As a company, you need to communicate with your customers effectively and address any concerns that they may have. Poor communication can lead to lost business and can have a major financial impact on your operations – one estimate puts the cost of poor communication at about $4 billion annually.

Businesses need to enshrine good communication as one of the integral parts of their business ethos. This includes providing thorough training to employees, including recommended communication strategies.

1.  Real-Time Assistance

Live engagement tools allow you to provide customers with real-time assistance and help you address concerns before they cause clients to navigate away from your webpage. Additionally, customers don’t have to take the time out to email or call you, and they know that they’ll get a response back within moments.

Other advantages include building a better rapport with customers and encouraging return business, increasing customer engagement with your business, and more. It is important to ensure that your responses are timely, however – research found that longer wait times resulted in lower customer satisfaction. At the same time, support should be high-quality – 95% of customers said that higher-quality support was more important than speed.

2.  Automate Communication

Not all communication needs to involve the customer service team. You can take advantage of SMS communications to automate responses to some common queries using chatbots. While over-automation can be negative, finding a balance can free up your customer service agents to respond to complex queries.

Other benefits of chatbots include offering 24/7 support, boosting customer engagement, and providing a better customer experience. Bots can even make the customer buying journey more seamless as they can help people make decisions and curate offerings to better meet customers’ needs.

Make sure that you have a clear chatbot strategy before opening them up to customers. While chatbots can be helpful, they should have a friendly tone and be able to manage complex conversations well. A poorly designed chatbot will confuse clients and affect your business reputation.

3.  Collect Feedback

Customer communication strategies are only as effective as the customer’s opinion of them. You need to be aware of how well your buyers think you are communicating with them so that you can adjust as necessary.

Good feedback lets you know more than just whether or not you are communicating efficiently – it also lets you know where you should make changes and what aspects of your strategy are working well. More than that, customers notice when their input is requested – 77% of customers are more likely to have a better view of your business if you ask for and incorporate their feedback. You should also offer multiple ways to offer feedback, including via email, over the phone, over social media, and through easily completed ranking systems.

4.  Use Social Media

Social media is becoming ever more important for businesses. More than ever, people communicate and interact with brands online, sharing their purchases and publicizing their grievances.

Depending on your business, your clients may prefer one form of social media over another. Clothing brands, for example, are more likely to see buyers post reviews on Instagram than on Twitter. It’s important that you understand which social media websites your clients are using and reach out to them via those channels.

Additionally, businesses should be prompt to respond to any posts about their business, especially negative ones. As social media is more likely to be public than not, letting concerns go unaddressed can affect their reputation among potential patrons as well as existing ones.

5.  Be Patient

When interacting with people, there is a chance that you will be speaking with someone who is angry, irate, or simply confused. You may also have difficulties in communicating with another person due to language barriers, emotional distress, and other similar issues.

Remember, your client is approaching you for a solution to their issue. It is essential that you stay patient while speaking with them. You may have to repeat the same information a few times or may have to apologize even though you believe you have done nothing wrong. Staying patient throughout will ensure that you provide everyone you interact with high-quality service and increase the likelihood of repeat business.

6.  Know Your Products

Many people who require assistance do not have the time to wait for you to look up details or clarify issues with management. While there will always be some queries you will need help to answer (such as whether you have certain products in stock or if you can provide someone with an unadvertised discount), you should be able to provide knowledgeable solutions as quickly as possible.

If you believe reaching a solution will take time, give the customer an idea of how long they may have to wait. When people are left waiting without a clear idea of what steps you are taking to resolve their concerns, they can become irate and angry.

7.  Improve the First Experience

If the first experience that potential clients have with your business is negative, you risk significant financial losses. Consider, for example, United Airlines, which lost over $1 billion in value when a passenger’s negative experience was exposed on social media.

Positive experiences right from the outset not only increase client satisfaction but can also boost revenue when those clients publicize their experience. Some ways to improve first experiences include reducing wait time, providing real-time support as much as possible, and increasing meaningful and genuine conversations.

8.  Provide Omnichannel Support

Omnichannel support is a strategy in which all communications are coordinated and consistent. This differs from multichannel support, in which several support channels are available but are disconnected from each other.

Omnichannel support allows buyers to interact with you in the way they prefer and increase client engagement. It also has financial advantages, as it reduces acquisition costs and increases conversions.

Ensuring your employees are engaging in effective communication will allow you to make your business more attractive to potential clients and improve its reputation. Aside from allowing you to connect with customers better, good communication can also result in improved sales, making a communication strategy essential for all businesses.