By Pinder Takhar, Director, Marketing, mGage
This year businesses have had to adjust the way they operate and communicate with their customers. Not only has it been vital in keeping customers informed it has also been just as important to ensure customers can easily reach the brand. With the increase in customer engagement, this has meant many businesses have had to utilise existing and embrace new technologies to cope with the demand.
According to Edelman, 65 percent of consumers will base their future purchasing decisions on the ways in which a brand communicates with them. This highlights customer needs and requirements are more important than ever before.
It’s apparent that today’s consumers are looking for simple and convenient ways to engage with brands as 69%[i] of consumers prefer communicating with brands over mobile messaging rather than traditional calls. Furthermore, a study by mGage revealed that 61 percent of consumers aged 25-34 years and 56 percent aged between 18-24 favour a messaging service over picking up the phone to contact a business.
Many brands are facing challenges with call centre resourcing, customer loyalty, retention and struggling to quickly implement the latest technologies. Therefore, for many businesses, mobile messaging has become a crucial part of their customer service function to deliver an advanced customer experience.
Mobile Chat Services Enable Operational Efficiency
Customer service centres are an essential but costly function for businesses.
By implementing a mobile chat service, this enables businesses to easily answer routine customer service enquiries swiftly and deflect traffic from its call center to improve the customer service. With agent driven applications businesses can become more efficient as you can have multiple mobile chat sessions. Most importantly it helps save costs and in fact, it is reported by IBM that integration of chatbots can lead to a 30% decrease in operational costs.
Invest in Mobile Chat to Enhance Customer Loyalty
Customers today expect fast and timely responses to their enquiries and a delayed response can often be the basis for a negative review or cancelled service. A report from Forrester Research found that 63% of customers will leave a company after just one poor experience and almost two-thirds will no longer wait more than two minutes for assistance.
By incorporating an automated chat service a brand can provide the immediate and time sensitive responses consumers expect, therefore improving the customer experience and average call handling time. This is reflected in research by Chatbot Magazine that shows 69% of consumers prefer chatbots because of their ability to provide quick replies to simple questions.
Businesses can also reallocate agent resources for more complex and delicate services that may not be suited for automation.
Lead with Smarter Messaging to Increase Customer Satisfaction
Smartphone users have access to a range of channels including SMS, RCS, Facebook messenger, WhatsApp and more. In the digital era, businesses no longer operate on a set time as websites and social apps are always available 24/7, meaning that customer engagement is a constant. This is where mobile messaging technologies become essential to support this level of customer/brand engagement.
The implementation of new technologies such as RCS (Rich Communication Services), will allow brands to build interactive and engaging chatbot flows for different stages of the customer journey. Whether that is to amend a delivery, track an order or request customer feedback, by combining the rich media and interactive chat features it offers a unique capability for consumers to engage with organisations like never before. It’s also a strong incentive for brands to deliver exceptional customer service and loyalty reward programmes.
Final thoughts
As consumer attitudes shift and technology advances further, companies that incorporate mobile chat services will be able to offer a far more personalised experience that fits in better with the ever-changing demands of consumers.
We know that mobile chat services have been around for a while, however, given the technological advances in making this a more “human” experience by using A.I technology, it will continue to be a vital part of any business looking to better their customer engagement.
To find out more information on mGage’s Mobile Messaging solution please contact us.
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