Are You Making These 7 Customer Communication Mistakes?
Nowadays retailers can communicate with their customers in a number of ways: phone calls, emails, the various social media platforms that keep increasing, and text messaging.
It’s easy to get lost in the thick of it and make communication mistakes.
Afterall, we use all these tools to communicate with friends and family, so it’s no surprise that sometimes you might freeze and wonder if you should really be putting that emoji in your message.
Embracing new communication methods with your customers can be challenging, as there are often unspoken rules that you need to follow.
This blog post will provide guidance on how to navigate these rules effectively.
In case you want more do’s and don’ts when it comes down to communicating with your customers.
#1 Energy Mismatch
Remember the last time you wrote a nice long text message and you got a thumbs up as a response?
How did you feel?
Now, that’s an energy mismatch.
Matching your customer’s energy, especially via text message or email is essential for a seamless interaction where both parties feel positive about the exchange.
You won’t need to consider this when you’re sending out promotional material, but the need to match your customer’s energy usually happens in sales or service interactions.
It’s always best to read the situation, and then choose how to respond given that these situations are generally more emotionally charged.
If your customer comes in with lots of questions about a new bike they want to purchase, or they write to you a long text message describing how their piece of jewelry broke, it’s important to get to their level because they want to feel heard.
That customer with lots of questions does not want to feel rushed, and the one with the jewelry that needs repair might need some empathy.
In our interview with Specialized Austin, we really liked what Kimmi (general manager) had to say about this:
Kimmi: We listen for cues for how that person is carrying the conversation. You know if somebody sends us a text message and it's ten paragraphs long.
If you only send them a little, all good. That person obviously has a lot of things to say. Which in turn, they would like us to say a lot of things back.
Some people are very short and to the point. That's how they want to be responded to. That’s how they want to be sold to.
That’s something we focus a lot on, we slow down to speed up, we read back the whole text thread that way we’re on top of what's happening. So we're not backtracking or looking like we don't know what we're doing. We want everybody to be in the know of what's happening.
Message Templates
The power of Ikeono lies in the fact that unlike most marketing SMS platforms, we encourage conversational text messaging to build relationships with customers for these exact scenarios.
While we highly recommend using message templates for routine responses, this is exactly where you should not be using message templates as they will always sound out of place in these scenarios.
At the end of the day customers prefer you to be real, have banter with them, and avoid big corporate talk.
The Exception
The only exception to this rule is… when a customer is expressing dissatisfaction with a service or interaction, this is when you should not be matching their energy.
Assuming it’s not a situation where you are being completely disrespected, as a business owner, this is where you and your team should take the high road, or the neutral road.
Best to steer away from matching energy in this situation as it will only escalate the situation.
Whether it’s an email, text message or a Google review, remember people will always talk about these scenarios to their circle, it’s best to take the high road and offer some solutions and let the customer make their own decision.
#2 Emoji Etiquette Oversight
The use of emojis in your communication can vary depending on your relationship with the customer, your industry, the context of your conversation and oftentimes different generations will have contrasting reactions to emojis.
Why do we even like to use emojis?
It’s no secret that text messages, emails, and even phone calls lack the physical and emotional cues that we have in our interactions, whether it’s our tone, smile, or eye contact, written messages are always missing a “je ne sais quoi”.
As humans we want to be understood, and emojis help with that.
If it’s an interaction with a customer you are already friendly with, or you are delivering positive news, emojis are always a safe bet.
We think emojis are great, after all emails with emojis in the subject line have a 56% higher open-rate than plain text subject lines.
But remember, emojis are not a universal language, back to our first tip, if the customer is using emojis with you, then you should definitely match their energy and use some too, but there might be moments you want to reconsider if using an emoji is a good idea.
Safe: 👍🙂📅 🤝📌✅
Reconsider: 🍑💩🤬🖕😘😈
#3 The Email Tsunami
Yes, there is such a thing as too many emails.
As a consumer we know, but sometimes as business owners we forget this.
Bombarding your customers with too many emails will lead to your followers clicking unsubscribe and low open-rates.
Finding the magic number for how often you should be sending out emails will be unique to your business and industry.
Plus, they are time consuming to write and design, and the return on investment is not always there.
And even though segmentation is key to a successful marketing email strategy (meaning you need to spend more time and resources to write more emails), more than 80% of marketers admit to sending the same content to all subscribers 👀.
If that was not enough, emails have a low open-rate with an average of 2.3%.
Avoid using emails as your main avenue for communication with customers and check out this blog post where we highlight the do’s and don’ts of each communication style, because there is always a time and a place for emails, just not when you’re looking for a time sensitive response for example.
🚨Noteworthy News
Google and Yahoo are introducing strict new security measures targeting bulk senders.
Bulk senders are defined as organizations sending 5,000 or more messages daily and will need to meet these new requirements as of February 2024.
The requirements include strong email authentication, streamlined unsubscription processes, and the enforcement of a spam rate threshold for large senders (abuse complaint rate of 0.3% or higher), which will be supported by platforms like Mailchimp, Klaviyo, etc.
What does this mean for you?
You will need to reconsider how often you send out emails because if 15 people out of 5,000 mark your emails as spam, then all messages from your organization will be blocked.
#4 Inconsistency Alert
We know that today retailers have many ways of communicating with customers. Whether it’s social media, email, text message, phone, or email, it’s important to keep your messaging consistent.
Staying consistent with how you show up digitally means customers will say “don’t worry, they will always text you when your bike is ready” or “check their instagram, they always keep their hours updated on there”.
This means that your customers always know what to expect from you.
What can this look like in practice?
Emails are reserved for marketing material.
Phone calls are scheduled via text message and are used to discuss lengthier topics that might need an extra human touch - don’t forget to recap your conversation via text!
Text messages can be used for repair or special order notifications, real talk with your customers, or even personalized promotional communication.
Social media is a place for your customers to feel connected with you, ask questions, and also a place for you to show your personality and stay consistent for brand awareness.
#5 The After(or before)-Hours Silence
Leaving your customers hanging during off-hours can lead to confusion and disappointment.
Especially if text messaging has become part of your communication strategy.
You want to avoid having them reach out via text message or even web chat and get no response at all.
Why?
Customers have an expectation when it comes to these two modes of communication.
Sure, they don’t expect you to answer an email right away and if you don’t pick up the phone, then they will definitely know you’re not open, but what about the questions they shoot over during their midnight shopping sprees or texting you for an update on their bike repair?
The beauty of Ikeono is that you can set your store hours and have automated messages sent out when customers attempt to reach out during off-hours.
Our Favorite Feature
Often times businesses will have staff working on repairs or service items before or after store hours, with automated status notifications, it might be misleading to send a customer a message that their item is ready for pick up outside your store hours.
That’s why we only send out any automated messages during business hours to avoid having customers show up when you’re not there.
Customer Stories
After being notified by their local Apple store that their new iPhone was ready for pickup, a customer of ours rushed to the store only to find out that they weren’t open!
This wouldn’t happen with Ikeono as messages are queued to only be sent according to your configurable store hours.
#6 Ignoring Social Media Interactions
Being active on social media is crucial for your brand awareness, brand personality, and overall for educating your customers on your products and services.
But being active on social media while you are actively ignoring your customers is worst than just not posting at all 😅.
Social media is a place where customers and potential customers come to ask quick questions, or interact with the content you are posting, which is exactly your goal, so why ignore them?
Make sure you answer every DM and comment you get on social media.
You can use Ikeono inbox to make sure you don’t miss any direct messages and make sure your social media manager is keeping an eye out on the comment section.
Make sure to like or even better reply to all the positive comments, and reply to any questions or negativity coming your way.
#7 Ignoring a Communication Stream
You know what they say “80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your customers!”
Retailers have been emailing their customers and prospects for a long time, and while email marketing has its own benefits, it has become a catch-all for communication.
Ignoring a communication stream like text messaging that allows you to build a closer relationship with your customers is limiting your potential as a business.
Text messaging not only has an open-rate of above 90% within the first few minutes (compared to just over 20% for emails), it’s the way people communicate with their friends and family.
Mirroring that communication style and nurturing relationships through text will seamlessly make you the preferred business next time they need to make a purchase.
Maybe This Is Worse Than Ignoring…
More communication streams, more customers.
This means that you will need to make adjustments to existing processes to make this change a success.
Actively discouraging customers to not use web chat 😬
However, implementing a new stream… and then encouraging people to not use it is counterproductive.
For example, we see this way too often – businesses that implement web chat because they know and understand the value but don’t want to change their ways to make sure messages get answered.
How Many of These Faux Pas Have You Done?
Don’t worry, at the end of the day, it’s all about trial and error, and you will get it right.
The most important part is to always have a pulse check on your customers, make sure you are interacting with them, and they will definitely tell you what you are doing right, and what you are doing wrong.