We want you to know what powers any engagement approach when it comes to modern technologies. Learn the essentials in this post.
Table of contents:
1. What defines a powerful engagement tool
2. Do not resist new technology
3. Understand the technologies on the market
4. Find out how the technology approach changed your role
5. Define what particular technology is NOT doing
7. Deliver value, not empty talk
8. Build relationships with your clients
10. Sprinkle entertainment into your communication
11. Moderate closely and adjust on the go
12. Regular interaction means more than occasional
13. Work with multiple target audiences
Client communication requires a serious approach. When it comes to modern technologies, you have tons of technologies that can power up your business and help you improve your marketing. Your marketing efforts and, therefore, results will directly depend on how you approach the engagement.
We decided to compile an ultimate list of rules that you should use as a cheat sheet while working on client communication. We can call it ‘Client Communication: Best Practices.’ Our editorial team recommends you to save this article to be able to look back and check whether you’re on the right path with your client communication plan.
Let’s take your client communication skills to the next level, but basics come first.
1. What defines a powerful engagement tool
Of course, the marketing industry, along with modern technologies, can offer you a lot of client communication tools, but how do you determine whether it’s a good and powerful one?
There are several things that you should look at when you decide to use technology in your engagement plans:
- They should be easy to deploy and manage
- The software you use should be scalable enough to fit the size of business
- It should be appropriate for your industry
- It must be easy to measure and review; with clear metrics and tests results
- etc.
So basically, we’re looking for a technological solution that will help you change the way you interact with your client. The aim is to engage with them on a certain stage of interaction and deliver better client communication. Therefore, you’ll get better conversion and business growth.
2. Do not resist new technology
Every year more and more client communication tools are released. As a business owner, you’ve got to do research and make up your mind on which one you should try out. Some people tend to be afraid of software or hardware that seems too innovative or even risky.
However, this is something you’ve got to fight if you want to improve your client communication skills and communicate with your client like a pro. Resisting new technology and using the ‘old but good’ one is a road to nowhere. You’ve got to test new approaches and technologies, measure results, and decide whether the new fancy client communication software worth it.
3. Understand the technologies on the market
So let’s say you’re very enthusiastic about new technologies that can help you apply the client communication best practices to your business marketing. Now what?
Do market research of your niche to determine what kind of software your competitors are using for client communication. This way, you’ll get a comprehensive report on the industry you work in. Then you can divide the list of researched brands or companies into two groups: the old-fashioned ones and those who prefer innovations.
When you find out what innovative technologies for client communication are available on the market, you’ll be able to study them and see which one will fit your business the best.
Basically, your research should answer the two most important questions:
- What are the technologies currently available for my niche on the market?
- Which one offers better functionalities and can be the best solution for my company?
This is fundamental.
4. Find out how the technology approach changed your role
In this post, we aim to find out how to communicate with clients more efficiently using technologies. But when you apply new technologies in marketing, you’ve got to understand how this particular technology changes your role in the client communication cycle.
For example, you’ve been hiring the help desk representatives to engage your clients and, as a marketing team manager, you had to work closely with the team and do all the micro-management. Then, when you decide to set up a digital signage network instead, you’ll deal with completely different tasks in your daily working routine.
This means that the technology approach can not only change the way your clients interact with your company but can also affect the responsibilities you and your employees deal with.
So a general rule of thumb is to keep in mind that technologies can change your marketing routine drastically (usually, in a good way!).
5. Define what particular technology is NOT doing
Now, when you studied how your technology affects your client communication process, you’ve got to figure out what steps are not covered.
Of course, it’s almost impossible to find a tool that will be an ultimate solution to every aspect of client communication. This means that you’ll have to analyze the pros and cons of each tool and choose the most fitting solution for your business. Therefore, you’ll have to deal with those disadvantages. It’s not scary if you highlight them right away and keep them in mind. Otherwise, they’ll kick you out of nowhere.
6. Predict before you engage
AI technology is a huge trend these days, and that’s for a reason. The amount of data that it can analyze and manage is unbelievable. With that being said, AI is your best bet in running tests and making predictions based on the analyzed data that you can gather from your marketing campaigns.
This opens a lot of opportunities for engagement ideas depending on the predictions you made. We believe that it should be in the top list of engagement rules: predicting the behavior of your client is a key to good results. Modern client communication tools and technologies allow you to make more precise predictions and, therefore, improve your engagement results.
7. Offer value, not empty talk
Other than being a Seinfeld fan, your client is not looking for a ‘show about nothing.’ You should provide real value with each interaction with your customers. When it comes to the best practices of client communications, bringing value is one of the critical elements in building relationships with your clients.
Engagement rate is a fragile thing that can be boosted enormously with the right technology. However, you should make the most out of it to get the best results. This means that no matter whether it’s an indoor digital signage network or out-of-home advertising platform we’re talking about, you’ve got to use all available features to make each interaction valuable.
Making a positive impact on the life of your customer will always work better than a mindless ad.
8. Build relationships with your clients
When you aim to bring value to your clients, you’re already one step away from building successful relationships with them. Since most of the marketing software or hardware solutions allow you to store, track, and analyze tons of data, you can find common ground with your client faster. People tend to waste so much time on studying the topic of how to communicate with a client more efficiently and yet forget about technologies.
A proper client communication technology can help you to get to know your clients faster. Therefore, build relationships instead of cold transactions.
9. Reward your clients
No matter how complex your message to a client is, rewarding him at some point is always a great idea. Engagement is all about keeping the interest of your customer and not losing his attention. Rewards allow you to create a challenge, and people love to complete them, especially when they get a taste of their first reward.
Modern technologies for customer communications can help you with a reward system as well. For example, if it’s a digital signage network we’re talking about, then you can complement your user with a small reward for completing a critical survey on a screen. Would it work without any reward? Yes, but rewards will help you double the number of responders. This will result in more data to analyze. Therefore, you’ll get more precise results.
10. Pour some entertainment into your communication
Since modern technologies allow you to use many forms of communication and many types of content, your interactions with the clients have an enormous entertainment potential.
Yes, everyone is working on brand humanization and apply a more personal attitude. That’s why entertaining your client is a crucial element of the successful engagement process. Your client knows you’re approaching him, so he will value your efforts more if you can make the process more fun.
11. Moderate closely and adjust on the go
Modern technologies are more flexible than the engagement tools we had to deal with earlier. Now it’s just a matter of a few taps on your laptop or even smartphone to apply changes to your marketing campaigns.
We strongly recommend you to review all of your communications with the clients, find problem spots, and make necessary adjustments to fix those in a few clicks.
12. Regular communication means more than occasional
So the communication technologies can power your relationships with the clients. However, even the best software or hardware in the world may fail if you don’t plan your work correctly.
Get yourself a strategy, make a plan, ensure regular communications to avoid the possibility of getting out of the spotlight. There are hundreds of brands out there; you have to work hard to stay on the ball.
13. Work with multiple target audiences
Client engagement can be harsh when your company provides multiple services or sells many different products. However, you can ease your life if you break down your marketing efforts and work with various target audiences.
Define the target audience for each service or product you want to promote and engage people to interact with. Most of the modern marketing technologies can support a multiple target audience approach. Therefore, you’ll be able to create a small engagement niche for each marketing campaign and get way better results.
14. Always make it interactive!
Here is the final advice that can be considered timeless — making your client communications more interactive is always a good idea. This is what makes the overall customer experience more pleasant and convenient. The whole process of people getting tired of cold robotic communication will not happen backward. More humanized and interactive interactions are better, faster, and more memorable. Therefore, no brand will do the other way around.
Conclusion
You can find tons of technologies to power your marketing strategy and improve engagement. Client communication tools that are currently available on the market publically can be very complex and fit different needs. We believe that no matter the niche you run your business in, you will find our list of fundamental engagement rules handy.
Remember that technologies can not only help you improve the engagement metrics, but change the way you interact with your customers at all. Some brands lack this innovative approach, but you definitely should not neglect it.