Savvy businesses understand the importance of efficient, effective customer support—maintaining a good relationship with an existing customer means more sales, better word-of-mouth, fewer returns, and ultimately, more profit. So if you’re looking to keep ahead of the competition on customer service, where should you be focusing your efforts?
The answer, as you might expect, comes from mobile technology. With the rise of mobile computing, the adoption of messaging apps over SMS texting and traditional phone calls is poised to continue at a rapid pace. If your customer service isn’t ready to service customers through avenues such as LINE, WeChat, WhatsApp, or Facebook Messenger, you’re already falling behind. Not convinced? Here are a few points to consider:
Communication is shifting. To understand the importance of adding messaging apps to your customer service centers’ means of communication, one needs only look at the way various major communication companies have been scrambling to bring the big names under their umbrella. Facebook has acquired WhatsApp and already begun working on methods to add Business-to-Consumer features to its traditional messaging app. LINE and WeChat, spotting opportunity, have opened up APIs for businesses as well. Rakutenpurchased Viber with the intention of extending its reach. This flurry of market activity should set off bells for any business paying attention.
Better quality means higher efficiency. Of course, there are reasons to embrace the messaging app revolution aside from reach: these apps offer improved clarity of communication over traditional phone calls, with audio quality exponentially better than telephony can offer. That’s putting aside the myriad advantages unique to mobile communications: video, photos, GPS positioning, text communication, special group communications, alert systems. Businesses embracing messaging apps to their fullest potential will see improved outcomes in customer service, as they eliminate the miscommunications inherent to the limitations of telephony.
Early adopters matter. Some businesses might at the reach of messaging apps with interest, but not quite be ready to pull the trigger on updating their customer service. But consider this: ‘early adopters’ is a term which overlaps almost 100% with ‘trendsetters’. Companies which can service early adopters of messaging apps better will see positive word-of-mouth grow at an outsized rate, as the same voices which encourage adoption of messaging apps speak positively about their company. The group may be relatively small, depending on your companies target demographics, but that small group will have an outsized reach.