The modern day consumer craves connection with brands – but on their terms. Whether they need to conduct research, make a purchase, or reach out to a customer service representative, consumers expect businesses to have a presence on their preferred channels.

Fifteen years ago, the average number of touchpoints per customer was two. However, today’s consumer uses an average of six touchpoints, and more than 50% regularly use more than four. And that proportion is increasing. In 2020 alone, 64% of customers have started using a new customer service channel.

This means that for your business to deliver improved customer experiences, it’s more important than ever to ensure that you have the right communication channels in place to reach consumers at the right place, and at the right time.

Six business messaging channels to maximize customer engagement

1. Email

Far from obsolete, email is one of the most effective ways for marketing teams to reach out to consumers, and it remains one of the most commonly used digital channels for customer service. Email marketing ROI stands at an all-time high of up to 4,400%, and 54% of customers have used email in the past year to reach out for customer service support. To maximize the potential of this versatile communication tool, businesses can also leverage an email guide to enhance their strategies and engage with their audience and also use a DMARC Record Checker to ensure deliverability.

A key strategy to improving customer engagement over email is to hyper-personalize your content and offers. This means ensuring proper audience segmentation — not just based on demographic information, but also on behavioral insight gleaned from past engagements.

2. Live chat

For younger customers, live chat is often cited as the more comfortable and familiar channel for reaching out to customer support, compared to calling or emailing. Millennials in particular have indicated that they prefer live chat over any other communication channel due to its efficiency and convenience.

But the highly engaging nature of this channel often requires that you have an appropriately sized team to handle the intensity of a live chat. Alternatively, you will need a robust enough self-service chatbot option that delivers similar outcomes.

3. Voice

The nature of your customer’s inquiry matters. While self-service tools or live chats may suffice for simple issues, 40% of people still prefer speaking to a real person on the phone when asking complex questions or resolving disputes. Which is why, when it comes to great customer experiences, Voice remains one of the top ways to deliver high quality, human-centric support that lifts customer satisfaction.

The biggest advantage of voice is that it bypasses traditional phone lines to deliver app-to-app calling services over the internet. The result is lower costs for your customers (and yourself) and more time spent on your platform for increased engagement.

4. SMS

Business messaging over text is primed for strong engagement in Southeast Asia, and it is especially important for e-commerce as open rates are as high as 99% — five times higher than email. However, rather than just blasting sales and promotional information via SMS, consider more creative ways to use it to boost customer engagement, such as gathering feedback, conducting polls, or allowing voucher redemptions.

8x8’s SMS APIs allow you to deliver efficient and cost-effective SMS campaigns through automation — anytime, anywhere — using any programming language you prefer. If you’re having trouble crafting the right SMS that converts, here’s some proven successful text message templates to get you started.

5. Messaging chat apps

With WhatsApp, Telegram, WeChat, Facebook Messenger, LINE, and more taking over our phones, we are well and truly in the messaging age. A hybrid of sorts between SMS and live chat, messaging apps boost customer engagement by providing on-demand support, automating marketing campaigns, and allowing for rich content to be sent, such as photos, videos, and location tags.

As an official solutions provider for WhatsApp Business, 8x8’s messaging app solution offers you a number of opportunities for customer engagement, such as personalized product recommendations, two-way customer conversations, media-rich real-time notifications, instant customer feedback, and so much more.

6. Video

If your industry is insurance, personal finance, healthcare, or remote engineering and technical support, video interaction can make a huge difference to customer engagement and satisfaction. Even beyond these fields, video call technology is quickly revolutionizing customer service through improved access, personalization, and collaboration, especially for more complex issues which require quick and effective resolution. Most importantly, video interaction reduces waste in operational resources and improves customer trust by providing face-to-face interactions.

Which messaging channel is best?

Well, there’s no right or wrong answer here. What works for your company depend on the nature of your business and the type of customers you serve. What is certain, however, is that you’ll definitely need more than one of these messaging channels, and they’ll need to be interconnected. Even if you use all of the messaging channels, disconnected channels will do your business more harm than good. What’s most important is ensuring that your customers messaging experience is unified and cohesive across whichever channels you offer.

This requires an omnichannel strategy. Unlike multichannel, which is merely about having multiple channels available for customer engagement, omnichannel is about developing a seamless customer journey through integrated and consistent messaging.

There are, however, common challenges related to delivering stellar omnichannel experiences — namely, insight and connectivity. Insight is the main driver behind personalization, while connectivity ensures that each company agent (whether a call center agent, service staff at a physical store, or sales personnel) has visibility into each customer’s unique journey to ensure optimized experiences.

Insight and connectivity made easy with 8x8’s integrated messaging channels

At 8x8, we know that giving your customers the control and freedom to choose their preferred messaging channels is an important part of improving the customer experience. We also know that the greater the number of messaging channels, the greater the complexity. This is why our product team created easy-to-implement APIs that allow you to manage your customer conversations on a unified communications platform. Our platform integrates, analyzes, and streamlines your workflow, thereby allowing you to scale your customer support quickly without compromising on quality.

Start strengthening your messaging capabilities, so you can gain a competitive edge. Get in touch with us to learn more about our integrated messaging solutions and see how they can be customized to meet your specific needs.