Conversational marketing continues to gain prominence when discussing future trends in marketing.
Conversations and their role in building customer relationships are by no means a new concept, but with technological advancements and constantly evolving customer behavior, the multi-channel nature of conversations creates both new opportunities and challenges for the market.
What Is Conversational Marketing?
HubSpot defines conversational marketing as the ability to have individual conversations with customers across multiple channels, how, where, and when they want it.
Conversational marketing is often confused with chatbots or live chats on a website, but it is much more than that. It’s a multi-channel presence that treats each customer as an individual: Conversations are initiated where each customer is already engaged.
The conversation takes place on the customer’s terms and must be prepared to continue later through any channel without losing the thread. The customer and the conversations with them must be remembered.
Today’s Customers Value Personalization and Convenience
For customers, this sounds like a winning proposition. People are increasingly spending their time on social media and staying in touch with each other through various instant messaging channels. It is natural to want to transfer this ease of communication to interactions with companies.
Instead of scrolling through a company’s website or waiting in a customer service queue, customers now want to get things done faster than ever. Who wouldn’t want to handle matters in their own way, as easily as possible and on a familiar channel—whether it’s a text message, WhatsApp, or a social media platform.
Example:
Consider a situation where a person has just purchased a lamp from an online store. After completing the order, they receive an automatic order confirmation via SMS. As soon as the customer receives the message, they realize they forgot to add light bulbs to the order. In such a situation, the customer typically has the following options:
1. Find a customer service email address or phone number to modify the order
2. Place a completely new separate order with its own shipping costs
3. Purchase the bulbs from another store, for example on the next shopping trip
One would imagine that most consumers would choose the last option because of its convenience.
When a customer is offered the opportunity to initiate a free-form conversation directly by responding to an order confirmation, they are provided with a straightforward way to modify their order and ask questions. In this case, the person in the example could place an additional order in the exact channel to which they have already been directed with the order confirmation.
Companies Are Required to Provide Multi-Channel Chat Connections
WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and other instant messaging channels will become an important venue for conversations between businesses and customers in the future.
For companies, this requires the ability to maintain a presence on different channels, as well as manage countless conversations simultaneously. There are numerous instant messaging channels available, and the customer base can be very diverse, including representatives from many different age groups. A 27-year-old millennial is likely to use channels differently than a middle-aged person who is somewhat distant from social media, adding an additional challenge to multi-channel conversations.
Cross-channel conversations are possible, but require considerable resources from companies as well as a constantly updated customer database. Alternatively, conversations can also be conveniently managed with one unified system. With our new service platform SmartDialog, you can not only respond to your customers’ messages, but also initiate conversations with your target audiences on various instant messaging channels.