In the past decade, instant messengers and social media saw a meteoric rise in popularity. For millions of people across the globe, apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook Messenger, and others became their primary tools of communication with family, friends, and colleagues at work.
The evolution of these apps also turned them into much more than a simple substitute for classical text-based channels, such as SMS and email messaging – people learn news, discover content and meet new people through social media and messengers today.
What this means for business is that no company, small or large, can neglect these channels in its customer interactions. Basically, ignoring them is equal to handing a large part of a potential client base to competitors on a plate (no cannibalism intended). Let’s see how businesses can benefit from adopting an omnichannel messaging approach in customer communication by selling, marketing, and supporting through various messengers and social media.
Benefits of the omnichannel approach in communication
Reach new customers
As mentioned earlier, messaging platforms gained enormous popularity later. However, for some people, these channels have effectively substituted others as they rarely make calls, send emails and watch TV. Engaging such segments of its audience with an omnichannel approach, a business can attract new clients and establish long-term relationships with them, improving conversion and sales.
Provide convenience
Studies show that when it comes to reaching out to get support, people prefer messaging to phone calls (who loves listening to music for ten minutes while being on hold?) and emails. By establishing support channels in messengers and social media, a company provides convenient touchpoints for customers who run into an issue or need help with making a purchase. All of this works toward improving customer satisfaction rate and customer lifetime value.
Add a personal touch
Omnichannel interactions via messengers open possibilities of truly two-way communication: a personal offer sent to a client via WhatsApp can hardly be ignored as easily as a bulk email promotion, and the chat format naturally promotes customers to engage in a dialogue, reply to the message, for example, to learn more details.
Get more insights
By analyzing customer interactions across multiple channels, a business can get a clear and detailed picture of its customers’ demographics, preferences, expectations, and interests. Such insights provide data for targeting marketing campaigns, upgrading products, and improving various aspects of customer support.
Be unique
Stand out among competitors by engaging customers in non-traditional channels. For example, Instagram is an obvious channel for a cosmetics brand but not so for a cement factory. Maintaining active customer communication in original ways can stimulate discussion and serve well for the brand’s promotion.
However, achieving an efficient omnichannel approach can be a challenge. Here, omnichannel messaging platforms and Social CRM systems, which integrate with messaging apps and social media and merge all communication in a single interface, prove to be indispensable. Let’s take a closer look at their functionality.
Social CRM key features
The market for Social CRM actively grows, just as the number of solutions available. For business, it is important to carefully assess every option’s capabilities, before making the final decision. Among the key features a CRM for messengers must include are:
- Client profiling. Social CRM should be able to collect customer details from various social media to present a full overview of their interests, activities, and prior interactions with the company.
- Social listening. An important function of a Social CRM is its capacity to learn public sentiment toward the company by monitoring keywords, mentions, and relevant tags in posts, stories, and comments.
- Social selling. Social CRM must have a functionality that automates the creation of Deals based on conversations via messengers and allows to track their progress through sales funnel for convenient sales management.
- Multichannel integration. Besides social media and messengers, client interactions almost always include more traditional channels, such as email, phone, and live chat on a website. It is important to be equally present across these channels as well, so an omnichannel messaging platform must support them all.
- Performance analytics. Without precise numbers, it is nearly impossible to measure the effectiveness of any business tool and Social CRM is no exception. A platform should be able to monitor audience activity in real time, as well as the performance of employees, for example, average ticket resolution time, sales conversion, customer satisfaction rate, and so on.
Conclusion
Messengers and social media play crucial roles in attracting new clients and retaining meaningful relationships with existing ones. To make the process as effective as possible, a company should consider employing an omnichannel messaging platform or Social CRM for messengers.
Umnico is a robust communication platform that blends omnichannel messaging with an intuitive interface and low pricing. The platform merges client chats in messengers, social media, and other channels in a single window and comes with CRM functionality for efficient client management. Umnico’s free trial period makes it simple to evaluate its capabilities without any financial commitment.
