Best Practices for Integrating Messaging into Your CX Strategy

From SMS to live chats, messaging is becoming an important part of different companies’ sales and customer service strategy. Many major brands have adopted some form of messaging to assist customers prior to, during, and even after a sale has been made. This powerful feature has the capability to help companies both drive sales and increase customer satisfaction. 

Despite the rising popularity of messaging features like SMS, live chats, and social media messaging, it’s important to adopt this strategy in the most effective way. Here are a few best practices to ensure that your messaging strategy helps your customers, your employees, and your revenue. 

Make the Option Known to Your Customers

Of course, the key to having a successful chat or messaging strategy is ensuring that your customers are aware that it exists. There are many ways to do this. Be sure to include phone numbers and social handles on customer service and FAQ pages. Additionally, it helps to be proactive. Just like a sales associate greets a customer upon entering a brick and mortar store, most live chat programs allow you to pop up on a visitor’s screen with a prompt to start a conversation. This is a great way to increase customer adoption of messaging channels. 

Make it a Seamless Process

There’s nothing more frustrating than completing a conversation with one customer service agent and then having to switch channels and start from square one with a new agent. This is where seamless integration of messaging and call center channels can come in handy. With a full transcript of the conversation available from one call center agent to another, the customer avoids having to repeat themselves and share information numerous times. To make the most of your chat feature, make sure that customers can switch from messaging to e-mail to phone calls without loss of relevant information that has already been shared.

Use A Combination of Automation and Human Interaction

Chat features that rely solely on automation can be extremely frustrating to customers. Typically, these bots are programmed to refer to FAQ pages or give stock, often useless, answers to customer inquiries. Having a combination of automation and human interaction can be very effective. For example, a bot can collect relevant information about a customer’s account and get a sense of what they are struggling with. From there, the conversation can be passed along to an agent to help resolve the issue. 

Take Advantage of The Latest Software

It’s never been easier to implement a messaging strategy. Companies like Apple and Facebook have developed software designed specifically to help customers and brands connect through SMS, live chat, and social media messaging. With a little research and testing, companies can easily find a software that meets their needs. Additionally, built into these programs are ample opportunities to customize, giving brands the chance to deliver personalized interactions to their customers.