Five Reasons Your Customer Communications Aren’t Working
By Layna Shuppert, Marketing Communications Manager with Message Broadcast –
The murmurings begin on social media… neighbors checking with neighbors to see if their power is out. Your phone number is posted and, within minutes, a flood of activity hits the call center, overwhelming the lines.
Hold times increase, patience decreases, and your customer care team scrambles to provide answers amid escalating chaos.
The answer seems simple: Proactively communicate with customers before they call. Easy, right? Except, it’s not so easy. Let’s look at some common pitfalls.
- Right Message, Wrong Time
With lengthy approval processes, your perfectly edited message is sent an hour later than intended, rendering it old news. Unfortunately,
the right message sent at the wrong time is more damaging to your brand than not sending anything at all. It shows you tried – and failed.
- Right Time, Wrong Customer
Let’s imagine your message is ready to go. Ah, but not so fast. The outage is in a specific area, but you’re sending a notice to the entire west side of town. In an instant, your customers’ trust in your ability to deliver accurate information is lost. Trust takes years to build, minutes to break, and forever to repair.
Are you able to segment your customers for specific communications in a timely fashion?
- Right Customer, Right Time, Wrong Channel
If you’re able to send the right message to the right customer at the right time, congratulations! But what if you’re sending it via voice call when the customer prefers a text? Knowing begins with asking…and asking implies you’ll be able to deliver. Does your system target the right channel?
- Right Information, Wrong System
If you’ve got loads of data in your legacy system, but your new OMS can’t integrate – it’s akin to discovering a mine filled with precious gems and using a toothpick to extract them. When acquiring a new solution, ask how it will integrate. If you don’t have expertise on your team, does your vendor?
- Know Your Rights
If you don’t have the ability to pull reports quickly, how will you improve? How will you adapt to ever-changing customer expectations if you’re not able to plan a path forward based on past outcomes? It’s your right to access reports – quickly and easily.
It’s Time to Right the Wrongs
Fortunately, there are solutions that will vastly improve your customer communication experience, addressing each issue we mentioned. In the process, you’ll do more than decrease your inbound call volume, you’ll level up your customer service program, increase CSAT and increase efficiencies within your department.
Have questions? Visit Message Broadcast’s Knowledge Resource Center for answers—and enter our EMACs Scavenger Hunt while you’re there!
