What are the most important communication strategies of 2023?
Efficient and custom-tailored communication is an essential tool in keeping customers engaged. And in boosting their overall satisfaction.
But what actionable communication strategies are there that you can harness? What can you actually do to enhance customer satisfaction?
Here are five tried and tested strategies to rely on in 2023.
Leverage Maximum Personalization
First and foremost, deep personalization remains center-stage among the different communication strategies you can employ to keep customers happy.
In 2023, there is a massive variety of tools you can leverage to gather the type of data that will help you send bespoke communications to every single customer. Plugins for your website help you track the products and services they look at most. Analytics tools let you identify their age group, gender, and geographical region.
Plus, one of the major trends in personalization in 2023 is zero-party data. This is data that customers choose to share with a brand they trust.
Say you’re a lingerie brand and someone signs up for your newsletter or an account on your website. It takes minimal effort to add a short survey on what types of cuts, fabrics, and colors your new lead prefers to the sign-up process.
You can even offer a small incentive, such as bonus points or a 10%-off voucher, as an incentive. The precise and personal information you get in return is well worth it.
With this type of data, you can craft custom-tailored emails, text messages, and even ads that speak to each customer on a personal level.
Harness AI and ML to Speed Up Response Times
Two more key communication strategies when it comes to customer satisfaction are efficiency and speed. We live in a world of instant communication. After all, who hasn’t become annoyed when a friend we’ve texted with an urgent question hasn’t replied within minutes?
The standards for businesses are similar. If they reach out with a question or issue, most customers now expect a reply in a matter of minutes or hours, instead of days.
But how can you meet these standards when you don’t have a large communications team who’s available 24/7?
For most businesses, the answer lies in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).
Recently, cutting-edge generative AI tools like ChatGPT have wowed the world with their amazing capabilities. Handling routine customer communication is a breeze for business AI tools.
For instance, many business phone systems already come with AI-powered automatization tools. Customers can call and handle routine queries like scheduling and changing appointments, inquiring about their account, or tracking shipments with the support of an AI assistant.
This frees up the time of your human agents to deal with truly complex queries and increases overall customer satisfaction.
Diversify Your Communication Channels
Another defining trend of customer communication is omnichannel communication. In 2023, customers expect businesses to be reachable through a diversity of channels – via phone, social media, email, live chat. To start with.
To keep customers satisfied, businesses have to stay on their toes.
Omnichannel communication tools can help you achieve this goal. Specialized UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) platforms allow you to centralize all your business communications. Instead of hopping wildly between different platforms and apps, your team will be able to access conversations with customers from one central point of entry.
Not only will this boost customer satisfaction, it will also help your team streamline communication processes and increase their productivity.
Guarantee Transparency
One major shift that we’ve observed in customer communication strategies over the past years has been an increasing preference for transparency. International guidelines like GDPR aside, customers increasingly want to know how you collect and use their data. And they want control over the process.
This becomes especially critical considering the looming deprecation of third-party cookies, on the horizon for 2024. According to recent statistics, 81% of businesses still rely heavily on this data for their marketing strategies.
It’s time to re-think that.
Instead, you need to be straightforward with customers. Highlight your data policy and make sure to consistently respect customers’ data preferences. Showcasing that you’re willing and happy to do so will only earn you plus points and increase customer trust.
Rely on Proactive Customer Support
Finally, a major communication strategy you can leverage to increase customer satisfaction is proactive customer support.
Rather than wait for issues with your products and services to crop up and for customers to reach out with questions, get there first. Analyze your data and identify where customers frequently need assistance, additional information, or help.
Then, make sure to provide exactly that when they reach that stage of their customer journey. Personalized emails, pop-ups, or even text messages at just the right time can supercharge customer satisfaction.
The Bottom Line: These Are the Key Communication Strategies for 2023
Optimizing your communication strategies is key in 2023. By stepping up your personalization game, harnessing AI, leveraging omnichannel communication, guaranteeing transparency, and betting on proactive customer support, you can do exactly that. And make sure your customers are engaged and satisfied.
