Customer Experience Communication – get it right, or lose sales!

Mark Cuban quote
Do you know how your customers prefer to communicate with you? 

I love that quote by Mark Cuban. Making your product easier to buy includes making it easy to communicate with you. It is part of the overall CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE. 

Let’s get really honest. I can count on one hand all the businesses that I have spoken with over the past 20 years that actually knew their customers preferred method of communication. And I’ve spoken to hundreds of businesses. Just a small fraction of them had made the effort to understand who their customers were, how to reach them and then how to communicate with them.

Why does this matter?

The more you know about who you’re trying to sell to, and how they prefer to be communicated with, the better chance you have of selling to them! 

SIMPLE!

I was recently trying to find out some information about a product I was trying to buy. I didn’t want to make a phone call, because my questions were simple and I wasn’t ready to commit to buying anything. They didn’t seem to have an email address or button that I could find. But they had a ‘live chat’ button on their website: “We’re online. Chat now!”

Great! They were inviting me to chat with them. Phew!

We're online - chat now

I had to fill in WAY too much information to start the chat (email, phone and FULL name!) Fortunately I have a Google Voice phone number that I can avoid if I want to, so I filled out the form. Relatively accurately.

Finally someone pops up – nice photo of a young lady and her full name. I started asking my questions and she said “I will have someone reach out to you”.

Ummm…. but we’re already chatting.

Why can’t you help me? I don’t want to talk to someone on the phone…

Well (and here is the clincher…)

“To ensure we provide accurate information, we need to speak with you over the phone.”

So wait. You DON’T provide accurate information via live chat? 

Well that conversation (and sale) ended quickly.

Live chat

I probably don’t need to repeat myself, but I will. If you don’t communicate with your customers with their preferred communication method, then you will likely lose the sale!

Here are a couple of tips to takeaway:

Tip #1: Don’t assume you know! Send out a quick survey to your customers asking their preferred method of communication during the sales process. (You should also know how to communicate with them once they’re a customer, but that is a survey for another day).

Tip #2: Make sure you have a live chat form on your website manned by knowledgable representatives. If you can’t afford to have someone knowledgable man the ‘live chat’ desk, then don’t offer it as an option. A poor experience is worse than no experience.

Tip #3: You should try to offer MORE than 2 methods of communication to provide a solution for a variety of customers to choose from. Consider adding texting as one of those options!

Tip #4: Assign someone to be responsible for monitoring and responding (quickly) to email communications. So many businesses miss out on the sale because they didn’t see the email for a few days.

So, let us know – do you know how to communicate with your customers on their method of choice? How did you determine what your customers preferences were? Share in the comments below…


The Intentional Marketer can provide you with a quick audit of your current solutions and some ideas and recommendations to improve your customer experience.

Just give us a call, email or text! Whichever method you’d prefer.

 

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