So … think carefully, for example, before redirecting all customers en masse towards self-service and FAQs. That could be killing loyalty at the source.How is your customer service department contributing to loyalty?Today, retail brands are facing serious competition. Shopper expectations are still rising. And many brands are still optimizing their mix of brick-and-mortar and online and refining their business model and operations as business grows.In this context, the difference between the cost of acquiring a new customer (versus the cost of making sure existing customers stick around) comes sharply into focus.With the right tools, you can make sure that customer service plays its full role to maximize its contribution to your company’s growth.*This article was originally published on robinhq.com
The Differences Between Chatbots and Conversational AI
What Is a Chatbot?A chatbot is a software that automates conversations and communicates via voice or text. Chatbots are virtual assistants that can quickly respond to customer queries and streamline your customer service workflow using predefined rules or artificial intelligence.Chatbots fall into two main categories: rule-based chatbots and AI chatbots. Let's explore further below!Rule-Based ChatbotsSometimes known as menu-based or basic chatbots, rule-based chatbots are typically what people refer to when they talk about chatbots. They communicate using a set of predefined responses based on keywords and other language identifiers from the customer. In some cases, rule-based chatbots display a decision tree so users can select answers based on their situation.Because these chatbots are oriented around pre-selected questions and responses, they are relatively easy to implement for customer support. Although rule-based chatbots seem fairly simplistic, they are an excellent tool for answering commonly asked questions and resolving basic customer issues. However, they will not be able to have a real conversation with a human being.AI ChatbotsAI chatbots use advanced technology such as machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), and natural language understanding (NLU) to understand the context of a user request. By leveraging the power of AI technology to analyze thousands of points of contextual data in customer conversations, AI chatbots offer improved understanding and decision-making abilities.Rather than being limited to preset rules, AI chatbots are constantly learning from each conversation with a customer. The more exchanges an AI chatbot has, the more helpful its responses will be as time goes on. An integral part of an AI chatbot is its ability to understand natural human language, which allows it to communicate beyond predefined questions and responses.What is Conversational AI?Conversational AI is a type of chatbot that combines artificial intelligence with other emerging technologies like machine learning, natural language processing, process workflows, and speech recognition, providing a personalized customer service experience. Thanks to its versatility and cost-efficiency, global spending by retailers on AI services like conversational AI will reach $12 billion by 2023.Conversational AI extends beyond the basic chatbot capabilities and sets a new standard for the customer experience. By using deep learning technology, conversational AI tools can continuously learn and improve, making them more adaptable to the unique needs of any growing business.Conversational AI typically uses a combination of tools, including:An automatic speech recognizer (ASR)A spoken language understanding module (SLU)A dialog manager (DM)A natural language generator (NLG)A text-to-speech (TTS) synthesizerTogether, these tools use information from a centralized database that contains all the knowledge that conversational AI has gained in every customer interaction. As a result, conversational AI can deliver a dynamic, context-based experience personalized to the customer by constantly growing its knowledge base and language understanding.Chatbot vs. Conversational AI: A ComparisonChatbots24/7 AvailabilityText Commands, Inputs, and OutputsKeyword FocusFast DeploymentConversational AI24/7 AvailabilityText Commands, Inputs, and OutputsMachine LearningNatural Language ProcessingAlgorithm TrainingEasy ScalingChatbot or Conversational AI: Which is Better For Your Business?Recent research shows that 37 percent of companies in South-East Asia have accelerated their AI adoption plans in the next five years. Although automated messaging technology can offer a massive boost to your business’s customer service, the difference between a chatbot and conversational AI might affect your decision.Because chatbots only need a set of predefined queries and responses, they can be set up and deployed very quickly. As a result, basic chatbots are often ideal for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) because they don’t need to handle a lot of data or respond to complex customer inquiries.Go Beyond Chatbots With LIKE.TG’s Conversational AIChatbots are just the beginning of what technology can achieve in customer service. Thanks to the latest advances in artificial intelligence, conversational AI has proved to be a powerful tool for communicating with customers. If you want to know how conversational AI can work with your business, LIKE.TG is here to help.Our Conversational AI Cloud can help you create your exchanges in our user-friendly interface. In addition, our platform enables continuous learning and improvement for an ever-improving customer experience, from easy-to-build conversational bots to AI-powered analysis.Contact an expert today to learn more about improving your customer service with Conversational AI Cloud.
SMS Marketing Use Cases for B2B to Build Your Business
With B2B SMS messaging, you can create a highly personalized customer experience while easily balancing multiple accounts. SMS text message open rates are as high as 98%, compared to 20% for email.Therefore, it's essential for businesses to include instant messaging such as SMS in their B2B marketing.SMS text message marketing reaches people directly without interrupting them, prioritizing the customer’s convenience. This makes consumers more open to receiving and engaging with your marketing messages and more likely to convert into paying customers.B2B SMS Marketing Examples That You Need to Know1. Lead GenerationWhile nurturing your existing client relationships is essential for sustainable growth, so is finding new customers. However, you need to be strategic about looking for new leads to avoid wasting time and resources.Many experts have said the “golden window” for responding to a lead is just five minutes. If a client has to wait longer than that to hear back from your business, they will likely look for another option.A great way to connect with leads is to create a sign-up form on your website so visitors can opt-in to your SMS marketing list. Once you have an audience, you can schedule text messages or configure auto-reply messages, so your leads don’t need to wait for a response.2. Order ManagementStaying on top of your orders is an integral part of your everyday operations. Using SMS text messages to update your customers about their orders enables them to reach out with any questions about your products and services.With two-way SMS, you can receive and reply to text messages on one platform. This enables you to interact with your audience in real-time, improving the customer experience and driving conversions.In addition, once you establish a personal relationship with a client via SMS, you will seem more like a friend than an anonymous brand, resulting in better upselling opportunities.3. Appointment SchedulingAutomating your appointment schedule means that your team can focus on other high-level tasks like collaborating with your clients. Instead of manually scheduling appointments, SMS marketing uses peer-to-peer campaigns that enable your business to have conversations with prospective leads and schedule private appointments, improving the business communication.Although appointment scheduling via SMS is an automated process, we recommend crafting your messages like you’re having a conversation with the recipient. Consumers prefer talking to human operators over automated systems, so using a friendly tone will keep them engaged with your messages.4. RemindersMost B2B sales leads have busy calendars that don’t leave much room for error. With B2B text messaging, you can schedule reminder text messages before a meeting, webinar, or payment deadline to ensure your recipients won’t miss any time-sensitive messages.5. Follow-UpsSimilar to reminders, you can automate follow-up messages whenever you’d like. By following up with leads and existing customers, you’re refreshing their memory so your brand stays on their minds.Drip campaigns are a common way to follow up with subscribers. A drip campaign consists of multiple time-based texts scheduled over a specified period. For example, you could create a series of three texts sent out over a month, or you could schedule a daily text that goes out every day for two weeks.6. Auto-RespondersAuto-reply messages are a powerful tool for B2B businesses working with multiple clients at a time. For example, remember the five-minute “golden window” to respond to a message from a sales lead? That’s where auto-responders come into play.You can easily set up automatic replies according to keywords or phone numbers with an SMS marketing platform. For example, a real estate office can configure automated responses based on the address in the message and connect the lead with the real estate agent overseeing that particular listing.7. Content SharingGetting subscribers for your SMS marketing list is easy, but they’ll only stick around if you give them a reason. So instead of waiting for your subscribers to reach out, send them valuable content exclusive to SMS subscribers, like a guide to using multi-factor authentication, to drive traffic to your website.Pro tip: Segment your SMS subscriber list based on interest, which you can add to your sign-up form. With this method, you’ll ensure that your messages offer value to an interested audience instead of ending up in their unreads.8. Customer Surveys and FeedbackProviding a great experience one time isn’t enough to build a loyal customer base that will sustain your business long term. To learn what your clients want, conduct surveys or polls to collect customer feedback.Many SMS marketing platforms have built-in polling and survey features that allow customers to share their feedback in just one short text message. A user-friendly SMS marketing software will also help your business find a better, faster ROI for your marketing strategies.9. AnnouncementsYou can use B2B text messaging to send text blasts announcing upcoming product releases or messages targeted to a specific audience segment. In addition, SMS marketing platforms can send out high message volumes daily, so you can rest easy knowing your subscribers will receive your intended marketing messages.Getting Started with SMS Marketing for B2BLIKE.TG’s communication platform is for businesses that want to start conversations with their clients. Many B2B companies use SMS as part of their overall marketing strategy to reach out to their customers. With our fast and reliable SMS Gateway API or our omnichannel marketing software Mobile Marketing Cloud, you can create superior customer experiences that drive engagement and convert leads. Don't hesitate, start sending out SMS to your customers now!
Optimising Customer Service With the Right Metrics
When it comes to chatbots, the key to ensuring your investment keeps paying for itself is to set and monitor the appropriate metrics for your business to ensure your solution is delivering value for you and your customers to ensure business success.Sometimes, however, setting metrics for yourself is akin to letting a credit card customer set their interest rates. You’ll want a customer centric solution that delivers a host of information to allow you to take a deep dive into the data and work out where things are going right and wrong, and figure out which metrics are important for your business.Get Actionable Insights To Deliver Exceptional Customer Experience (CX)Accurate, powerful reporting with various metrics allows you to make changes to your consumer offering in real-time, tweaking chatbot responses and adding extra functionality to cope with frequently asked customer questions (FAQs), for example.With these reports, you can better understand various touch points on where your chatbot is struggling to answer specific questions thanks to QA overlap, where it’s failing to answer typical questions due to missing recognition, or where it has existing gaps in your database. You have a better overview of issues that need to be addressed deliver a rewarding customer service experience.Getting feedback in its simplest form, via customer feedback post-interaction with your chatbot for example, is a hugely valuable tool to help you improve and iterate on your chatbot’s functionality.Customers can deliver positive and negative feedback right after they’ve completed their interaction so you get fresh, real-time insights you can use to improve for next time. Having members of your team available to analyze this feedback is crucial to ensuring you can be as reactive as possible to customer feedback.Equally, pre-live chat surveys are an invaluable method of discovering why many of your customers are contacting you. It could be something as simple as accessing account information; something that might be a relatively quick fix and immediately relieve pressure on your customer service agents.The reverse of this scenario occurs when you use your customer contact data to uncover where your team is spending too much time. Are your customers constantly asking questions about billing, for example? In this instance, you might review your FAQ copy or use Gap Analysis to uncover instances where your chatbot could provide customers with the required information.You may find that some of your channels aren’t frequently used by existing customers. Under-performing channels may not be the result of a lack of desire for customers to interact with them; it may be to do with your navigation. Do these channels have obvious entry points? Are you pushing customers towards these channels? Or are your other channels just much more visible to customers?What’s most powerful about all of this insight, is the intersection between the data you’re able to collect. Using a data-driven approach to making strategic decisions, you can create a living, breathing, three-dimensional personas rather than using single sets of data to try and extrapolate conclusions.Benefits of Measuring Effectiveness of Your Chatbot InteractionsThere are a host of benefits of using reports and metrics to measure the effectiveness of your chatbot interactions.Increasing Customer SatisfactionRefining typical customer conversational flows to deliver answers to your most-asked chatbot questions helps to create positive customer experience, and with it, customer satisfaction. Conversational AI Cloud’s Feedback report allows you to find out what customers are saying, understand customer expectations and whether or not they’re getting satisfactory responses so you can take action.Reducing Contact CostsGap Analysis can quickly identify areas where unanswered queries are routed to your contact center, costing your team time and you money. From there, you can quickly fill in the blanks and create answers to the questions that are causing your team the most headaches.Boosting Employee ProductivityThe Project Manager Overview report in Conversational AI Cloud gives an overview of where your chatbot is delivering the most value. That means you can refocus your customer service agents on other areas, ensuring they’re delivering real value and boosting morale.Continuing Knowledge GrowthEnsuring you’re continually refining answers and adding knowledge to your chatbot is a vital element of improving its ROI and labor-saving abilities. Gap Analysis and FAQ reports will help you improve your chatbot’s breadth of knowledge and answer relevance.Customer Success Story: MissguidedMissguided experienced rapid growth which meant its fledgling customer service team was quickly overwhelmed with queries. Partnering with LIKE.TG to implement a chatbot resulted in a reduction in contact and costs of 14% and allowed the team to use the data gathered to inform their decision-making. ROI tracking was key to Missguided and the team invested heavily in data analysis and the introduction of other tools, such as Google Analytics, to complement the chatbot’s operation.Read Case StudyCheck Out Conversation AI Cloud’s DashboardsConversational AI Cloud includes 20 ‘out-of-the-box’ dashboards that cover every aspect of customer chatbot interaction. Users can download these dashboards or create their own –we provide raw logging via our reporting API to help you do that.These dashboards are broken down into two specific categories:Optimization DashboardsUsed for improving customer journeys via Gap Analysis, Answers, Recognition Analysis Interaction Explorer.Reporting DashboardsTo monitor project health (Monthly Weekly report, KPI).Find out more about Conversational AI Cloud and how our chatbot dashboards can help improve your ROI and we’ll take you through the use cases and benefits of our all-in-one solution.
Exceptional Customer Service Starts With a Chat (App)
Enter the chatbot, which can be your customer service team’s next “new hire.”Capable of conversing with customers about simple queries 24/7, chatbot programs can provide the speedy, effective customer support responses that customers demand.It’s no wonder such chatbots are the fastest-growing channel in the Asia-Pacific, with nearly one-third of consumers using chatbots to interact with customer service!That said, there are plenty of chat app channels that you can build chatbots for on your communications platform. If you’re operating in Southeast Asia, you’ll want to prioritize offering support on the channels that customers in this region use.Don’t expect customers to sign up for a chat app channel just to contact your business, because they might not be willing to make the effort. Depending on the situation, they might find it easier to leave you a bad online review—which is something you definitely don’t want.In this article, we’ll explore the top chat app channels in Southeast Asia, plus what makes them worth providing customer support on. We’ll also share tips for improving the service experience on these channels so you keep customer goodwill in your business high, providing them with great customer service.What Are the Top Instant Messaging Apps for Customer Service in Southeast Asia?Check out the apps you’ve downloaded on your phone. Which instant messaging apps do you have on there? WhatsApp? And possibly Facebook Messenger too?You may not realize it, but you’re probably already using some of Southeast Asia’s top instant messaging apps to connect with loved ones and brands. Different chat apps enjoy differing levels of popularity in Southeast Asia, so let’s take a look at some of these apps in closer detail:WhatsAppOwned by Meta, WhatsApp is a highly popular chat app channel in Southeast Asia. Businesses in the region have tapped on WhatsApp Business to accept customer orders, provide quick services, offer customer support, and more.Facebook MessengerFacebook Messenger provides an avenue for Facebook users to chat with other Facebook users—including brands—even if they don’t have the recipient’s phone number. As of April 2022, Indonesia has at least 28.7 million active Facebook Messenger users, while this figure rises to at least 55.7 million for users of this messaging app in Vietnam.ViberMaintained by Rakuten, Viber enjoys an especially active user base in the Philippines. There, the service clocked an estimated 9.1 million active users from January to April 2022 (for Android devices alone!) The main Viber service is free, while users can also pay to make international calls through the app.TelegramBesides letting users send animated stickers and access chats across multiple devices, Telegram also sports a popular Channels feature. By setting up their own Telegram Channel, businesses such as Klook SG have cultivated a captive audience of Telegram users for pushing mass updates and promotions in Singapore.SMSSMS may seem old-fashioned, but it still enjoys a good amount of usage. And no, we aren’t referring to just the sending of one-time SMS passwords.Using an SMS API integration to scale their communications, businesses may also use SMS to send customers delivery alerts, appointment reminders, and other brief messages in real time.SMS open rates can be as high as 98%, so this is one chat channel not to be underestimated.Apple Messages for BusinessBusinesses can use Apple Messages for Business to communicate with iOS device users in various ways, such as scheduling appointments and providing customer support. However, this channel has limited effectiveness in helping businesses service non-iOS users.Pro Tips for Providing Customer Support on Chat App ChannelsYou’ve picked the chat app channels you’d like to add to your customer service processes. How can customer support agents make the most of them? Here are three pro tips that you can do to ensure good customer support:1. Make Your Chat App Channels AccessiblePublicize your chat app channels once you’ve set them up! Your customers need to know these channels exist before they can use them.Making your chat app channels accessible can be as straightforward as linking to them on your website. You can also add these links to your social media pages.But ensure the links are clickable, too, because having to manually type links—especially long ones—can be a major deterrent for customers.An alternative to links would be QR codes, where customers can scan these codes with their phone to launch your chat app channel. QR codes are especially useful if customers are interacting with your business offline, such as at your brick-and-mortar store, where link-clicking isn’t so convenient.2. Automate Chat Responses to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)As you attend to support queries from customers on live chat, you may notice customers asking certain questions again and again. For example, logistics businesses may regularly get questions on customers’ order statuses. Alternatively, e-commerce businesses may receive refund requests from customers.By adding a simple scripted FAQ chatbot to your support page, you’ll be able to automate instant replies to straightforward questions 24/7. You can also tap on an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot solution such as Conversational AI Cloud for next-level chatbot service. Compared to their scripted cousin, AI chatbots can better understand the context behind customers’ questions to enhance the appropriateness of their responses.Whether you opt for a scripted or AI chatbot, the result is that customers can obtain help quicker. You also free up manpower to address more complex queries that your chatbot refers to your customer service team.3. Manage Conversations in Various Chat App Channels in One PlaceAs you strive to provide support on as many chat app channels as possible, it can be a chore for your customer service team to log into different channels and navigate their respective interfaces. A customer service platform like Mobile Service Cloud eliminates such hassle by integrating chats from various chat app channels into one omnichannel Agent Inbox.To help your team get greater context on queries, the customer service platform may also integrate with your customer data platform to display your customers’ profiles next to support conversations.For example, Mobile Service Cloud integrates with our Mobile Marketing Cloud customer engagement solution to enrich support conversations with context on customers’ order histories and promotional campaigns received.Chatting with customers thus becomes effortless for your customer service team, who can deliver more personalized responses while exploring opportunities to boost sales. Meanwhile, customers receive support from their preferred chat app, enhancing customer satisfaction. It’s a win-win situation!Unlock New Customer Support Opportunities With Chat SupportOffering support on chat app channels is an investment that can significantly pay off if undertaken with the right strategy. For a business in Southeast Asia, this involves establishing a support presence on the most popular chat app channels in the region.But as maintaining a presence on more channels can lead to greater operational complexity, businesses should also take steps to streamline their support operations.LIKE.TG’s Mobile Service Cloud provides the essential chatbot and multi-channel conversational commerce infrastructure for integrating Southeast Asia’s top chat app channels in one place.Facilitating collaborative communication among your customer service team, Mobile Service Cloud allows the smooth and efficient management of support conversations across multiple channels and the delivery of outstanding customer service. It also empowers customers to communicate with your business via the channels of their choice and get the assistance they seek.The result is satisfied customers who may become loyal advocates for your brand, helping you raise brand awareness and attract new customers. You even stand to reap more sales from new and repeat customers alike!Explore Mobile Service Cloud to learn how it can help your business provide a seamless support experience on your customers’ preferred channels anytime and anywhere.
How to Increase Customer Retention on Service Delivery in Retail and eCommerce?
Retention is the new growth. Why? To begin with, acquiring customers is around 5 times more expensive than retaining customers. Moreover, data shows repeat purchases from only 8% of the customers can contribute up to 40% of your total sales.This means increased retention rates = an increase in Average Order Value and Customer Lifetime Value. Retained customers also buy more often and bring new prospects through word-of-mouth referrals.Now, that makes increasing customer retention sound like a solution—but how do you achieve it? Let us see how service delivery affects customer retention and how the top strategies retail and e-Commerce brands can leverage to boost customer retention.The First Step to Understand Customer Retention and Service Delivery in Retail and eCommerceThe first step to retaining customers is understanding and catering to the rising customer expectations. A PwC study found that more than 50% of customers will leave a brand they love after one bad experience, and 92% will do so after two to three. While 94% of today’s consumers will purchase more goods and services from a company after an excellent customer experience.If you are not providing an exceptional customer experience and engaging your customers through the (multiple) right channels at the right time—you’re going to hurt your customer retention. That’s how customer experience, service delivery, and retention are intertwined.We need to elevate the customer engagement and experience for increased retention. Where do we start? Let's understand the root of the problem first.The Main Root of the Problem: Why Customers Leave?Customers will stick to a brand that delivers a personalized and seamless experience across all touchpoints with minimum friction in this experience-driven world. And poor customer experience is one of the main reasons they leave. How can customer service teams be hyper-focused, boost customer satisfaction, manage high conversation volumes, prevent customer dropouts, and beat burnout in such a scenario?You start by being reachable and available on your customer’s most preferred messaging channels—24*7 availability, multi-channel messaging, omnichannel customer service, and personalized communication are a must. When you meet customers where they are, you exceed their expectations and increase the chances of them spending more.This means making sure your customers find what they are looking for, making it easy for agents to talk to customers, enabling customers to contact you via preferred channel while keeping an overview of all conversations.Strategies to Boost Customer Retention for eCommerce BusinessesHigh service delivery responsiveness, a multi-channel communication approach, leveraging customer data, delivering contextual support, and internal collaborations are some of the best ways to boost customer retention. Let’s dive deeper into them.Improve Employee Engagement for an Exceptional Customer ExperienceAn improved employee engagement is a prerequisite for an enhanced customer experience. As the company grows, the customer base also expands, thus increasing the touchpoints and pressure on your employees to deliver more. And without proper employee engagement, it can become increasingly difficult for you to address your customer’s needs.How do you improve employee engagement? The short answer is—by improving your systems, but here’s the long answer:Issuing tickets to resolve customers’ issues not only reduces customers to reference numbers—prioritizing processes over people and compromising the customer experience but also encourages agents to cherry-pick questions leaving tough ones to attend to later.Mobile Service Cloud, a next-gen conversational helpdesk system, replaces this impersonal way of treating customers and helps agents deliver relevant and personalized service experiences across all channels. It eliminates queues and not tickets while segmenting, prioritizing, and assigning issues as they arise to ensure quick resolution.Mobile Service Cloud makes this possible using -1. Advanced routingInstead of going the conventional way where workloads were evenly distributed between available team members, resulting in slower and inefficient service, Mobile Service Cloud gives the agent ownership of the conversation. Routing utilizes a combination of rule-based and skill-based elements.Rule-based routing passes queries to the agents only if pre-established criteria are met, moving unqualified conversations to Archive or Unwanted inbox without human intervention.Skill-based routing assigns conversations based on the agent’s skills and priorities. With Mobile Service Cloud, these triggers work on all incoming conversations across all channels.2. One Agent Inbox and Smart Inbox ManagementMobile Service Cloud's intuitive dashboard brings forth one agent inbox where agents have access to conversations with customers (across all channels), partners, and colleagues plus a 360-degree view of the customer’s profile on a single screen.Agents can then engage in every conversation regardless of the channel through one inbox. With smart inbox management, they can snooze, archive, or forward a conversation. This keeps their inbox clean, helps them focus on the next important conversation, saves costs, and improves service.All of this ramps up response and resolution time, skyrockets employee engagement, and improves customer experience and retention.Launch a Loyalty Program and InspireUsing a loyalty program is another excellent strategy to increase customer retention rates. The loyalty program rewards customers for their purchases and encourages repeat orders. You need capable customer service software with access to customer data to handle multi-channel communications and keep customers updated about their rewards points for an effective loyalty program.However, using a dedicated loyalty program is not the only way to inspire loyalty in your customers. For example, My Jewellery, a Netherlands-based jewelry company, found that directly communicating with their customers was key to retaining their loyalty and building trust.The company started implementing dedicated personal omnichannel communication to maintain consistency and quality of communication—not only on social media but also on WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and wherever their customers can be. They leveraged Mobile Service Cloud’s ability to communicate via all channels in one inbox.The result? All the conversations were streamlined with a significant increase in quality and efficiency. And 89% of their customers are happy with the outcome of the conversations.Upsell and Cross-sell via Leveraging Customer DataEffective upselling and cross-selling will help you retain existing customers with an unforced, well-timed offer. Customer behavior speaks volumes about customers’ intent and is critical in helping your agents guide customers to their desired outcome. By leveraging customer data provided by Customer Data Platform (CDP), your agents will be able to make offers that feel like a natural extension of your existing customer relationship. A win-win situation there.Customer Data Platform centralizes customer data from multiple sources and shares this data with your existing systems. This helps you segment your customers better (at risk, high value, and more), get a complete view of customer behavior, and understand customers in real-time. It unifies and organizes the previously siloed data across various touchpoints thereby giving deeper insights into customer behavior and driving relevant and personalized campaigns.The right CDP recognizes that customer journeys are dynamic and ensures that your offers can change when there’s a change in customer behavior. You will now be able to deliver personalized customer experiences that gain trust and loyalty.Improve Customer Support and Be Available for your Customers on Their TermsCustomer support is not just about being helpful and answering your customer’s queries. Excellent customer support requires you to be available for your customers on their terms, on their channels, and with the speed and efficiency they expect.You need to provide service everywhere for improved customer support, especially on customers’ preferred messaging channels like Live Chat, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, SMS and more. How do you achieve that?Mobile Service Cloud's agent inbox manages personal multi-channel conversations with customers, colleagues, and partners on a single interface with the ability to view or forward (share or assign) conversations is one way.There are features like a live chat web widget that customers can use to connect with agents immediately (using a name, logging in to chat live, or filling out an email form). Using internal live chat, teams can collaborate in real-time to improve customer issue and resolution time whereas external (email) collaboration involves external partners to support customer service conversations.Add to that—the Mobile Service Cloud’s potential to connect with the systems of your choice, and you’ll be able to deliver faster and more personal service experiences. One of the first steps is to enable your agents to instantly access a 360-degree customer profile in one view. How does Mobile Service Cloud give agents the contextual data they need to deliver improved support?Access to insights right next to the conversations (regardless of the channel) on one screen.Integrates data with an eCommerce system, CRM, ERP, or wherever customer’s data is stored.All of this helps you achieve enhanced collaboration, faster resolution, and improved customer support.Reward Your Most Valuable CustomersWhile loyalty programs focus more on exclusivity and additional perks, reward programs offer higher discount rates, free goodies, and other prizes. Having a good rewards program can accelerate the loyalty life-cycle of the customer.It also enables the company to pass on the benefits to the customers in proportion to the value that their loyalty creates for the company. However, it is essential that you continuously educate your customers about the program and promote the benefits.CDP helps here too. When reward programs work in tandem with the power of CDP, you’ll be able to tap into untouched customer data and reward customers with a more well-rounded and personalized approach.That means recognizing your customers for every action they take (captured via CDP) and rewarding them with omnichannel loyalty and reward programs. This will encourage your customers to spend more and more often, increase CLTV, and discourage them from going to your competitors.Assemble Your Tools to Boost Your Customer Retention RateOne of the more impressive stat is that just by increasing your customer retention rate by 5%, you can boost your revenue by a minimum of 25%. This statistic alone and the comprehensive strategies listed above are enough to never let your customer retention rates stagnate.However, knowing the strategies is one thing, but integrating them into your current systems, well, that’s where the issue begins. But, not with us.You need tools that help you communicate with customers on their favorite channels, increase customer loyalty, and drive personalized experiences that delight customers. And that’s precisely what our Mobile Service Cloud intends to do.Mobile Service Cloud recognizes that speed, convenience, expert advice, and friendly service are the essential elements of a positive customer experience. Enabling you to deliver frictionless experiences anytime, anywhere.With LIKE.TG’s Mobile Service Cloud, you’ll have access to -Live chat with customers,View of multi-channel customer conversations on a single interface,Internal and external collaboration on one agent inbox,Skill-based query routing,360-degree customer profile,24*7 availability on all customer-preferred channels,Personal and contextual conversations backed by data,Automated conversations at scale,and much more.The result? Exactly what you want—increased customer satisfaction, experience, and retention.
Why Do You Need a Customer Data Platform?
The reach of marketing channels has been expanding over time; starting with newspaper ads and local radio reaching a region to new ad networks such as Facebook and Google reaching half the globe. And not only the reach is expanding, the insights into the audience, as measured in actual data about the individuals, is growing. Using this information, you can create very specific segmentations that will allow marketers to target those profiles that are highly relevant and receptive to your information.Also read: What is a Customer Data Platform?6 Reasons Why You Need a Customer Data Platform (CDP)If you can build your database of individuals and keep learning to know these people, you will be able to create very focused segments. And when combined with real-time data about behavior, this could lead to the holy grail of a “segment of one”. Where every person will be treated as their segment, being informed with a completely personal message, at a personal place and time through a personal channel.A CDP Collects All Your DataThe amount of information all of us need to process is getting larger continuously. Martin Hilbert of the University of California estimated in 2010 that “in 1986 we received around 40 newspapers full of information every day but this had rocketed to 174 in 2007”. That is a growth of over 7% per year, so each year we process a few additional newspapers every day. Extrapolating this linearly to 2022 would mean we all process the equivalent of 492 newspapers each day.In their 2014 report “The digital universe of opportunities” IDC estimates that by 2020 [the digital universe] contain[s] nearly as many digital bits as there are stars in the [physical] universe. It is doubling in size every two years, and by 2024 the digital universe – the data we create and copy annually – will reach 149 zettabytes. The amount of data in the world growing even faster than we can process it.A CDP Makes Personalization PossibleSo our brains are swamped with information every day, how do we manage to get by? That's because our brain incorporates some great attention filters. A good example of this was popularized by Colin Cherry’s “Cocktail Party Effect”; how can a partygoer focus on a single conversation in a noisy room? That is because your brain applies selective filtering to all information that your senses take in. And only the things that are relevant to you, because you care, or it threatens you, will be noted consciously.This filtering system also filters all the information that is presented to us in everyday life. Only the bits of information that mean something to us are kept, the others are ignored. To come full circle again, as a marketer, how can you increase the chance that your communications are not excluded by these filters? Make sure that your communication is relevant to the person that is receiving it. The more personalized the better.A CDP Activates All Your DataThe Customer Data Platform (CDP) brings all your marketing data together to build a full (360-degree) profile of the customers. This has been the promise of many marketing data solutions, but only recently using Big Data technology and open APIs, we are now able to deliver on this vision.With access to rich profiles, your CDP can orchestrate and automate communication with your customers or prospects. The finer-grained your understanding of a person is, the better you can target them with information that is relevant within the context they currently are in. Truly connecting over topics of interest. And it should be a conversation instead of a marketing push, there should be an opportunity to respond. This will help us to get to the promise of a segment of one, because every conversation can be geared towards every individual, on their terms.A CDP Is Not a CRM or DMPOften, people get confused within the large landscape of marketing tech and think their CRM or DMP can deliver on these promises. This is usually not the case. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software contains much fewer data from external sources than a CDP. They are much more geared towards sales and require sales reps to reach out to customers and prospects to take note of their conversations. A Data Management Platform (DMP) contains un-personalized data that is usually collected by large ad networks tracking online click behavior. A DMP is used to target online ads, as opposed to a CDP that contains personalized data and is used to target personal communication.Also read: CRM, CDP, and DMP Platforms: How Are They Different?A CDP Stores All Your DataTheoretically, everything that is personalized can be stored and added to specific customer profiles. If it cannot be tied to a person in any way, the data cannot be added to a profile and will not increase your effectiveness. We usually see data from one of the categories below:Personal information, for example, name, address, country of residence, date of birth.Contact information, such as e-mail address, mobile phone number, Facebook id (PSId), WhatsApp enabled? Consent management should be included as well.Transactional or eCommerce data, such as purchase value, products, sizes, shop location, customer value, basket abandonment, etc. But also using loyalty cards or coupons connecting the bricks visitor to her clicks online.Web and behavioral data, such as page views, clicks, apps used, and buttons clicked. Think of the Google Analytics of a single person.Satisfaction scores from reviews, inquiries, feedback forms, NPS, CSAT, etc.Contextual information, such as the weather, holidays, income based on postal codes, and credit risk scores are typically used to enrich the data events.In general, this data is called first-party data, or “your data”. High in value, real-time, and personalized. As opposed to second or third-party data, which is usually bought or accessed through data marketplaces or ad exchanges. Such data is not personalized and can only be used for the category or interest targeting.A CDP Automates WorkflowsImagine running a soccer team. You have two major revenue drivers: seats sponsoring. As a commercial director, you want to fill the stadium and get the most out of the sponsorship deals you set up. About 81% of your stadium is filled by seasonal ticket holders. How are you going to fill up the remaining seats?If you know who previously visited matches, and the conditions (weather, opponent, seat type, etc.) in which they visit, you can reach out to the audience that is most likely to repeat that visit. Perhaps we know a certain John who visited the same match last year, you know that game was won, and he stayed for the after-party as you can see in his bar purchases. In this case, we can reach out directly to John, informing him about the match coming up again and offering a small discount and a quick ticket purchase link. If you would also be able to persuade him to bring in a friend and/or come early, you can increase the financial value of his visit. And this can be automated to reach out to a large group of fans.This is a great innovation in a market where sports teams usually don’t even know who most of their fans are. And think of the possibilities where you can build with these types of solutions. And the benefits not only pertain to the sports industry, we see great examples in leisure and retail eCommerce.Why Is a Customer Data Platform Important?So to wrap up, we all have too much information to process. So our brains are in the heavy filter mode. To reach your audience, you need to pass through the filters by being very, very, very relevant. A Customer Data Platform is your tool to help you to achieve this. It stores all your marketing data into profiles, and you can use these profiles to orchestrate meaningful conversations with your customers.
Chat Apps - Choosing Between Messaging Channels
Decisions… Decisions…SMS used to be the standard to send mobile messages. Nowadays, you can also reach people via channels like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Viber, Telegram, and the list goes on. You can even extend traditional SMS with rich messages using solutions like Pages. There are so many options; the sky seems to be the limit.New messaging channels appear and each channel has its own characteristics. Different channels have different features, different regulations, they are governed by different legislation, use different keys to reach a specific phone.Some require you to pass a validation process while others are open to use for everyone. You can’t possibly invest in all channels that are out there. If you want to reach your (future) customers, you need to cater your solution specifically for your target audience.How Do I Choose the Right Channel?One of the biggest challenges in mobile marketing nowadays, is getting your message across to the right person at the right time. If you want your audience to notice your message and register it, ensure that the message is relevant to the recipient and is delivered via the channel the recipient prefers. Just sending loads of emails is not sufficient anymore.The chosen channel should be able to carry the information you want to share. Will text suffice, or do you need images and videos as well? Do you want to provide navigational directions? Are you sending one-off messages or are you broadcasting huge personalized campaigns?Do you want to start an in-channel conversation with your recipients? And would you like to even close a deal and perform a payment transaction without the end-user having to leave the conversation? The final and inarguably most important factor is whether your intended recipient is reachable via the channel.App availability differs wildly, based on geography and demographics. Older users tend to prefer traditional SMS, while the younger generations hardly ever leave their favorite messaging application. Viber is well adopted in Eastern Europe, yet hardly ever seen in China. There, WeChat is the dominant application, like Plus Message in Japan or Facebook Messenger in the USA.Incoming!Many channels have two-way capabilities. Even though SMS offers inbound possibilities, this often came at a price for the end-user and as such, the number of incoming messages stayed low. With most new channels, inbound messages are free for the end-user. Also, they are accustomed to using their apps for two-way communications. For some channels, companies are obligated to reply within 24 hours. Some channels can only be used when the end-user initiates the conversation. All these different streams of messages, all these different interfaces, how can you manage all that and still keep your end-users satisfied?The Power of OneLet’s face it. You can never find a single rich messaging channel guaranteed to reach all your intended recipients. There still are people who don’t have a smartphone or don’t have access to data.And what happens when you need two channels to reach the majority of your audience, want to expand your business, or need to reach out to another audience than before, maybe also into another geographical region? You will have to adapt to other channels as well.When you connect directly to one or two channels, you can develop the required software and connectors yourself. Yet, when you want to connect a new channel or need additional features, it’s back to the drawing board. A small addition could even require a complete overhaul of your entire codebase. Connecting to a well-catered CPaaS provider like LIKE.TG can help you simplify your connection process.The single web platform, offering multiple channels in a single environment, enables you to adapt your messages and marketing campaigns for specific situations, without the need of custom development. Using proven API solutions, you can connect your own CRM system. You can even take it a step further and add LIKE.TG’s Customer Data Platform for highly personalized campaigns. And when none of the available rich text channels are available or suitable for your recipient, LIKE.TG offers the ability to send end-users to a mobile-friendly landing page by sending a personalized link via an SMS message.Should I Choose At All?You might want to send a single type of message to a big group of recipients, spread over multiple channels. You could split your recipients into several groups, one for each channel.However, it could be much more convenient to use a supplier like LIKE.TG, which enables you to send a message to all your recipients via all available channels. Our system can determine which channel is available for each recipient and send the message via the most appropriate system, eventually falling back to a plain SMS message or even a text-to-speech voice call.SummaryThere are lots of messaging channels. Each channel has its own pros and cons, and each audience has a different channel preference. To select the correct channel, you have to evaluate your needs and decide what channel best matches their needs. When using a CPaaS provider like LIKE.TG, you can conveniently target many or even multiple channels at once and reach a bigger portion of your audience than when aiming for a single connection.Being a fully equipped CPaaS provider, LIKE.TG can help you with this as well. Mobile Service Cloud connects all applicable channels into one inbox for your support agents to communicate with your customers. By adding intelligent chatbots in the same application, and handing them over to human agents when needed, you can save costs on support personnel, stay compliant and still give your end-users a frictionless experience.
