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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.
The Benefits of A2P Messaging for Business
Often using plain-old SMS as its medium, A2P provides a way for machines to message humans, organizations sending you texts directly from their platform or app. If you’ve stayed in a hotel or taken a flight recently, the text message you received from your mobile phone confirming your booking, came from an A2P messaging provider.What’s great about A2P is its lack of drama. It’s straightforward and cost effective, it reaches the device you’re always carrying, and it’s practically foolproof, making it a popular medium to receive relevant content.According to ReportLinker, the global A2P messaging market will reach $77.1 billion by 2026 as SMS is a universal method to reach its end-users without access to data services. Like most technologies that do something simple but useful, A2P has found utility far beyond its original purpose of just sending messages.From P2P to A2P: How Application-to-Person Messaging WorksYou already know P2P: it’s the messages you exchange with your friends and family, witha human being at each end of the conversation. A2P replaces one party (the sender) with software, often connected to company databases and marketing platforms.While some countries classify A2P as any messaging sent by a machine (which would include WhatsApp and email!) most people understand A2P as an application of SMS. And that’s the main reason it works so well.Decades-Old, Still Working: The Benefits of SMSSMS messaging works at the network level: the operator “knows” what’s happened to the message, with its status communicated back to the sender. There are four: SENT, DELIVERED, FAILED, and UNDELIVERED. Because of these standard responses, an A2P application can act on feedback and flag errors that keep the database of phone numbers fresh.SENT simply means the message is on its way. DELIVERED means the send was successful, with the message reaching the recipient’s phone; this helps to determine how many people were successfully reached (of course, that doesn’t mean they read it – but a very high number of texts are read within minutes).FAILED is equally obvious: something’s gone wrong on the network, and your message can’t continue. While UNDELIVERED indicates the fault is at your end: usually an incorrect phone number or format, which prompts you to correct it.SMS Use Cases for Business CommunicationSounds simple? It is. And that’s the main benefit of using SMS: it’s crystal clear how up-to-date your database is. Today, A2P messaging is suitable for a huge number of use cases as it's an effective business communication. Let’s look at a few:Notifications and Confirmations: Simple Updates, Sent Well.The majority of A2P messaging today involves travel and transport. What’s the common denominator? All of them rely on someone or something being in a certain place, at a certain time. Airline tickets, hotel bookings, and package deliveries: all benefit from customers being able to see timely updates, appointment reminders, and confirmations.The useful part is that A2P can include a response mechanism, providing (for example) a number to call if a reservation needs to change. This simple trick can reduce unexpected no-shows—which cost the hospitality industry a lot.Post-Job Surveys: Gathering Customer IntelligenceThe best time to survey someone about the service they received is straight after the job’s complete. Many service companies—from plumbers to delivery drivers—set up action pathways that send a survey SMS to a customer whenever the tradeperson leaves. Using A2P messaging means this happens automatically.Of course, SMS messages are simple and short, which boosts response rates. A popular survey method is the “Ultimate Question” of the Net Promoter Score, “Would you recommend us to friends and family?” The customer is asked to respond with a number from 1 (no) to 10 (definitely).One Time Passwords or OTPA huge and growing part of A2P text messaging involves security. Lost a password? The website will let you reset it—but you’ll need to enter a six-digit number texted to your phone first which is automatically generated. That message is generated by A2P.And if you make an unusual bank transaction, the bank will frequently ask you to confirm your identity by doing the same. These are called One Time Passwords, or OTPs.This is another reason A2P using SMS persists in a world of many communications channels. People tend to keep their phones close at hand, 24 hours a day, and most are used only by one person. So texting an OTP adds a strong layer of security. And A2P can send them out in seconds, millions of times a day, without wasting the customer’s time.Emergency AlertsOf course, A2P is timely. While at the network level SMS isn’t quite instant (and was never designed to be) it’s rare for one to take more than a minute; a few seconds is more normal. This means A2P has found great utility in emergency alerts of many kinds.In a hospital, emergency situations (such as a major car crash) have a prewritten response plan to bring the right people and resources together to meet and treat the arriving patients. This team effort is often coordinated by SMS; mobile users appreciate the short, sharp, automated messages telling them what’s happened and where to be.Similar procedures enable aircrews, warehouse workers, and building services to swing into action in defined circumstances. A2P provides the simple messaging underlay to their roles.One-to-One Marketing ChannelMarketers, of course, use A2P messaging to send promotional campaigns and special offers to thousands of people at a time. The application is linked to the marketer’s database or other software, like CRM (Customer Relationship Management), and can personalize and customize messages, too—like including the recipient’s first name.Most countries have strong regulations around SMS marketing, with many requiring double-opt-in before you’re allowed to send a consumer a text. Fortunately, most companies obey such rules.Competitions, Voting, and CharitiesMainstream “old media” like television has many uses for A2P messaging. Many talent shows, online competitions, and national events feature telephone voting; A2P lets viewers vote by sending an SMS, with the response recorded and a confirmatory SMS sent back.There’s another benefit of using A2P messaging, and it’s financial. Companies can charge consumers when they send an SMS, with the charge appearing on the consumer’s phone bill. It’s a simple way for users to pay small amounts and is heavily used in the world’s poorer regions for everyday payments.A2P Messaging Turns SMS Into Smart MessagingIf you see a role for timely, relevant, one-to-one messaging to customers in your business, why not explore what LIKE.TG could do for you?
How to Automate Marketing With Workflows
What Is Marketing Automation?Marketing automation makes a marketer's job a lot easier. It is an umbrella term for technology that automatically manages marketing processes and campaigns across multiple channels. This makes it easy to send automated emails, texts, social media posts, and messages in chat apps. Also, this ensures that you can implement a digital marketing strategy without manually having to press send on each and every email, text, social media post, or message in chat apps.To send these marketing messages automatically, a set of triggers and tasks must be defined. These triggers and tasks are referred to as workflows. Workflows can be drawn up from scratch, but marketing automation software usually contains certain templates to easily define workflows.What Are Automated Workflows?Broadly speaking, a workflow is perhaps best described as a sequence of steps or processes that a business takes to complete a task. That task can be of different types and range in terms of how long it takes to complete or complex it is. It can also span multiple departments within a company or across various channels.Within each workflow task, there is usually a varying quantity of other factors involved, such as timelines and approvals. However, to properly understand what workflows are and how they work within marketing automation, it’s best to use relevant examples:Welcome SubscribersEach time a customer signs up for your content, such as a newsletter, they’ll receive an email welcoming them to your services. This is a simple yet effective way to show your audience you care while laying the foundation for a lasting relationship.You can use these welcome workflows to build on your value proposition and what makes your business special, reasserting why being your customer is beneficial to them. You could even use it to surprise them with a bonus, such as a discount coupon (if you have a store) or an exclusive piece of content that only they can access.Personalized Birthday MessagePeople love to be remembered, so another great example of a workflow within marketing automation is by giving your customers VIP treatment and celebrating their birthdays or anniversary.This can be done by opting to automatically send them a discount or offer for their birthday or the anniversary of when they became your customer. All you need to do is create a workflow that automatically sends a pre-prepared message to subscribers on the same date each year.By personalizing your campaigns in this way, you can more easily build loyalty and keep your brand at the forefront of their minds, while incentivizing them to purchase from you again and again.Although it’s worth noting that for birthday messages, you’ll need to ask your customers for some personal information when they sign up, such as date of birth. The date the customer was added to your database can be used for the anniversary messaging.Reminder EmailsOne other example of a marketing automation workflow is a reminder email, such as following-up abandoned carts for retailers. These workflows are a must for any eCommerce sites as they not only give your customers a nudge about items left in their online shopping baskets but will send them a link to take them back to complete their purchase, therefore helping you to secure more sales and boost your conversion rate.If they’ve purposely abandoned their cart, you could also offer them a discount to encourage them to complete the purchase or provide details for contacting your customer service if there’s an issue they need to resolve before doing so.How to Store and Centralize Customer DataThe most important input for marketing automation is data. Without data, it is almost impossible to use marketing automation tools, or set up workflows.However, data centralization might be a challenge within the company you work for. Data is often stored in several systems that might contain duplicate customer profiles. How to centralize, enrich, and segment your data to make it ready to use for your marketing automation campaigns?To solve the problem of decentralized data, a Customer Data Platform (CDP) is the best solution. With a CDP, data from different sources can be enriched to create personalized campaigns. Marketing automation is a tool that both needs data and generates behavioral data of your customers to further enrich its customer profile. This enables you to start conversations with people, not profiles.Now you know how to centralize your data, you can start creating automated workflows.How to Create an Automated WorkflowAs mentioned above, workflows consist of triggers and tasks:A trigger is an action that a customer takes;A task is a task the system has to fulfill based on the trigger.So: if [trigger], then [task]. For example: if a customer subscribes to a newsletter, then the customer receives an email with a discount code for his or her next purchase.But also: if a customer clicks through in an email, then create an MQL, but if a customer does not click through, then send another email after 7 days with more informative content. This is an example of a so-called ‘branching workflow’: a workflow with multiple tasks originating from one trigger.After visualizing these flows, workflows are easily built in a marketing automation tool.How to Get Started With Marketing AutomationMarketing automation is the solution for all marketers that could use some more hours within a working day. It basically allows you to do more with less, how great is that? After reading this, you’re probably more than ready to set up your own workflows and enrich your customer data. But do you have the tooling to start right away?Well, we’ve got you covered! LIKE.TG’s Mobile Marketing Cloud is an omnichannel customer engagement solution build for B2C marketers. What makes this tool so special, is that it is specifically aimed at mobile marketing. All you need to do is create segments and workflows with an easy drag-and-drop editor. The Mobile Marketing Cloud helps you to collect data from multiple sources and build rich customer profiles with its own CDP. When your goal is to automate your mobile marketing activities, this is the tool to go for.
3 Ways of Enhancing CX With Conversational Commerce (And How to Get Started)
Conversational commerce is the phenomenon of customers interacting and shopping with brands through chat and social apps. Customers spend a good amount of time on these apps—and they spend a good amount of money on them too.According to Juniper Research, for example, global spending on conversational commerce channels grew by an incredible 63% from 2021 to 2022. And with this trend being projected to continue upward until at least 2025, it’s clear that conversational customer engagement is the future of commerce.Why do customers love conversational commerce? Their familiarity with their favorite chat apps is clearly one reason. But brands that prioritize a customer-centric business model have also found ways of leveraging these apps’ conversational nature to improve the eCommerce CX, and in turn increase customer goodwill and sales.Here are three ways in which conversational commerce can enhance CX and how you can implement it in your business.How Can Conversational Commerce Enhance CX?1. Let Customers Shop With You on Their Preferred ChannelsStart the customer journey on the right note by making it convenient for customers to shop with you. While customers can browse products on a website, they may not have a good CX if the website is difficult to navigate.In contrast, chat app channels provide a user interface that customers are already familiar with. By setting up a brand presence on chat apps popular with your customers, you empower customers to shop with you on whichever channel they prefer and know how to use like a pro.When you provide such enhanced customer touchpoints, the CX becomes effortless. You also pave the way for more customer interactions and purchases, word-of-mouth recommendations, and possibly even repeat orders!For example, let’s say you sell gift baskets for special occasions. Carrie texts Megan to invite her to her upcoming baby shower. Megan sends Carrie a quick congratulatory text, then seamlessly switches to a chat with your brand—in the same app—to order Carrie a gift basket.Your brand’s intelligent chatbot processes the order instantly and sends Megan a confirmation message. And just like that, her gift is on its way!Satisfied with such a smooth CX, Megan knows she can rely on your brand to fulfill her future gift basket needs—and that when such a time arises, you’re just a text away.2. Better Serve Customers With Personalized InteractionsWhile establishing a presence on your customers’ preferred channels is a good start for enhancing CX, take things further by personalizing the customer journey.Don’t forget that people typically use chat apps to interact with others who personally know them. To provide a warm and meaningful CX, you’ll likewise want to foster a sense of human interaction and personal touch when communicating with customers on chat apps.Look into customizing the marketing campaigns and support messages you send to customers via these apps. By now, addressing customers by their first name is standard practice. But apart from that, you can further tailor your communications based on your customers’ profiles and order history.For example, a customer, Calvin, may have previously indicated his interest in learning about your clothing store’s offers for shirts but not those for pants. This is your cue to:text him about upcoming discounts on shirts, andexclude him from texts promoting pants.By tailoring your customer interactions in this manner, you improve the relevance of your communications and keep customers interested in engaging with your brand for longer.3. Help Customers Get Quicker AnswersWhether they have a pre-sales question or need post-sales support, customers want answers fast—and they perceive email communication as being too slow. With customers used to quick replies via instant messaging apps, they may prefer to chat with your brand on such apps to enjoy shorter response times.And this is your brand’s chance to shine. By deploying chatbots, your customer service team can offer automated, self-service solutions for customers to resolve simple queries on their own. These chatbots can also be programmed to chat with customers using informal language—just like how friends talk to each other!—to maintain the personal touch.Chatbots also increase the speed advantage by being operational 24/7. Customers don’t need to wait to reach out during fixed support hours, but can get immediate assistance no matter the time of day. And nothing can be quicker than that!Implementing Conversational Commerce: Things to ConsiderOn Which Channels Will You Implement Conversational Commerce?Be strategic with the channels for which you implement conversational commerce.While you have no shortage of channels to choose from, shortlist only the ones popular among your customers. After all, if you’ll be expending resources to support certain channels, then it pays to focus on those that enjoy higher usage.Not only that: with customers comprising the “C” in “CX,” you’ll want to take the conversation to your customers rather than making them go through hoops to chat with you.When you do so, you stand to reach more customers—who may also feel more valued as you’ve made the effort to engage them on their preferred channels. In turn, they may be more inclined to shop with you instead of another brand that generically treats them as a faceless individual.If you are doing business in Southeast Asia, then WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Viber are just some of the popular chat app channels in the region worth implementing conversational commerce on.Learn more about these channels, and pro tips for offering customer support on them, in our guide to providing exceptional customer service on chat apps.Which Tools Will You Use?LIKE.TG develops a wide range of tools that make implementing conversational commerce a breeze.For example, Mobile Push provides a no-code solution for delivering personalized push notifications to customers. Integrable with a wide range of chat app channels, Mobile Push enhances the CX by helping you tailor marketing communications based on your customers’ profiles, location, order history, and more.As for enhancing support conversations, our Mobile Service Cloud customer service software offers a scripted chatbot that can instantly answer simple FAQs. Contributing to a convenient CX, these support chats will take place on your customers’ preferred chat apps, letting them chat with you as if they were talking to a family member or a friend.If you regularly receive more complex support questions, Conversational AI Cloud is a worthwhile investment. This AI chatbot harnesses natural language processing (NLP) to:capture and process user input, and thenprovide an appropriate response using friendly language for a humanized CX.Being capable of self-learning, Conversational AI Cloud helps deliver automated responses that only improve in quality over time. It also provides insights into customer intent that can prove valuable for refining the CX.Our AI chatbot solution can be implemented on any channel of choice as quickly as within a few weeks. For example, online insurer Onlia was able to get its AI chatbot up and running in just six weeks.Conversational AI Cloud is also undoubtedly effective: just take it from fashion retailer Missguided, which reported a high AI chatbot engagement rate of 80%. The brand also reduced its support contact and costs by 14%.Increase Conversions With Impactful Brand ConversationsWhether in sales, marketing, or customer support functions, conversational commerce has become the norm. And this is unsurprising, given its ability to enhance CX throughout the customer journey.To tap on the full potential of conversational commerce, brands will need to employ the right solutions that turn the humble chat app into a channel for customer engagement and conversions. We’ve covered a few of these solutions here, but especially recommend taking a look at Conversational AI Cloud if you’re keen to elevate CX with the power of AI.Explore Conversational AI Cloud in more detail here to learn how it can help you provide a seamless and delightful support experience on your customers’ preferred channels.
4 Digital Marketing Trends in the Financial Service Industry
The financial services industry has evolved; people can now conduct certain transactions entirely via online channels from a device that fits within their hand. And many of them do: in a study conducted by digital security platform Entrust, for example, 65% of Singapore respondents shared that they most often did their banking using their bank’s mobile or tablet app.As financial services go digital, so must your marketing efforts. Otherwise, you’re missing many opportunities to promote your offerings and provide the personalized service that customers want.Read on as we share four digital marketing trends that financial service businesses should leverage to facilitate an omnichannel presence and boost customer adoption.1. Content MarketingContent marketing is creating and distributing content to attract and nurture readers into customers.The content medium can range from blog posts to videos, podcasts, case studies, and more. What’s critical, however, is that your target audience should find your content valuable. Users who consume your content should go: “Wow, this was so helpful! I will keep an eye on more posts/videos/episodes from them.”Apart from posting your content on your channels, you can also promote it on social media to reach out to users unfamiliar with your brand—and potentially expand your customer base.When done consistently, content marketing offers opportunities to:position your brand as an expert in the field to boost user trust and confidence,educate users on your products and how they can address the user’s needs, andkeep your brand top of mind so that users will think of you as they search for solutions (and ideally buy your products afterward!)Digital wealth management platform StashAway has thoroughly covered its content marketing bases. It maintains a blog called Insights, which publishes investing tips and marketing opinions. The platform also provides free StashAway Academy courses for users who want a more structured approach to learning investing skills and strategies.Finally, StashAway invites financial leaders and bloggers to share their investment insights and experiences on a podcast titled In Your Best Interest to cater to auditory learners.2. ChatbotsChatbots are computer programs designed to converse with users and address their needs. Their features typically involve answering questions and assisting with simple customer service issues. (If the matter is trickier, a human support rep will take over.)Integrating chatbots into your customer support processes opens opportunities for you to:help customers get answers quicker as chatbots can operate round-the-clock,improve the customer experience by providing personalized chat interactions,free up your support representatives to focus on more complex customer support issues, thus cutting your operational and customer support costs, andserve customers on their preferred channels. For instance, our Mobile Service Cloud omnichannel scripted chatbot solution lets you set up a support presence on your website, plus popular chat apps such as WhatsApp and Instagram, andpromote your latest products, services, and offers across multiple channels.DBS Bank’s chatbot offers a comprehensive menu of customer services, such as:retrieving transaction details,assisting with card replacement requests,answering frequently asked questions, andsharing ongoing deals and promotions.For security reasons, users must first authenticate their login to DBS’s online banking services. After doing so, they can launch the chatbot and select the appropriate self-service menu option to get immediate assistance.If the user does need human support, however, they can select the “Contact Me” option to leave a message for a representative’s follow-up action.3. Email MarketingEmail marketing is a form of marketing that uses email to engage in targeted communications with segments of users. Emails have been around for a long time now, but still bring about marketing opportunities such as:direct communication with users to build trust and authority without finicky and ever-changing algorithms affecting your campaigns’ reach (social media algos, we’re talking about you here), andunifying your customer data through the use of powerful email marketing solutions. For example, LIKE.TG’s Mobile Marketing Cloud lets you build comprehensive customer profiles from data obtained via various platforms, then personalize your email campaigns for higher engagement and lower unsubscribe rates.Wise’s marketing strategy uses triggered email campaigns on their target market that promote its currency conversion service exceptionally well.The money transfer platform lets users sign up for exchange rate email alerts that will notify them when a specific currency reaches its target exchange rate. For example, a user might want to receive an email alert when 1 USD hits the SGD 1.44 mark.When this threshold is reached, Wise’s email marketing system is automatically triggered to send the user an email alert.Wise’s rate alerts also include a link to its currency conversion services—because when a user learns that the mid-market rate has reached their desired rate threshold, the natural next step is to use Wise to convert their funds!We also like how Wise’s email marketing strategy involves users setting up the alerts on the platform’s website themselves. This approach helps Wise precisely learn its users’ preferences, so it doesn’t send them irrelevant emails.4. WebinarsHave you been to a seminar in a physical venue? The webinar is the online equivalent, where businesses hold seminars using a virtual conferencing platform such as Zoom.Webinars exploded in popularity when organizing large gatherings became unfeasible due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But even in the current endemic conditions, webinars appear here to stay due to opportunities for businesses to:position their brand as an authority by sharing knowledge with attendees or hosting experts in their fields to do the same,increase their brand awareness as users can join webinars from any location and device. This allows businesses to scale their attendance numbers with a marginal increase in cost, andproduce more content for marketing purposes because it’s easy to record webinars for splitting into bite-sized video segments later.Look no further than TD Ameritrade for an example of a well-oiled webinar strategy. The stock brokerage holds regular webinars on investment-related topics (sometimes even multiple sessions a day!)TD Ameritrade’s webinars are categorized into beginner, intermediate, and advanced topics to help users decide which webinar is right for them based on their level of investment experience. To increase the longevity of its webinar content, TD Ameritrade also records all its webinars and makes them available for viewing on demand.Riding the Digital WaveWhat’s the future of financial services? It’s reaching out to customers using digital marketing channels and helping to serve their needs via the online medium. At the same time, financial service businesses must consider using such technologies to provide a personalized customer experience.“As consumers’ uptake of digital channels increases, their expectations of customer experience are also rising,” writes global management consulting firm, McKinsey. “Digital technologies raise the bar in that respect because they are enabling easy-to-use and personalized services.”Despite the digital shift, physical services won’t become entirely obsolete. Due to security concerns, unfamiliarity with technology, or other reasons, some customers will still prefer completing transactions in person.Businesses in the financial services industry will hence need to create an omnichannel presence on both the physical and digital fronts, from which they can:market to customers,offer a seamless customer experience, andglean insights on customer behavior to guide their business strategy.In the digital realm, LIKE.TG’s Mobile Marketing Cloud provides an omnichannel customer engagement solution for financial service businesses to automate the delivery of tailored marketing campaigns on a wide range of digital channels.Explore Mobile Marketing Cloud here to learn how it can digitally transform your marketing tactics and deliver the personalized experience that your customers seek.
Guidelines for setting up WhatsApp Display Name
Each WhatsApp Business Account will relegate a showcase name to the telephone number and submit it for audit by the WhatsApp group from your Business Manager. Show Name will appear to the User dependent on your sort of record.
Guidelines for Display Name
All display names ought to have a relationship with your business and ought not to disregard WhatsApp Commerce and Business arrangements. Having show names consistent with our rules is a necessity to send messages utilizing the WhatsApp Business API or meet all requirements for WhatsApp official business accounts.
The following are five standards for show names and direction for best practices to abstain from arranging blunders.
Compliance
A display name ought not to disregard WhatsApp Commerce and Business arrangements. A model for a store that sells wine glasses:
Acknowledged: ABC Wine Glasses
Not acknowledged: ABC Wine
Inside your organization, you may have separate WhatsApp business represents various divisions; just those divisions that are consistent with WhatsApp’s Commerce Policy may have a WhatsApp business account.
The exact portrayal of your business
A showcase name ought to speak to:
A business or its administration, item, or division
A test account or a demo record and it must keep up a relationship to the business (e.g., Fresh Produce Test)
A presentation name ought not to be:
A person’s complete name
A conventional term (e.g., Fashion)
A conventional geographic area (e.g., New York)
A trademark or a long portrayal
An association with an administration connection needs the WhatsApp group’s endorsement
Clear relationship with your business
A display name must have an unmistakable relationship with your business (must be alluded to the business’ site or outer media references). For instance:
Acknowledged: Name of a cause referenced on a non-benefit association’s site
Not acknowledged: Name of a foundation not referenced on any outer sites
In the event that the connection between your organization and the brand isn’t self-evident, show the relationship utilizing “by [company name].”
Not acknowledged: Fruit Snacks (Fresh Produce possesses the Fruit Snacks brand however their affiliation isn’t referenced on any outer sites)
Acknowledged: Fruit Snacks by Fresh Produce
Try not to utilize the name of an administration organization or other outsider in your organization’s showcase name.
Not acknowledged: Alpha Agency for Fresh Produce
Consistency with outer marking
A display name must have predictable marking with outer sources (e.g., an organization’s site or promoting). A model for a product offering named “New Produce Cold Pressed Juices”:
Acknowledged: Fresh Produce Cold Pressed Juices (how it is marked on your site)
Not acknowledged: Fresh Produce Juices (you changed marking by eliminating “Cold Pressed”)
Not acknowledged: FP Cold Pressed Juices (you added a contraction to the organization name conflicting with outside marking