Chatbots that say “I’m sorry, I don’t understand that” fail in today’s consumer-brand interactions - here’s why!
At MarTech San Francisco 2017, Nick Pandolfi of Google’s Global Product Partnerships claimed that language is the new user interface. But chatbots are still a nascent technology, and they come with positives and negatives. People are willing to use them and find them valuable, especially during purchasing, but if a company’s chatbot is poorly designed and leads to a negative interaction between the consumer and brand, then that person will likely never come back. The more conversation technology improves, then, the more consumer expectations will evolve, too.
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As chatbots become more fundamental to consumer-facing experiences, chatbot designers must make their creations more human by improving natural language…
Why social media customer care is important in retaining loyal customers and positive brand awareness
With all the noise and saturation of businesses and brands online vying for more clients and customers, there is one guaranteed thing that any smart digital marketer can do to stand above the noise to build and keep their network of buyers: social media customer care, or SMCC.
Although most business owners today are familiar with the concepts of digital marketing and customer relations management (CRM), the concept and successful application of SMCC isn’t quite as widespread. In light of ever-increasing volumes of competing brands getting online, the wiser business owners should be shifting their attention to reaching out to their customers when it matters the most, addressing their questions, problems, and concerns.
Social Media Customer Care (SMCC) vs. Customer Relations Management (CRM)
According to the information from this data sheet by UK Website Builder, brands send an…
Streamline your marketing with CRM automation
We all have a list in our mind of the newest marketing tools and strategies we’d love to implement. The only thing we’d need is a bit more time, resource, people and did I mention time? Realistically, we are only able to keep up with about a dozen strategies.
What if I told you that you could streamline some of your marketing processes to free up that magical time and resource? Not only that, but you could reduce errors and improve marketing measurement in the process. All of this without buying the latest marketing tech release – you can do this in CRM.
CRM as an essential marketing tool
In the same way that your sales and marketing teams are connected during the sales process, so should your sales and marketing software. Clever use of customer data is the…
Blocking a visitor from Live Chat should be your last option, but sometimes it is necessary.
Usually, you can find lots of information online on how to improve customer service by using live chat software. But when is it necessary to block visitors that are abusive?
Learn to tell apart a challenging customer and an abusive one
A challenging customer is still a customer. First, do all that you can to resolve an issue, reassure your visitor and provide great customer service.
While using a live chat software the agents have opportunities to learn general customer behavior patterns faster, as they can handle multiple customers at once. There are two patterns that are quite similar for challenging and abusive customers.
While every abusive customer is also a challenging one, not every challenging customer is an abusive one. It is important to understand this fine difference, as resolving an issue for a challenging customer can convert…
Chart of the day: A recent study has shown that customers want better customer service from your brand.
It's no surprise that a good customer support service is topping the list of what customers want most from a brand. Having a good communication with your customers is vital in conversion and retention. How else is a customer going to tell you if something is wrong? You need to address these issues as quickly, efficiently and professionally as possible to keep a quality brand and product reputation.
This being said, is it a shock that customers favor always on, automated service options the least? No. Customers do not want brands with a detached automated service. It is clear that over half (52%) of respondents want a fast response to their issues, something that can be hard to achieve with…
Chart of the Day: Is a 360 degree customer view a myth or a reality?
I have been involved in marketing since the mid 1990s and I was brought up by Martha Peppers and Don Rogers, authors of 1:1 marketing encouraging businesses to develop a single customer view. The nirvana of a single customer view for large organisations is that all employees from marketing and sales through to customer service can easily harness profile information about a customer and all their marketing communications interactions with a company plus their sales and service transactions.
Since that time we have had an explosion of channels, martech and data which has made the theory difficult to put into practice. So I found this insight from Blue Venn on marketers perception of the SCV interesting:
On the positive side it's good and actually surprising that the percentage of marketers who think a…
Sales metrics should not be alien to digital marketing teams
As digital marketers, it is our job to drive sales for our business, correct? Wait, but isn’t that the job of the sales department..? As it turns out, with Smarketing we have many of the same goals and objectives so it makes sense that we would work together to form a more united team and focus on the same measurements to close our deals.
Source: HubSpot
I realize this is easier said than done, but if you look at the statistics: according to an Aberdeen report, companies that were successful in aligning their sales and marketing teams were able to increase revenue by 20%. This is in stark comparison to those who weren’t able to align the two departments and saw a 4% decline.
Yes, it…
Innovative First Car Quote project stalls just before launch
You'll know that Facebook is the largest social media network in the world with over 1.13 billion daily active users and 1.03 billion mobile daily active users. Advertising on Facebook has major advantages as companies can proactively target individuals based on their profile, that’s their gender, age, location and many other demographics. You can even target users based on their favourite TV programmes. Advertising IS Facebook’s business, looking at the revenue for the last quarter that was 6,239 billion US dollars, which represents a 63% increase since 2015.
Whilst Facebook captures more data than any other network, it has detailed policies on how the data can be used. It states “Advertisers are responsible for understanding and complying with all applicable laws and regulations. Failure to comply may result in a variety of consequences, including the cancellation of ads you have placed and…
LinkedIn is not as far ahead of the rest as you might think.
HubSpot has launched their yearly State of Inbound 2016 report, providing us with some great insights into the latest trends and growth of inbound marketing.
This year their report is looking to showcase not just the current state of - but also the future of - Inbound Marketing.
One of the charts that caught my eye is the one below. It can be found on page 115 of the report if you're interested. It highlights the preferred channels of communication marketers and business owners like to use for both personal and professional purposes.
It is somewhat unsurprising to see LinkedIn as the preferred choice of professional communications. After all, it is a social network intended to help you build and engage with…
Customers want good customer service, and don't like being passed between channels
On average, customers interact with four different channels when seeking customer service related enquiries from a business. The types of channels they use or expect to be able to use when contacting a business is changing too. Any marketer worth their salt knows that word of mouth and online reviews are some of the most critical channels for any business, and customer service is key to getting good results. Delivering good customer service now requires a presence across a range of channels, but in a way that allows them to be mutually supportive and helpful, rather than working at cross purposes. This isn't just a 'nice to have', it really is a must, given 97% of people say that customer service is important to their choice of brand. That's according to a study by Microsoft, which asked 4,000 people across the…
