Businesses Don’t Get The Message and Unintentionally Ignore Their Customers
Brands around the world spend significant amounts of time, human, and financial resources every day on marketing and promotional campaigns. And all of this is done with the single purpose of getting the potential customer’s attention and offering them a relevant product.
Considering this, the new findings of a new report by Sinch are quite surprising: it states that businesses, in fact, don’t get the messages sent by customers, and unintentionally ignore them as a result. Let’s take a closer look.
What Brands Get Wrong?
The report is a result of a survey of 3000 consumers across 15 countries and shows that 89% of people want, in fact, to initiate a two-way conversation with the brands, but their voices are not being heard. In fact, 53% of respondents recalled not being able to send a reply to a text from a brand when they wanted to.
Delayed Responses Result in Dissatisfaction
In the age of smartphones, messengers, and Internet coverage available everywhere, customers are used to quick communication. And this is not only the case in personal life: they expect to hear back from the brands swiftly as well.
Even the brands that have invested in two-way communication channels are struggling to meet the needs of their customers. According to the survey, it usually takes brands around a day to reply to customer inquiries on social media, and longer on email. While this can be a result of overload and limited capacity, it affects negatively the brand image. As a result, customers are less likely to buy from the brand, as they are unsure whether they can trust it.
AI Chatbots - Helpful or Not?
The majority of the respondents admitted interacting with support chatbots at least once. But what happens when the pre-trained bot isn’t that helpful, and can’t solve the customer’s problem? In this situation, 95% of the respondents would prefer to instantly be directed to a live agent. However, only 35% of companies currently allow this. This stark contrast between consumer needs and brand offering is another case of businesses ignoring the customers, this time leaving them with unsolved issues.
2-Way Interaction: How to Achieve It
The report shows that customers would be willing to interact with brands more if the latter provided 2-way communication methods that would allow customers to express themselves. While email is still there, it is often considered a “slower” communication method, and in emergency situations may not be such a good fit.
Establishing omnichannel 2-way communication with your customers, and allowing them to reach out to you by simply replying to your messages would be a huge step towards meeting customer requirements. And the digital age gives us an ample number of channels to do just that.
SMS messages can be just one of them. Quick, straightforward, simple, and well-known to anyone, they are perfect for establishing ongoing and undisrupted communication between your brand and the customer. Using messengers like Viber is another channel that can help to achieve the same results. Other tools include live chat, phone support, and even video calls.
Final Thoughts
Understanding the pain points of your customers and addressing them is a crucial step toward developing your business. The insightful findings of the report indicate that customers no longer want to be only on the receiving end of the communication, but want to actively participate in it. Take this into consideration as you develop your brand strategy, and you’ll forge more long-lasting and satisfying relationships with them.
Considering giving SMS a try? Our experts will be happy to guide you through our product. YooTelco is a leading company in the communications industry, with 14+ years of experience at the top of the telecom industry, working with 450+ partners, and has a presence in 200+ countries.
