eCommerce businesses are continuing to experience rapid growth in online orders in 2021. As a result, customer service teams have become overburdened with a rising volume in “where is my order?” (WISMO) queries and other order-related inquiries. At the same time, consumers have also grown increasingly frustrated with long wait times and the inconvenience of using traditional channels, like phone support, that have proven to fail in meeting shoppers’ expectations for immediate answers to simple, order-related questions.

To solve for both of these operational and customer experience oriented challenges, eCommerce brands must turn to automated, self-service solutions that successfully contain order-related inquiries while providing instantaneous order updates through the messaging and conversational channels that today’s customers prefer. 

Here are some of the most popular examples of automated experiences that today’s leading eCommerce brands leverage to provide instantaneous WISMO responses:

Automated Experience for Single Order Lookups

Automated, single-order lookups enable customers to immediately get order status information on their latest purchase through conversational channels like web chat, Facebook Messenger, SMS, and more in just 3 easy steps.

Customers simply need to start a conversation through their messaging channel of choice, enter their email to verify their account, and select “View Order”.

Through an integration with popular shipping APIs like EasyPost, conversational automation solutions can instantly provide consumers with their most recent order status.

Proactive, Automated Order Status Updates

Today’s leading eCommerce brands also leverage proactive order notifications through conversational channels to keep their customers informed on the status of their order as it progresses towards their doorstep.

In the example above, a customer opts in to automated Facebook Messenger order status notifications from their initial order confirmation email. After opting in, the customer is sent a series of push notifications through Facebook Messenger that informs them of each change in their order status.

Seamless Transitions to Customer Service Platforms

Of course, while conversational automation is highly effective at successfully containing the vast majority of order-related inquiries, not every inbound issue can be resolved through self-service channels. For the remaining inquiries that are too complex to be solved through self-service channels, automated experiences must also be able to sync with popular Customer Service Platforms like Zendesk, Oracle, and more to provide seamless transitions to live agents.

By connecting with popular CSPs, automated experiences can greatly drive agent efficiency by verifying account information before inbound tickets reach the agent and by supplying them summaries and key details from customers’ interactions with the conversational AI.

The Benefit of Providing Automated WISMO Responses

By providing customers with the option to get fast, self-service responses to WISMO inquiries, eCommerce brands like TechStyle Fashion Group have been able to successfully contain over 85% of inbound, order-related inquiries while simultaneously driving 95% customer satisfaction.

Is your brand experiencing an overwhelming volume of WISMO inquiries? Contact us today to learn how we can work with your customer service team to deploy a highly-intelligent automation solution in a matter of weeks.

This year, holiday shopping will be more digital than ever before. As consumers continue their shift to online channels and major retailers cancel in-person Black Friday sales, brands must quickly adapt through new omnichannel tactics that capitalize on surges in online traffic. Here are five strategies for doing just that.

5 Examples of Top Retailers with Brilliant Omni-Channel Strategies For Holidays

1. The Gift Recommendation Engine – Guided Selling

Digging through endless product listings, looking for the perfect gift, is a tedious and challenging process for holiday shoppers.

However, AI-powered assistants, used by leading brands like Nike Jordan and Lane Bryant, make it easy and frictionless for shoppers to find the precise gift for their recipient.

Deployed on your web site, in apps, or social channels like Facebook Messenger or SMS, these intelligent automated agents can quickly interact with users and recommend some great options:

Earlier this year, one of our customers, an Iconic jewelry brand did just that leading up to  another gift-heavy holiday: Valentine’s Day. In previous seasonal campaigns using Facebook Messenger, the retailer’s social managers and sales associates were swamped with the need to respond to customers’ inquiries.

To address this, the retailer deployed an AI-powered conversational shopping feature on Messenger that made personalized gift recommendations at scale. They quickly found that consumers were 4X more likely to make a purchase when they receive such guided sales assistance, compared to those who are unassisted.

By clicking on a social ad, shoppers were seamlessly guided to Facebook Messenger and offered a brief interactive quiz with gift recommendations based on who the gift recipient was, the gender and the price range, selected from a group of products chosen by the retailer for those profiles. The AI-powered assistants also handled free text queries, and customers could shop for products online at the retailer’s site or find the nearest physical store.

We’ve all had that experience when shopping for a friend, where you discover a product or item that you’d prefer to be on the receiving end of rather than giving. To address this, the iconic retailer also provided shoppers the option to send their friends and family links and images of on Messenger gifts that they want for themselves, accompanied by a small note: “Hint hint…This is at the top of my wish list.”

The results: Half of the quiz takers received a gift recommendation, leading to a 28x return-on-ad-spend (ROAS).

And, because AI-powered assistants love to work all the time, they also helped relieve customer service by efficiently handlings FAQs.

2. Gift FAQ & Customer Service Engine

Gifts purchased over the holidays are wrapped not only in ribbons and pretty paper but are enveloped in countless questions about sizes, style options, and prices. The season of joy is also the season of customer service, a stressful time for brands to handle the massive volume of inquiries.

In fact, 54% of customer service requests are taking place outside regular business hours. A vast number of those requests are happening on messaging platforms since those are channels that consumers already use.

That’s where conversational AI comes in this holiday season. Intelligent chatbots work diligently and accurately day and night, providing a front line for all queries from customers and passing on some queries to human agents only when they get too complex. This allows your team to focus on driving sales and new purchases instead of an endless queue of customer service inquiries.

3. Digital Holiday Coupons

One of the best traits of intelligent chatbots is that they never get tired of pointing out the great holiday offers you have. This means that brands can reinvent promotions.

Regional grocery chain H-E-B did just that with their conversational AI. The grocery reinvented discount coupons by delivering them to more than 13 million customers weekly, personalized to the declared shopping needs of the recipients.

Automated notifications let customers browse the deals through button clicks or free text requests, even when they were standing in the store. The open rate for the notifications: 77%. Percentage of opened deals that were saved by users: 70%.

4. Convert Holiday Enthusiasm into Sales

Facebook is a platform designed for engagement and, during the holiday season, that engagement kicks into high gear with shoppers expressing their excitement through post-likes and comments.

This holiday season, Facebook is also offering a nice new gift for marketers. Facebook Messenger is expanding its capabilities to allow marketers to privately message shoppers who have left positive comments on their brands’ posts.

All of those shoppers commenting “this looks awesome!”, “I’ve got to get this for my sister!” can easily be turned from mere commentators into new customers. Combined with conversational AI, this opens up a whole new channel to convert positive comments into sales at scale. See this experience below:

Contact our conversational experts to learn more about this experience.

5. Turn the Holiday Rush into Real Consumer Insights

The rush of consumers during the holidays is like a large polling sample that can provide tons of answers — if brands can only figure out the questions.

A rush of customers looking for this season’s hot gift item, for instance, could answer a number of questions that help uncover and define your target customer persona.

But the trick is efficiently capturing holiday shoppers’ information, at scale, and quickly turning it into insights.

Take California wine and spirits brand E. & J. Gallo Winery. To engage shoppers of their new Rosé product line, they developed “Rosé Your Way” AI-powered experience, which was introduced to consumers via targeted ads on Facebook Messenger, Facebook Newsfeeds, and Instagram.

The digital assistants guided consumers through a series of questions to recommend the ideal Gallo Rosé, followed by personalized content that included the best recipes to go with the recommended wine and finished with a customer satisfaction survey.

The results: 90% of the 25,000 engaged consumers completed the Rosé recommender. Gallo was able to determine the most popular Rosé flavor preferences, drinking styles, and occasions. When follow-up push notifications were sent based on those preferences, 60% of the messages were opened.

Unwrapping It All

With some planning – and the use of intelligent, automated, always-on conversational helpers – brands can soar through the holiday season by building a dedicated fan base attracted to personalized recommendations, customized deals, and prompt customer service attention.

And, when the rush is over, the brand can quickly assess what worked, what didn’t, and what was missing.

Ready to boost your sales and drive higher performance this holiday? See which strategy is the best fit for your organization. Learn more.

With the holidays quickly approaching, eCommerce brands are bracing for an unprecedented volume of online orders. With this influx of sales, however, brands can also expect a massive influx of unmanageable customer service inquiries.

In recent posts, we’ve talked about how conversational AI can help boost revenue during the holidays.

But, as we approach the year’s end, there are three big reasons why AI-powered agents can prove critical to your customer service during the holiday season.

1. Order Personalization

Automated customer service can not only handle a large volume of inquiries, but it can do so with a level of personalization that would be difficult for human agents to accommodate at scale.

Integrated with backend order systems, Quiq’s Conversational AI can immediately pull up the details shoppers are looking for when contacting customer service, such as when the order will arrive. As wonderful as the holiday season is, it’s a stressful time for consumers as well as for brands, and this kind of frictionless order info, at any time of day or night, can make the experience a pleasant one.

Shoppers are also more likely to engage with personalized customer service responses. Our team at Quiq has found that consumers respond to personalized engagement with a clickthrough rate that is almost three times higher than otherwise.

2. Instant Reminders of the Season’s Hottest Products

It wouldn’t be a real holiday season unless some item was the star – the product that everyone wants, but that sells out too quickly.

Intelligent automation helps brands handle and manage this surge in demand. They can minimize the effort to find out if this year’s hot product is still available while providing the immediate option to subscribe to notifications about future product availability leading up to the holidays.

Automated agents can also intelligently steer the demand toward similar or complementary products that are in stock, as an addition to, or a substitute for, that hot item.

Through these finely tuned efforts, automated agents can help keep consumers favorably engaged with your brand, turning the experience into a rewarding one even if the product they initially were searching for was out of stock.

3. Proactively Addressing Holiday Friction

Like any relationship, customer relationships require steady maintenance and the ability to respond instantly if needed.

Automated agents can help support that kind of consumer-wrangling, such as through the recently available ability to send messages to users on Facebook Messenger right from the comments about your brand’s posts on a Facebook page.

These public comments, of course, are often occasions when customers ask questions or vent their frustrations, so they’re not always flattering. A quick response automatically sent through messaging can defuse an adverse situation and demonstrate to others that your brand is responsive, proactive, and ready to improve their shopping experience.

Conversational AI Makes Sense for the Holidays

AI-powered automated agents make sense for customer service – especially during the holidays when there is a surge of inquiries, orders, and complaints. These agents help brands maintain constant, 24-hour contact with customers and would-be customers over their preferred communication channels. Especially for younger consumers, those channels involve texting or messaging.

Intelligent automation can handle many of the mundane inquiries, handing off the communication to live agents for the more complex ones. They also provide a steady stream of high-level personalization, offer detailed analytics to showcase what responses worked best and provide a more difficult target for fraudsters than do human agents.

During the holiday season, brands must bring their varsity team to the field. AI-powered chatbots from Quiq know how to run the right plays, again and again, at any time of day or night. Learn more from our conversational consultants.

This year, holiday shopping will shift to eCommerce like never before. Once again, eCommerce sales are projected to grow this holiday season as consumers continue to transition to cyber-week sales.

To capitalize on this season’s unprecedented spike in online traffic and digital purchase behavior, top eCommerce brands are turning to automated shopping assistants that act as key revenue drivers and provide the sort of highly personalized assistance shoppers would traditionally receive from an in-store experience.

Deploying highly intelligent, automated shopping assistants during peak seasons has proven to increase sales conversion rates as high as 4X.

Here are 6 of the most common ways that leading eCommerce brands leverage automated assistants to drive more revenue during the holidays.

1. Proactive Product Suggestions

Highly-intelligent, automated assistants are capable of identifying shoppers with high purchase intent and proactively engaging them with upsell opportunities that increase Average Order Value (AOV). For example, when online shoppers add new products to their cart, automated onsite assistants can initiate a conversation and suggest additional products that are frequently purchased along with the items recently added to the cart.

Through such highly-personalized engagements, in a conversational format, eCommerce brands can lift AOV while providing convenient suggestions that support their customers’ journeys.

2. Guided Gift Recommendations

For shoppers unsure of the right gift or product to buy this season, automated shopping assistants can provide personalized suggestions that guide shoppers to the perfect holiday present. Automated onsite shopping assistants can deliver unique gift suggestions through a series of quick questions that touch on the shopper’s price range as well as the gift recipient’s gender, age, and preferences.

Automated gift recommendations have been proven to drive 4x higher sales conversion rates across shoppers who engage in guided sales assistance when compared to unassisted shoppers.

3. Simplify Repeat Purchases

eCommerce brands can also leverage onsite assistants to make the repeat purchase process as seamless and straightforward as possible. By developing persistent profiles based on each shopper’s personalized data and repeat site visits, intelligent shopping assistants can proactively initiate new conversations with returning customers looking to make a repeat purchase.

By leveraging personalization data to identify and engage repeat customers, eCommerce brands can significantly reduce friction and provide a premium shopping experience for their VIP and returning customers with high purchase intent.

4. Reengage Cart Abandons

As holiday shoppers contemplate a variety of different offers and products, it’s inevitable for some online purchase processes and shopping carts to be abandoned. By leveraging conversational re-engagements, however, high-intent shoppers can be reminded of products waiting in their carts and be offered special discounts that nudge them into returning and completing their purchase.

By leveraging conversational automation to re-engage abandoned carts, eCommerce brands have been able to effectively recover up to 20% of incomplete purchases with reminders, promotions, and other automated messages.

5. Automate Responses to FAQs

Leading up to the holidays, shoppers have no shortage of questions and concerns related to online shopping, with “will my order arrive on time?” being one of the most frequent. By providing shoppers with automated, 24/7 support that can instantly answer some of their most frequently asked questions, brands can reduce online shopping friction and common barriers to purchase.

Additionally, by leveraging conversational automation to resolve frequently asked questions in a way that is entirely self-service, customer service agents that would traditionally be required to answer these questions can focus on sales-oriented initiatives during the peak holiday season instead.

6. Convert Sales Receipts into Ongoing Channel for Commerce & Care

Lastly, after a purchase is completed, brands can leverage automated shopping assistants to send digital receipts to customers through conversational channels. By doing so, eCommerce brands can convert traditional receipts into a new avenue for ongoing care and commerce.

This post-purchase conversational connection gives shoppers access to an automated channel for order management or to even purchase additional, related products.

Reinventing Online Shopping for the Holiday’s Most Digital Season Ever

The 2020 holiday season will be eCommerce’s most significant moment to date. More than half of US shoppers have indicated that they will not return to shop with a brand following a poor customer experience, so it is vital for CX and eCommerce leaders to deliver the best possible experience during the season’s rush of new online shoppers.

Interested in deploying an enterprise onsite shopping assistant for your brand? Contact us today to learn how you can deploy a bespoke solution for your website and other conversational channels in a matter of weeks.

For eCommerce brands, the long-awaited arrival of automated business messaging on one of today’s most widely used social platforms presents a massive opportunity to deliver seamless, end-to-end shopping experiences.

To help illustrate this opportunity, we’ve outlined several key points throughout customers’ online shopping journey for eCommerce brands to incorporate highly-personalized and automated conversations — entirely within Instagram.

1. Engagement: How To Start Conversations on Instagram

Perhaps one of the most important new features of Messenger’s API support for Instagram is that it enables customers and brands to initiate automated conversations through various entry points on the platform.

Customers can start conversations with eCommerce businesses through the brand’s Instagram profile page.

Instagram Stories have also been enhanced to provide an additional opportunity for brands to initiate automated 1:1 conversations with customers.

Customers browsing Instagram Shops can also start conversations with brands when they have product or shopping-related inquiries.

eCommerce brands can now initiate 1:1 conversations with shoppers who leave questions and comments on brands’ posts.

By integrating Messenger’s API Support for Instagram with highly-intelligent conversational automation, eCommerce brands can initiate conversations at each of these entry points and deliver highly-personalized messaging experiences — entirely at scale.

2. Consideration: Addressing Product Questions and Concerns

After driving shoppers to 1:1 conversations on Instagram, eCommerce brands can leverage conversational automation to provide answers and responses to customers’ frequently asked questions.

By addressing customer inquiries directly within Instagram, eCommerce brands can further ensure a comprehensive online shopping experience within the platform.

3. Purchase: Helping Shoppers Find the Right Products

eCommerce businesses can also use automated conversations within Instagram to help drive shoppers to purchase.

By leveraging Messenger’s API support for Instagram, brands can provide shoppers with guided shopping experiences that deliver highly-personalized product suggestions based on their conversational inputs.

4. Care: Seamless Order Management and Support

Lastly, after making a purchase, customers can also leverage conversations within Instagram to get post-purchase order updates and more.

Through this experience, shoppers can receive immediate responses to their current order status and more.

A Comprehensive Shopping Journey – Entirely Within Instagram

By combining highly-intelligent automation with Messenger’s new API support, eCommerce brands can now use Instagram to provide the sort of personalized conversational experiences that shoppers love.

Almost as importantly, by partnering with an enterprise conversational automation provider like Quiq, eCommerce brands can deliver this sort of highly-personalized, 1:1 experience at scale, which enables them to build deeper relationships with their customers in a way that is both manageable and efficient.

As a Facebook partner, Quiq has worked closely with the team at Instagram and several leading eCommerce brands to test and deploy conversational experiences that leverage Messenger’s new API support. To learn more about these experiences and how your brand can get started with conversational automation on Instagram, please reach out to us by setting up an inquiry.

For retail organizations, Google’s Business Messages feature presents a powerful new opportunity for various teams to forge 1:1 connections with consumers, at scale, through the world’s largest search engine.

But which teams stand to gain the most, in both the short and long term, from this new messaging channel?

To answer this question, the Quiq team recently sat down with Katie Osberg at Google for a webinar discussion on what are some of the successful strategies and how different retail teams should use Google’s Business Messages.

Top Google’s Business Messages (GBM) Strategies for Customer Service, Marketing, & Omnichannel

Here are a few examples she cited of how customer care, marketing, and omnichannel teams can be successful with Google’s Business Messages:

Care & Service Teams: Instantly Answer Questions That Customers Are Searching For

In the short term, customer care teams will be the immediate beneficiaries of this technology. This is largely because Business Messages has the capability to resolve customer questions through Google Search, decrease inbound call volume, free up care agents for more sophisticated troubleshooting, and delight customers with fast and reliable answers/solutions.

One way customer service teams can leverage Business Messages is to provide answers to frequently asked questions, which could include questions related to store hours, COVID policies, and more.

By responding to customers’ most common inquiries through Google, care and service teams can route a significant amount of potential volume to a channel that is entirely self-service.

Care teams at retail and eCommerce organizations can also use Google’s Business Messages for handling customers’ order management inquiries.

Through this channel, customers can get immediate updates on the status of their previously placed orders and even have the capability to set up order returns or exchanges.

Marketing Teams: Re-Engage Shoppers through an Innovative New Channel

It is projected that marketers will also become one of the largest beneficiaries of Google’s Business Messages. Since the channel is asynchronous and users can return to brand conversations and pick up right where they left off, marketers can use Business Messages as a new channel for re-engaging shoppers.

After a shopper has started a dialogue with a brand through Business Messages, Marketers can leverage the channel to reconnect.

By reconnecting with customers in this way, marketing teams are empowered to strengthen their brand’s identity and create meaningful relationships with their customers through an interactive channel.

Additionally, marketing teams can also leverage Business Messages to target past customers with highly-personalized product suggestions.

By re-engaging shoppers in this fashion, marketers can support their customers’ journey and reinforce brand loyalty in a way that is both innovative and assistive.

See which strategies could work best for your business. Learn More

Support Omnichannel Customer Experiences with Messaging on Google Search

Retail operations, both in-store and online, have been anything but normal in 2020 and the demand for seamless omnichannel customer experiences has increased drastically. Shoppers’ points of friction have included standing in line outside of a store, the inability to find in-stock products, and more.

To support shoppers searching on Google for information related to an in-store visit, CX and omnichannel teams can leverage Business Messages to enhance the experience and seamlessly blend both online and offline touchpoints.

For example, CX teams can leverage Business Messages to digitally facilitate in-person appointments — from the initial booking to check-in, and more.

By extending this automated, self-serve functionality to Google Search, CX teams can ensure a much wider adoption of an omnichannel experience that better suits the needs of today’s modern shopper.

With Google Business Messages retailers brands can also provide shoppers with real-time updates on product availability.

By extending product availability information to Business Messages, CX and omnichannel teams can improve customer satisfaction by properly setting shoppers’ expectations for their upcoming in-store experiences.

Getting Started with Google’s Business Messages

Ultimately, Google’s Business Messages offers massive potential across multiple teams within the retail enterprise. To learn more about this exciting new messaging channel, check out our on-demand recording of a recent webinar discussion we had with Google on key tactics and best practices for getting started with Business Messages.

Of course, you can also contact us for a free consultation and a personalized demonstration of how your team can incorporate Google’s Business Messages.

Getting Started with Google’s Business Messages

Ultimately, Google’s Business Messages offers massive potential across multiple teams within the retail enterprise. To learn more about this exciting new messaging channel, check out “What You Need to Know About Business Messaging.”

Of course, you can also contact us for a free consultation and a personalized demonstration of how your team can incorporate Google’s Business Messages.

Quiq is proud to announce that all of our customers are now 10DLC compliant. Over the past several months, the Quiq team has worked with each of our clients to register their brands and campaigns to meet the October 1, 2021 Campaign Registry deadline.

By achieving 10DLC compliance we’re ensuring that our clients’ messages avoid any filtering or deliverability penalties that will be imposed on non-registered numbers. Compliance also ensures our clients will receive a higher throughput and deliverability rate.

If you’re unfamiliar with 10DLC, or looking to get more information about it, we recommend you download “The Complete Guide to Messaging With 10DLC.” This comprehensive guide will help you navigate the ins and outs of 10DLC and provide you with a step-by-step outline to ensure compliance. We also invite you to reach out to us and speak directly to one of our conversational experts.

Why is Quiq committed to 10DLC compliance?

The Quiq team has always made it a priority to ensure that the ten-digit long codes used by clients to send and receive messages adhere to the latest regulations and standards. 10DLC is the new standard for sending business SMS through Application-to-Person (A2P) messaging and making sure that our clients are 10DLC compliant validates our continued commitment.

Earlier this year, Quiq joined The Campaign Registry, the reputation authority that governs the 10DLC process, and incorporated the registration process into Quiq’s messaging platform. With this new process, brands can register their numbers and inform The Campaign Registry of the kinds of messages that will be sent. The 10DLC verification process validates the sender and message before the text is transmitted to the end consumer. The new system was created to protect the SMS channel from spam, junk, and fraudulent activity.

The objective of 10DLC is to register, verify, and track organizations and their messaging campaigns to create a higher-quality messaging experience. And that’s a goal we can get behind. We see it as a win for the brands we serve, their customers, and all stakeholders who want to ensure the continued scale, stability, and deliverability of those messages.

Why is 10DLC compliance important?

SMS is an excellent way to effectively turn potential customers into sales, and Quiq simplifies this process by combining human agents with artificial intelligence and automation.

However, due to changes in FCC rules and carrier requirements, many legitimate business text messages will soon be blocked before they reach the customer. Starting October 1, 2021 text messages that don’t comply with new regulations may be labeled spam and never reach the intended consumer.

Using The Campaign Registry’s verification process, Quiq establishes a campaign ID to validate the sender’s use case before texts are sent over the network. Mobile Operators will then confirm that these IDs are legitimate through their SMS reporting. These steps give companies confidence that their messages are being received by the intended recipients.

How does this affect Quiq clients?

Now that all of our clients are 10DLC compliant, they can use their sanctioned ten-digit long codes for business SMS and expect higher throughput and deliverability. 10DLC will provide transparency and ensure that brands are in complete control over their registrars, domain names, and messaging campaigns.

Since security and trust are a core part of what we do here at Quiq, we’re optimistic that the 10DLC system will keep business messaging secure and compliant. Not only will consumers see a decrease in the number of spam messages, businesses will see an even greater return on messaging with more messages being sent to and received by their target audience.

If you need help registering your brand to be 10DLC compliant, please contact us. We are experts at optimizing messaging across multiple channels and can help you navigate the constantly evolving FCC regulations and carrier requirements.

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In 2020, eCommerce grew by a staggering 44% as shopping experiences typically associated with in-store visits rapidly migrated to digital marketplaces.

While this shift in purchasing behavior has several implications for the retail industry, two changes stand out as particularly significant for eCommerce leaders:

1. An increasingly digital retail market levels the playing field for brands – With greater access to a wider array of brands online, consumers’ purchasing decisions have become heavily dependent on the quality of their customer experience in addition to traditional considerations like price and product.
2. eCommerce’s rise has also led to an increase in customer care needs – As more purchases take place online, brands are also facing a sharp escalation in customer care inquiries related to order management and more.

As a result of these two changes, brands’ ability to succeed online and drive more revenue has become increasingly reliant on their capability to deliver premium customer service experiences.

When it comes to poor support experiences, whether care agents are unavailable or self-service chat is not provided, consumers will simply take their business elsewhere, with 89% of consumers trying out competitors after a poor customer experience.

Introducing Counterintuitive Commerce

To unlock more online growth & conversions, modern eCommerce and CX leaders must provide their customers with premium support experiences.

Why? Because care’s impact is no longer isolated to metrics like deflection or CSAT. Today, care IS commerce and, through natural automation, provides online retailers with unexpected opportunities to drive more revenue.

Counterintuitive commerce is the practice of driving incremental revenue through initiatives and tactics traditionally associated with customer care and experience rather than sales and commerce.

Here are 3 examples of how Counterintuitive Commerce can provide customers with enhanced care experiences while simultaneously boosting a company’s bottom line.

1. Reroute Off-Hour Care Inquiries to Self-Service Messaging To Drive Conversions

The lack of instantaneous support during off-hours presents a massive opportunity for improving retailers’ online shopping experiences while increasing conversion rates.

Snaps customer data has revealed that over 47% of online purchases are made during off-hours, which means that a significant volume of online shoppers is left hanging for hours (or days) without receiving answers to their purchase-related inquiries.

To make life easier for online shoppers and increase purchases during off-hours, online retailers can reroute inbound customer support from traditional channels, like email, to self-service messaging that provides immediate support at any time of day.

When shoppers click to initiate email-based customer support, online retailers can trigger an AI-powered assistant to take notice and immediately start a chat engagement.

Through a simple, conversational message like “Hey, I noticed you have a question. While it may take our team a few hours to get back to you, I can provide an immediate answer to your question,” brands can easily transition shoppers to a self-service automated chat, provide quick 24/7 answers to their questions, and increase conversion rates and revenue during off-hours.

2. Transform Order-Status Notifications Into a New Marketing Channel

Automated shipping and order-status notifications present online retailers with one of the most valuable tools for improving customer experience while establishing a new channel for driving revenue.

According to Snaps proprietary customer data, over 60% of customers’ inbound support inquiries are related to order-status questions. By automating order notifications, online retailers can systematically resolve shoppers’ most common need for support and free up agents to help sell more and reduce the total number of inbound tickets.

Additionally, by enabling customers to subscribe to post-purchase updates, eCommerce brands establish a valuable channel to upsell. Through natural automation, digital assistants can recommend additional products to customers based on their purchase history or preferences and encourage additional purchases.

Snaps’ customer data has revealed that post-purchase notifications like these have yielded open rates as high as 98% while driving 30% of shoppers to make an additional purchase within 28 days.

3. Automate Responses to Pre-Purchase Inquiries

Providing shoppers with automatic, instantaneous responses to purchase-related inquiries is another highly effective tactic for improving customer experience while simultaneously increasing onsite conversions.

Through automated, 24/7 support, online retailers can reduce friction and purchase barriers. Simultaneously, customer service agents that would traditionally be required to answer these questions can focus on sales-oriented initiatives instead.

Premium Support Experiences Drive Unexpected Revenue-Driving Opportunities

Ultimately, eCommerce’s sharp rise and evolution over the past several months has blended the worlds of care and commerce. Shoppers’ ability to make an online purchase is now heavily dependent on their ability to get immediate, 24/7 support. Online retailers that do not support these experiences will lose out to those that do.

Interested in learning more about how natural automation can improve your customer experience and drive more conversions? Contact us today.

The cost of losing one customer is equivalent to seven times the resources used to convert them. It’s imperative to not let it happen by implementing an effective customer retention strategy to improve customer retention..

Customer retention is the key to improving your business’ profitability. In some cases, increasing customer retention by 5% could lead to an increase in profit of as much as 95%. Do the math and then read on to find out some customer retention strategies that can help your business.

Customer retention can be one of the hardest things for companies to do. There are many reasons why companies lose customers, but the fact remains that most companies aren’t doing much to retain their customers. In this blog we will look at why it’s important to improve customer retention and why every company needs to start focusing on this important issue.

What Is Customer Retention?

No matter what your business or industry is, whether you’re just starting out or already running a thriving company, you need to learn about customer retention. A lot of businesses get it wrong and end up spending huge amounts of time and money trying to bring in new customers, but forget about the ones they already have.

Customer retention is the process of attracting repeat customers and keeping them from switching to a competitor. It is an important aspect of business strategy, and it can help businesses gain a competitive advantage.

The goal of customer retention is to maintain the company’s current customer base and increase loyalty by providing better service or more benefits. There are various methods that businesses use to retain customers, including loyalty programs, discounts, freebies, special offers, and targeted marketing campaigns.

Why Is Customer Retention Important?

Customer retention is important because 68% of sales come from existing customers. Loyal customers are more likely to share their experience with the company and they are also more likely to purchase from the company again in the future.

These customers are not only your customer’s best cheerleaders but they help you to better understand your brand. They will provide you with honest feedback about your product and customer service that will allow you to make the necessary adjustments to your business to make it more successful.

Customer retention is important because:

• Loyal customers who continue to support your brand will increase your profits
• They will also recommend your brand and give positive reviews to their family and friends
• Returning customers tend to spend more on your brand over time
• You get a greater return on your investment (ROI) from repeat customers than trying to acquire a first-time customer

It is important for companies to work on building loyalty because of these reasons. Even though only 12% to 15% of customers are loyal to a single retailer, they represent between 55% to 70% of the retailer’s sales. It is also good for them because loyalty can lead to a higher retention rate. This retention rate, in turn, leads to a higher profit margin which will mean a better bottom line for the company.

Calculating Customer Retention

Want to know exactly what your customer retention rate (CRR) is? You can calculate the percentage of customers you have retained over a period of time.

Customer retention is the return on investment in customer acquisition. It’s a measure of how many customers are retained in the course of one year, with a view to estimating the long-term profitability of marketing and sales efforts.

The cost per acquisition (CPA) is an economic term used to measure the cost incurred by a company, per new customer acquired. In other words, it’s the cost for a company to acquire one new customer who becomes loyal to their brand, so they keep buying from them.

In order for us to calculate our retention rate, we need to divide our number of loyal customers by our total number of active customers over that same time period.

Customer Retention Strategies

Businesses often lose customers due to poor customer service. If you don’t retain your customers, your business will lose a lot of money. Providing great customer service is just one of many customer retention tips. Here are a few more that will help you to build stronger relationships with your customers.

 

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1. Good Values Build Good Relationships

Your company’s values are important to you. Your business processes, the quality of your products, and how you treat your customers should be a reflection of them. These things should make your values evident to your customers, but it doesn’t hurt to remind them occasionally.

Customers who stated they had a relationship with a brand indicated it was due to shared values. Brands that mirror customers’ beliefs while enhancing their lifestyles will naturally attract them. It’s known as implicit egotism.

Theoretically, people are unconsciously biased towards things they relate to or associate directly with themselves. It’s something all businesses should be aware of.

Let your customers know what you stand for and incorporate it into your brand. Having common values with your customers makes it easier to retain them.

2. Trust Is the Basis for Good Relationships

Creating a brand that is easily relatable is the first step to building trust with your customers. Having something in common fosters trust and this is the key to building a strong relationship and by extension, a successful business.

Use your customer data to find out more about your customers’ needs and provide them with a positive experience. Let it also guide you on the best way to communicate with them so that you earn their trust. When customers trust you, you don’t have to spend time convincing them to buy your product.

Research has shown that 82% of customers will continue using your brand if they trust it and 83% of customers who trust your brand, will recommend it to others. Conversely, bad service and distrust will result in them not only exercising their purchasing power elsewhere, but they will also spread the word that you’re not trustworthy.

The goal is to build a long-lasting, positive relationship with your customer.

3. Build Customer Expectations and Over Deliver Every Time

Seventy-six percent of customers feel that companies should understand their needs and expectations. A good price and quality are no longer enough. Today’s consumers expect much more because they have more choices and can purchase elsewhere if you don’t meet their needs.

There’s now an expectation of personalized and proactive service and interactions as well as a seamless experience across all your channels. The best way to meet their expectations is to know what your customers want. Get their feedback through surveys and reviews and analyze them to see areas that need improvement.

Be honest. If you know you can’t deliver, don’t over-promise. Otherwise, keep your promise. You lose your customers’ trust if you don’t. If you can’t keep your promise, apologize and find ways to compensate your customers.

Build a sustainable business by retaining your customers through customer satisfaction. Keep your customers returning for more by going above and beyond for them.

4. Let Customer Data Work for You

As mentioned, customer data can help to determine your customers’ needs. If you know some of your customers’ pain points, include them in surveys. Use feedback and reviews to provide solutions for your customers’ problems.

Surveys are an effective way to build and encourage customer engagement. It shows your customers that you value their opinion and that you care, and are willing to do whatever it takes to satisfy them. Some of the benefits of conducting customer surveys include:

• They’re a great way to interact with your customers
• Customers tend to give honest and open feedback
• These customers will be more likely to give feedback in the future if they see changes implemented based on prior concerns
• Survey feedback can result in positive adjustments to your products, services, or processes
• It can allow you to ensure you’re pursuing the right targeting strategy or assist in re-strategizing your email campaigns

Surveys can help you to identify dissatisfied customers before they decide to no longer support your company. You can create campaigns or offers to help to win them back. You can also treat customer complaints that come through other feedback channels, in a similar manner.

These customers can provide you with information about product defects or deficiencies in your service. It’s a great opportunity to improve these and it’s another way to learn your customers’ expectations. Seventy percent of customers who complain will purchase your product again if their complaints are favorably resolved.

5. There’s Always Room for Improvement

Always strive to provide exceptional customer service. Customers love great offers and discounts, but they love it when you help solve their problems even more.

You can ensure this by providing support to your customers by using the channels that make the most sense for your customers. Exceptional customer service should be present at all levels across your organization, so that no matter who your customer interacts with, they will get the same amazing service.

This includes ensuring all employees understand the key objective is to resolve customer issues promptly. Invest the time and money to optimize your customer service experience and remember that engagement is part of good customer service.

6. Keep Customers in the Loop

You should continuously educate customers by providing up-to-date information about your products and services. This should include sharing product milestones so that your customers know you strive for continuous improvement.

Communicate regularly using various channels including webchats, social media, and text messaging. Personalize your content so they target your various customer segments.

7. Determine Customer Lifetime Value

A key performance indicator (KPI) of customer retention is Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). It shows your customers’ worth over a period of time. It helps determine the value each customer brings to your business, otherwise known as customer’s equity.

Returning customers add more value based on the resources you’ve expended to acquire them. They’re usually your VIP customers and their loyalty will encourage them to tell others about your products and services.

CLV can help you determine what you should spend to engage your customers and can also help to predict revenue.

8. Reward Loyalty

Thoughtful gestures go a long way. In addition to discounts and offers, think of things that will make your customers feel good about using your product. A thank you note or any positive acknowledgment can keep your customers coming back.

Treat your customers well and they will respond accordingly. But nothing works better than exceptional customer service.

Want to know exactly what your customer retention rate (CRR) is? You can calculate the percentage of customers you have retained over a period of time.

Customer retention is the return on investment in customer acquisition. It’s a measure of how many customers are retained in the course of one year, with a view to estimating the long-term profitability of marketing and sales efforts.

The cost per acquisition (CPA) is an economic term used to measure the cost incurred by a company, per new customer acquired. In other words, it’s the cost for a company to acquire one new customer who becomes loyal to their brand, so they keep buying from them.

In order for us to calculate our retention rate, we need to divide our number of loyal customers by our total number of active customers over that same time period.

Building Customer Relationships

Customers are the foundation of any business. Without them, a business will not be successful. It is important that after using resources to acquire customers that you invest in customer retention. You can do this by using customer relationship-building strategies.

Building long-lasting customer relationships take time. One of the best ways to do this is through customer engagement. Quiq’s Conversational Engagement Platform will impress your customers during every interaction they have with your business.

Don’t miss out. Find out how our clients are increasing their conversions and retaining customers. Our platform is easy to use. Try it for yourself!

Over the past year, businesses have been forced to rapidly adapt to consumers’ sudden shift in purchasing behavior. Customer service teams, in particular, have faced significant change with nearly half of customer support leaders experiencing a sudden lift in inbound customer service volume and issues due to the pandemic (Gartner). 

This abrupt spike in customer support needs has strained customer service teams and yielded intolerable wait times for customers looking to reach representatives through traditional channels like phone and email. Recent surveys from NBC and studies from Harvard Business Review illustrate that 75% of consumers feel that customer service has gotten worse amidst the pandemic and that call center hold times have increased by as much as 35%.

The Strategic Opportunity in Digital Customer Service

While the increased demand for customer support has produced many business challenges, it also has presented an opportunity for brands to better connect with customers, provide better experiences, and foster stronger relationships through the channels that they prefer — messaging apps.

Today, when approaching businesses for support, customers are accelerating their shift from phone and email to third-party messaging channels including WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Apple Messages for Business, and more. In fact, Facebook recently reported that 64% of consumers prefer to message a business instead of communicating through call centers or email.

This rapid shift is welcomed news for businesses looking to alleviate the strain on their customer support teams while simultaneously providing customers with faster customer support. That’s because, when paired with highly-intelligent conversational automation platforms, messaging channels are empowered to deliver instantaneous, always-on self-service experiences that modern consumers prefer.

However, with a growing number of messaging services out there, it can be difficult for customer service leaders to figure out where to get started, identify which channels will be most effective, and deploy customer service experiences at scale.

To help brands navigate the messaging space, we’ve outlined some important factors to consider when choosing the right messaging channel as well as key benefits of each of the most popular messaging services. Let’s dive in.

Evaluate existing customer service channels

First, before customer service leaders begin selecting which messaging services will best meet their needs, it’s important for them to evaluate the performance of any of their existing digital channels and understand how they are currently being used. 

Brands should take inventory of each of their existing contact points and understand the kind of customer inquiries most often received on each channel. In addition to the channels that customers currently use most, it is also vital for teams to understand the types of customer support needs that shoppers have when reaching out to customer service. For example, a lot of retail brands will receive phone calls from customers simply wanting to know “Where’s my order?” 

Some brands may find that the bulk of inbound inquiries received are related to new products and product discovery. it will be important for them to consider messaging channels that can support rich data snippets like product card carousels. These rich product presentations provide an enhanced messaging experience and can provide lots of information in a relative tight space.

Lastly, after analyzing the intent of support requests, customer service leaders should consider where the majority of inbound inquiries fall within the customer journey. Are the bulk of customers contacting support for pre-purchase related questions? Or maybe the majority of inquiries reflect customers who have order management related needs? Determining where inbound inquiries are coming from within the buying journey can be extremely helpful when selecting the right messaging channels for support.

By understanding where customers are and what they are asking when contacting support, customer service leaders can make far more strategic choices when expanding into new messaging channels.

Unique customer support benefits of 4 different messaging channels

When selecting new digital customer service channels, brands are faced with a dizzying amount of factors to consider. Each third-party messaging service has its own set of features and functionality, rules that brands must follow, and customer entry points.

To help clarify this fragmented marketplace, Forrester recently published a report entitled Use Popular Third-Party Messaging Platforms For Customer Service, which illustrates the unique benefits of the four most widely used messaging channels in the US for customer service — Apple Messages for Business, Google’s Business Messages, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp. We’ve included a summary of the report’s findings on each of these channels below.

Apple Messages for Business

While Apple Messages for Business cannot boast the volume of business partners that Facebook’s Messenger platform has, Forrester’s report categorizes it as one of the fastest growing customer service channels.

Whether through Apple Maps, Siri, Safari, or an iOS app, Apple Messages for Business has no shortage of potential entry points and use cases. As such, it has broad appeal and application despite being confined within the Apple ecosystem.

Like most of the other major messaging platforms, Apple Messages for Business requires brands to provide human agents in the instance a customer chooses to escalate an inquiry from automated, self-serve support.

However, Apple Messages for Business differentiates itself through transactions, authentication, and privacy. For brands looking to better support shoppers pre-purchase related inquiries, Apple Messages for Business enables brands to drive revenue through product discovery and appointment scheduling capabilities.

In the example above, Men’s Wearhouse leverages Apple Messages for Business to convert general inquiries and product-related questions into website sales and scheduled appointments.

Furthermore, through an integration with Apple Pay, Apple Messages for Business is able to process transactions and provide a fully comprehensive, end-to-end purchasing experience entirely within a chat. With its unique capability to process transactions, Apple Messages for Business is a valuable channel for brands that are looking to better support their top-of-funnel customers and convert inbound inquiries into revenue.

Google’s Business Messages

Google’s Business Messages was the last significant player to enter the world of digital customer service, but it arrives built-in to services that have massive reach and broad appeal — Google Search and Google Maps.

Providing that a business has registered with Google and enabled Business Messages, customers who search for that business on Google can initiate a conversation through a chat icon that appears in Maps or Search results.

Google’s Business Messages differentiates itself through the massive reach of these entry points, including the world’s largest search engine.

For brands looking to resolve a high volume of general inquiries through automated messaging, Google’s Business Messages provides a powerful opportunity to redirect customers searching for their business to a self-service channel.

Similar to Apple Messages for Business, Google’s Business Messages requires human agents to serve as backups in case a customer support inquiry is too complex for automation and requires to be escalated. Google’s Business Messages actually takes it one step further by requiring businesses to respond to users within a 24 hour time period.

Messenger

Facebook’s Messenger service was opened up to businesses in 2016 and, since then, it has surged in growth and adoption. Most recently, Facebook extended its Messenger’s API to support automated business messaging on Instagram, further extending its reach into one of today’s most popular social networks.

With multiple potential entry points for customers, across both Facebook and Instagram, Messenger provides dozens of use cases for customers to initiate conversations to seek customer support. Customers can initiate Messenger conversations with business through their profile pages, Facebook/Instagram shops, story posts, and even from ads.

Through these assorted entry points, Messenger is broadly applicable for supporting customers at just about any stage of their customer journey.

What truly sets Messenger apart from other Messaging platforms, however, is its enhanced capability to proactively address customer support needs. Using sponsored messages, brands can use Messenger to send customers proactive notifications including reminders, information on recently purchased items, and more.

When paired with an automated messaging platform, support teams can even use Messenger to automatically respond to customers’ comments on their brand’s Facebook or Instagram posts and proactively address their needs.

WhatsApp

Since launching on iPhones and Android devices in 2018, WhatsApp has extended its reach through its dedication to customer service over marketing. It’s growth has led to WhatsApp possessing, of all the third-party messaging services, the largest audience of consumers around the globe. Forrester’s report states that 2 billion consumers use WhatsApp including 400 million users in India and 120 million in Brazil.

Like Apple Messages for Business and Google’s Business Messages, the majority of customer service interactions that take place on WhatsApp are initiated by the consumer from various entry points including the business’s website, Facebook Page, or a unique link. However, as a member of Facebook’s suite of messaging products, WhatsApp can leverage Facebook and Instagram ads that include click-to-chat buttons in order to draw more users into branded conversations.

Where WhatsApp sets itself apart from the other predominant messaging apps is in IVR and call deflection. WhatsApp ranks only behind SMS in terms of inbound support calls that are redirected to messaging.

Providing Consistent Customer Experiences Across Digital Channels

Ultimately, while each of these messaging services are uniquely positioned to address specific customer service needs, managing new digital customer service channels is still a complicated process with numerous factors, features, and rules to consider.

In need of more detailed analysis of each channel? Download the full Forrester’s report, Third-Party Messaging Platforms For Customer Service, for a deeper dive into each messaging channel’s capabilities, use cases, and challenges.

These days, the vast majority of consumers have their mobile phones on-hand for every activity — particularly when it comes to online shopping. In fact, it has been projected that purchases on mobile devices will make up the majority of ecommerce sales by the end of 2021. 

As a result, mobile shoppers are always looking for easy, convenient, and mobile ways to interact with eCommerce brands through social media and third-party messaging services. This increased channel volume  if not managed properly often overwhelms customer support teams, leaving customers frustrated with digital experiences that fall short of expectations and brands struggling to protect their brand image. 

On the other hand, consumers’ shift to digital also presents a valuable opportunity for retailers to deliver targeted customer service solutions and enhanced buying experiences that lead to increased conversions and customer satisfaction. Some brands, like TodayTix, have seized the opportunity to provide their customers a more seamless experience.

Here are five ways that customer support has been transformed by mobile shopping and how brands are adapting to ensure that they’re providing the best possible experiences.

1. A Rise in Mobile Shopping Leads to a Rise in Messaging

When it comes to seeking customer service, mobile shoppers leverage a unique set of channels that have required brands to adopt and adapt to. One of the most popular customer support channels for mobile shoppers is contacting brands through third-party messaging services. Today, nine out of ten consumers want to use messaging to communicate with brands and retailers are quickly turning to WhatsApp, Messenger, Google Business Messages, Apple Messages for Business, and more to provide the text-based experiences that shoppers prefer.

Third-party messaging is only second to the most popular channel for mobile customer support — SMS business messaging. SMS provides mobile shoppers with a direct line of communication to a retailer’s support team to exchange information or transactional details.

SMS offers an additional layer of convenience for consumers. With SMS, consumers do not have to be connected to Wi-Fi to have a convenient online shopping experience.

2. Rich Messaging Provides Precise Feedback and Solutions

Mobile shoppers today expect a high level of personalization in both their shopping and support experiences. In order to deliver on this expectation at scale, eCommerce brands leverage rich messaging to provide personalized experiences for each individual shopper. Rich messaging further boosts engagement through dynamic content like quick reply buttons that anticipate the most popular responses, interactive maps, and more. 

For example, the Facebook Messenger mobile platform allows business representatives to add images to replies and allow consumers to see a product in question. During these interactions, team members can help consumers complete a purchase, schedule an appointment, or share a link with a preview of a product or service page. Rich media ultimately sends consumers to an ideal destination, faster, for a better shopping experience.

3. Mobile Shoppers Expect Immediate Service on Their Terms

Today’s mobile shopper seeks customer support that is available to answer their questions quickly, at any time of day. Currently, 54% of shoppers reach out to brands during non-business hours over messaging channels like Facebook Messenger and brands are expected to respond in a timely manner.

This cycle of always-on, 24-hour customer service means that support teams can no longer refer to traditional business hours to dictate when their business is open or closed. Customer support must always be “open” or else customers will go elsewhere for their next purchase.

This demand for always available customer support and service doesn’t mean you have to staff your support center 24/7. Many Quiq clients rely on technology to help meet SLA’s. For instance, some clients will only show the live chat icon on their website when there are live agents available to respond. Other brands choose to use automation and conversational AI to help customers with simple, frequently asked questions that can be easily resolved through a bot.

If a shopper needs an answer quickly, they can text an eCommerce business, rather than having to tap through webpages, compose an email, or enter a call queue. Mobile shoppers enjoy the convenience of starting a conversation faster, feel they’re receiving personalized attention, and can reply at the rate they prefer.

4. Demand for More Local Customer Service

While mobile shoppers appreciate support experiences that are both instantaneous and always-on, they also have a strong preference for customer service that can assist them at the local level. Mobile shoppers, for example, often seek information on product availability at their closest store based on their phone’s GPS location.

When mobile shoppers contact customer support, it’s important for both automated and human service agents to be equipped with local store data in order to respond to local-specific inquiries. Channels such as Apple Messages for Business and Google’s Business Messages helps consumers find and engage with your business on a local level. Consumers discover businesses through Google, Siri, or Map results daily with searches like “Tuxedo rental near me”. These channels now offer a convenient way for consumers to initiate a conversation with a location near them via messaging.

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5. Increased Mobile Interactions Lead to Further Customer Insight

Through additional interactions and touch points from mobile devices, brands are enabled to build more detailed and personalized customer profiles to reference. Through customer inputs like mobile numbers and location data, eCommerce brands can create a foundation for more tailored, future engagements. Analyzing a mobile shopper’s purchase history, for example, can inform timely offers in the future to reinforce customer loyalty. 

The Most Versatile Platform for Mobile Shopping Customer Service

With its numerous impacts on customer service, there is little doubt that the accelerated pace of mobile shopping will continue to transform the support sector. Adapting to these changes, however, provide significant opportunities for businesses to forge stronger relationships with their customers and build stronger businesses. 

Is your brand looking to modernize your customer service experience? Contact us today to learn how to provide diverse and personalized customer service for mobile shoppers. 

When company leaders consider implementing live chat support, many in the contact center and the broader leadership team may wonder if customers will actually use it. The short answer is yes. An impressive 30.7% of female internet users say they prefer to contact support using live chat. When the platform offers an engaging experience, helpful agents on demand, and quick responses, those that want to message support will happily do so.

Offering more communication options means more customers can contact support using the channel they prefer. So, it’s crucial to help customers see that chat is an option and encourage them to try it. Following are some of our real-time chat best practices ensures a company’s live messaging feature offers a delightful, engaging experience.

Tips for Encouraging Customers to Use Live Chat

In the United States, 78% of consumers rate their live chat support communication experience favorably. Once people experience a live messaging service, they often feel comfortable using it in the future. By promoting the new tool effectively and offering an enjoyable experience, companies can encourage more customers to use this platform regularly. Here are some tips for driving more customers to live chat.

1. Mention Live Chat During the Phone Hold Message

Customers waiting for phone support are the perfect target audience for live chat support. When customers realize they can text an agent instead of sitting on hold, it’s a huge plus. Consumers who didn’t realize chat was an option can exit the phone queue and receive help using their preferred communication channel.

This feature is excellent for contact centers, too, because they can redirect some callers into chats. Using a messaging platform like Quiq, agents can manage several conversations simultaneously, jumping back and forth between conversations as they wait for specific customers’ responses. They can support a higher volume while freeing up the phone lines for more in-depth support queries.

2. Use a Contact Form to Collect Information Wisely

Using contact forms in live chats can be a bit of a balancing act for many contact centers. For customers with complicated questions and concerns, forms can speed up the time-to-resolution by organizing all the basic information for the service agent. When a customer has a quick question, a contact form can prevent them from asking it. In general, the fewer fields a contact form has, the more likely someone is to fill it out.

One way around this potential hang-up is to use a chatbot to collect information about customers’ specific orders or requests. When a chatbot detects that a request is complex and needs human attention, they can ask for the necessary contact information and order details. This dialog turns the traditional contact form into a conversation and places it further along in the customer service journey so only those customers who need to fill it out will have to use it.

Live agents or chatbots can also answer simple questions from customers without the need for a contact form.

3. Link to Live Chat in Post-Purchase Communications and Other Email Campaigns

One of the biggest hurdles to getting customers to use live chat is that many people may not realize it’s an option. Especially after a company adds a messaging feature for the first time, customers may not notice the icon right away or think about live chat as an option when they need support.

Contact centers that add live messaging features can encourage more people to use the service by adding a link in their email footers. A post-purchase email can even dedicate an entire section to introducing the feature. Live business messaging is an excellent way for customers to track or make changes to their orders quickly. It’s prudent to add a call to action about contacting support via live chat with any concerns about the recent purchase.

When customers submit an email support request, their confirmation email can inform them that they can get help right away using real-time business messaging. Even if it doesn’t call out the live chat service directly, every email can include a link that customers can access from their computers, tablets, and phones with ease.

4. Personalize Your Chat

Marketing and contact teams can work together to craft notifications and auto-generated greetings to fit their brand’s personality. Friendly, on-brand wording within the chat interface can encourage people to take the next step and type out a message. Chat icons often feature an introductory message such as, “How can I help you?” or “Any questions for me?” to let website browsers know their questions are welcome.

Next, these departments should also develop a tone of voice for their service agents. While there may be some scripted language in customer service interactions, most customers expect human support specialists to act like humans. And, since every request or concern is a little different, agents often need to change what they say or how they say it.

Setting rules for tone of voice and word choice ensure the messaging experience is consistent no matter which agent helps a customer or what the conversation is about. People will use live chat features more when they know what to expect and the dialogue feels personable and aligned with the brand.

Many brands do well to make their messages seem warm and conversational. In industries where trust and authority are paramount, like credit unions and insurance companies, agents and bots may adopt a more formal tone. Choosing a tone of voice for the chat feature is a crucial consideration that affects how customers use the service.

5. Promote Live Chat on Social Media

When companies launch any new feature, their social media channels are an excellent way to get that service in front of their core audience. Companies can post about chat features on social media to let customers learn about this new way to access support in real time. Be sure to answer questions in the comments section. Those comments can also be a fantastic source of feedback about what customers think about the new chat feature and if they want to use it.

Meanwhile, with chat integrations through Quiq, customers can contact the support team by direct messaging a company through their Facebook or Twitter page. Contact agents will receive the messages in the same interface that they receive text messages and web chats, making support over social media messaging faster for customers and agents alike.

The contact center and the social media management teams can also collaborate to manage social media direct messages. For example, social media managers can answer general questions about products and quickly direct customers to the company’s official live chat for specific questions. Whoever manages the direct messages can link to the live chat support feature on the company’s website or provide the number for text message support to direct the customer to the correct support channel for complex issues.

6. Add an Image of the Live Chat Customer Service Agent

Besides personalizing the tone, another way to make the conversation feel more natural and inviting is to show visitors who they’re talking to. Many live business messaging interfaces incorporate customer service agents’ names and photos to make the experience more authentic. The profile picture lets customers put a face to the name when they click on the messaging icon. They know right away that they’re getting helped by a real person.

The number of personal identifiers that make sense for any particular contact center will vary. Some brands and chat interfaces may use professional headshots, while others employ more casual photos. Contact center leaders may choose to use their agents’ real names, just their first names, or aliases to protect their agents’ identities.

7. Use a Button for Easy Chat Access

While many websites feature a live chat option on their contact page, they can make it even more accessible by adding a chat button to every page. As web visitors navigate around the site, the button follows them. It may even prompt them with an occasional message like, “Can I help you with something?” to encourage them to interact and let them know messaging is an option. Brands can also insert a button on their emails and other mass communications to bring customers to a conversation with a live agent in seconds.

The key to using buttons to promote chat usage is to give it a prominent location on every page. Most people expect to see the live messaging feature in the bottom right corner or as a pop-out menu along either side of the screen. Pinning the button in the bottom corner lets it travel with the visitor as they scroll down the page, retaining its prominent location for easy access.

When inserting a chat button, most companies choose a color in the brand’s color palette that contrasts with the primary color. That way, the button stands out from the rest of the web design, and more people will notice it.

If the button displays notifications, time them to appear after a certain period of browsing or on pages where users are likely to ask questions. This tactic lets customers know that the chat is there just as they’re becoming invested in the site. Whether they’re searching for products to add to their carts or information on the FAQ page, a notification lets them know a live agent is available to answer their questions.

8. Include Privacy and Data Usage Messages

Customers visiting a new website for the first time often need some encouragement to provide their contact information, shipping address, or credit card number. They want to trust that the company will take every precaution with their private information. Enterprises build that trust on their websites with plain-language data privacy policies and customizable cookie preferences.

Live messaging tools can add a wrinkle because they are often powered by third-party software. Customer service messaging can also require a lot of personal information, making some users hesitant to use these tools.

Companies can quell these concerns by including a short, easy-to-understand privacy message that outlines how it handles private customer data. When a message like this appears at the start of a new chat, customers can see how their data is safeguarded and feel secure while entering personal details.

9. Use Rich Messages

Rich messaging is enhanced text messaging. With an integration like Google Rich Business Messaging and Apple Messages for Business, customers can have an upgraded experience whenever they contact support. Rich communication services (RCS) give companies verified profiles that help customers feel secure when providing details from their phones.

RCS also improves the chat experience by incorporating rich media. Shoppers can use their phones to access a personal shopping service, where agents can show customers product listings directly through their mobile devices. Rich messaging can incorporate Apple Pay or Google Pay, allowing customers to check out right in the conversation thread. Other rich messaging features include the ability to book appointments through a timeslot or calendar interface or to see order confirmations with pictures of the products and tracking capabilities in the messenger.

Rich messaging offers an enhanced experience over traditional text messaging. Rather than sending plain text-based links that customers have to navigate, all messages arrive in a visual, easy-to-understand format. Customers enjoy a seamless experience that makes contacting support through their phone simpler and more enjoyable.

10. Use Live Agents

Now that they’re on almost every website, chatbots have solidified their place in customer service communications. With their sophisticated AI, they can respond to many customers’ common concerns and simple questions with surprisingly human-like answers.

Still, human agents take the top spot in consumer preferences. Even if a chatbot saved them 10 minutes, 46% of internet users would still prefer speaking to a live representative. A skilled, emotionally aware support specialist will outpace a chatbot every time. They can listen to concerns and reply with more helpful solutions faster than even the most sophisticated AI. Their social intelligence also makes them more adept at handling emotional situations and remaining personable and enjoyable to interact with.

Customers demand human conversations, and they’re more willing to reach out when they see a live person on the other end, ready to assist them. After trying the feature and having their issues solved masterfully and with a human touch, they will feel confident contacting support through chat the next time.

11. Schedule Chat Availability Around Agent Availability

Many companies have specific time windows when live agents are available. When support specialists aren’t available for business messaging, it’s helpful to give customers a sense of when they can reach out and expect a response from a live person. If employee representatives are offline, companies can still let customers know when live chat is an option by leaving the button active and communicating the next availability window.

A quick notification can let site visitors see the days and times when live agents are staffing the chat and can even encourage customers to come back another time. Company leadership should decide whether it makes sense to leave a chatbot active when agents are unavailable.

Also, consider investing in a platform that supports asynchronous communication, like Quiq. When agents are unavailable, the platform can keep track of messages received and let customers know that someone will read and respond to the message when representatives are back in the office. While many chat services will not save messages between sessions, Quiq does. That means agents can view messages sent hours or days ago, so customers don’t need to repeat themselves.

When a company schedules agents for certain days and times, it’s wise to schedule that availability around web traffic. For example, many eCommerce stores see a traffic spike on the weekends, when most traditional jobs are off the clock. It makes sense to have more live support specialists on call to answer messages during these busy times. Company leaders should analyze their traffic patterns to decide when to offer live chat with human agents.

Give Customers the Ultimate Live Chat Experience With Quiq

Live business messaging offers many benefits to companies when their customers use it readily. It can free up agents to take more live calls with faster wait times by routing simpler conversations through chat. Agents can manage multiple conversations at once, responding to one discussion while waiting for replies in others. Best of all, it offers a new communication channel, letting more customers engage with support in the way they prefer.

These benefits will offer the highest returns when customers and site visitors use this communication channel often. The best way to increase engagement with live chat is to provide a platform worth engaging with. Staffing a chat channel with live, friendly agents and using a fast, intuitive platform can make all the difference.

With Quiq, contact centers can use rich messaging to improve customer engagement. In one central platform, they can also manage messages coming in from their website, mobile devices, Google My Business profile, social media, and anywhere else they offer a chat feature. That means customers can expect a lightning-fast response however they send a message. Quiq integrations also allow seamless transitions between human agents, third-party chatbots, and native chatbots.

All these features add up to an engaging and enjoyable messaging experience that customers will want to use again. To see how Quiq will improve your live chat, sign up for a free demo today.

Instant messaging is a ubiquitous part of daily life for the majority of consumers. Over 41 million messages are sent out from messaging apps every minute while popular messaging apps like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are used by nearly 3 billion users.

Naturally, the rapid proliferation of instant messaging over the past decade hasn’t just transformed communication between individuals — it has also had a significant impact on how consumers communicate with businesses. Last year, a study from Juniper Research found that mobile business messaging increased 10% from 2.5 trillion messages to 2.7 trillion while Twilio has found that 9 out of 10 of consumers want to interact with brands through messaging.

The increase in messaging between consumers and businesses has been further accelerated by the pandemic. According to a recent Forreseter report, over 50% of consumers increased their use of third-party messaging and chat to engage with businesses last year while about one in 10 consumers tried mobile chat for the first time.

But how has this shift in consumer behavior affected the relationship between businesses and their customers? Below we’ll highlight some of the most significant impacts of instant messaging’s rapid growth on the business community.

How Instant Messaging Is Changing Business Through Customer Convenience

When engaging businesses, today’s shoppers are migrating from traditional channels like phone and email to instant messaging services due to the unparalleled level of convenience they provide.

Instead of being subjected to long hold times delayed email responses, real-time instant messaging paired with intelligent automation enables brands to address consumers’ concerns and respond to their most common, frequently asked questions with instantaneous feedback. Examples of common inquiries that instant messaging can provide quick responses to include:

• Hesitancy surrounding shipping details: Potential customers may want more information about shipping related costs and timing to help them commit to making a purchase.
• Product availability: Customers frequently contact businesses to verify whether a product is in stock and can actually be purchased.
• Questions about product details: Leads might contact an employee representative with additional questions regarding product features, such as dimensions or materials.
• Uncertainty about the product’s value: If leads want more information about how the product or service will benefit them, a contact center agent can explain its value.

By providing instantaneous support to these sorts of sales-related questions, brands have seen lifts in conversion rates by as much as 4x when compared to shopping experiences that are unassisted by messaging services.

Instant Messaging’s Impact on Customer Service Team

Instant messaging is a convenient communication method for both the consumer and the contact center supporting them. Through instant message based support, contact center agents are enabled to manage multiple customer inquiries at once rather than assisting shoppers one at a time – greatly increasing agent efficiency.

Additionally, when paired with messaging automation, support teams can provide their customers with self-serve experiences that are better aligned with customer preferences and can substantially reduce the volume of inbound issues that need to be addressed by human agents. By automatically resolving a percentage of inbound issues through automated chat experiences, agents can dedicate a greater percent of time to handling more complex customer inquiries and driving sales.

In the instance that a customer service chatbot is unable to resolve a customer inquiry through self-service, instant message chatbots can still increase agent efficiency by verifying basic customer information, like name or order number, before handing off to the human agent. This seamless handoff process allows human agents to spend more time actually supporting customers instead of capturing routine information.

Additionally, instant messaging-based conversations between consumers and businesses simplifies agents’ processes for following up with shoppers and keeping accurate records of past communication data. All sales or support agents see previous conversations and have the necessary information to tailor and personalized subsequent customer interactions.

Instant messaging makes communications more straightforward for all parties involved. When that convenience influences a consumer’s perception of a brand, they’re more likely to close a deal, renew a service, or make a purchase. In fact, 73% of consumers have indicated that positive and convenient experiences are essential for influencing their brand loyalties.

How Rich Instant Messaging Enhances Customer Support

In addition to its convenience and efficiency, instant messaging between businesses and consumers is also capable of providing superior, more clear support experiences. Providing support through traditional channels like phone can become challenging for both customers and agents, especially if shoppers have trouble describing their needs with words alone.

Rich instant messaging platforms allow consumers to use their smartphone cameras and take photos for support representatives. Rich messaging also enables businesses to embed maps, order tracking information, product catalogs, and more — directly within instant message chat windows.

Explore Instant Messaging Opportunities

Instant messaging represents an evolution in communication methods between individuals and the businesses they shop with. Embracing SMS and third party messaging apps is crucial for businesses to remain competitive and provide the customer experiences that today’s shoppers prefer.

The Quiq Conversational Customer Engagement Platform provides an all-in-one solution for communicating with consumers at their convenience. It enables monitoring and managing conversations, plus keeping buyers interested with images, videos, emojis, and exclusive offers.

Contact us now to learn more about how instant messaging enhances communications. Trying a product demo is an excellent way to see firsthand how Quiq saves time and money.

Google announced the expansion of Business Messages to their Search and Maps products in June of 2020. With this change consumers are provided the option to message brands directly and ask for the information they are looking for when searching for a business on Google. Quiq has learned a lot about how consumers engage with Business Messages. Read on or reach out to learn more.

The Impact of Google’s Business Messages on Customer Experience

First, this opportunity provides a new channel for consumers to connect with brands through their preferred conversational format. According to a recent Twilio study, nine out of ten consumers said they prefer to use messaging when communicating with brands. By automating Business Messages on Google, brands have the opportunity to reroute a significant volume of inbound inquiries through a channel consumers prefer — self-service messaging.

Additionally, brands that automate Business Messages through Google Search and Maps provide their customers a superior customer support experience that is capable of delivering immediate answers and feedback, 24/7. By being available for customers with immediate, around-the-clock support, retailers are able to drive customer loyalty while simultaneously rerouting support issues from call centers to a new, self-service channel.

Retail and eCommerce Use Cases for Messaging Consumers Through Google

Combining intelligent AI and Google Business Messages provides clear value to eCommerce retailers through three primary use cases:

1. Resolving Customer Support Inquiries for Local Business Locations

First, brands are now empowered to deliver automated customer support to shoppers looking for information from a specific, local business location.

For example, when a customer based in San Antonio searches for their favorite local grocery with the keywords “GroceryBrand San Antonio” they will be provided an option to start a Business Messages conversation with that specific store. With an intelligent automation solution, brands are then empowered to provide customers with specific answers and information related to individual locations. Questions like “what time does your store close?”, “Do you have this particular product in stock?”, or “What is this location’s COVID policy?” can now be answered in a way that is instantaneous, always-on, and without support from a call center.

2. Implementing a First Line of Defense for General Support Inquiries

Brands are also now empowered to position automated support through Google’s Business Messages as their first line of defense for all customer inquiries ⁠— not just questions related to an individual business location. For example, a shopper that has an inquiry about a product that they purchased online is now able to search for the brand that they purchased it from, start a Business Messages dialogue with that brand, and get the answers they need in an entirely self-service manner.

3. Driving Leads and Sales Through Conversational Commerce

In addition to driving efficiencies in customer service, automated conversations through Google’s Business Messages also empower brands to support sales and drive incremental revenue through consultative shopping assistance.

For example, when shopping for a new vacuum cleaner online, customers can search for their favorite brand name on Google, open a messaging dialogue through Business Messages, and ask a question like “What vacuum should I buy for my hardwood floor?” By combining Google’s Business Messages with automation, brands can then provide a series of consultative questions and answers to understand the shoppers’ preferences and direct them to their ideal product for purchase.

What to Look for When Evaluating Partners to Help Get Started With Google’s Business Messages

While retailers may be eager to deploy a new messaging channel through Google, it is important for them to be prepared with the right tools and tactics to automate the sudden influx of customer inquiries that it will yield.

But what are the important things to look for while evaluating automation solutions? When our enterprise partners describe what has enabled them to be successful, we often hear that messaging partners must be able to:

• Deploy highly-personalized AI-powered conversations

  Modern consumers demand personalization in their online shopping experiences and interactions with AI-powered digital assistants are no different. A recent Gartner report found that brands that deploy personalized messaging can expect a 16% greater impact on commercial outcomes than retailers who deploy basic automation that is incapable of personalizing their experiences.

• Deliver actionable insights that empower every team

  When engaging in thousands of automated conversations with customers, eCommerce retailers generate a significant amount of customer data that has limitless potential and value for their various teams. Without the assistance of an experienced automation partner, however, this valuable data and insight simply goes to waste. By partnering with an enterprise-tier partner, like Quiq, retailers can ensure that they are properly gathering consumer insights through conversational automation and are able to synthesize that information into practical insights for different teams across the entire organization.
  

• Provide hands-on support through a team of award-winning automation experts

  Conversational automation is a complex undertaking for any enterprise business and hands-on support is vital for ensuring its success. An effective automation solution is the result of a collaboration between internal teams and a proven, experienced team of conversational experts that can consult on strategy, integration, conversational design, and ongoing optimization.
  

Ultimately, while Google’s Business Messages provides online retailers a significant opportunity to connect with their customers more, it has to be deployed in the right way to leverage its full capability and avoid common pitfalls and complications. If you are interested in learning more about getting started with deploying automated messaging through Google, please schedule a free consultation with one of our conversational experts today.