Three Ways Multichannel Improves Customer Engagement

Wednesday, Apr 21st 2021
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In crowded markets, customer choice and competition has never been higher, and companies jostle for space and attention. Brand discovery is just a click away and your potential new customer is likely to be paying just as much attention to your competitor’s online reviews and social media promotions as they are to your carefully constructed marketing campaign.

In such a landscape it’s a challenge to get your message across and stand out from the crowd. Brand loyalty can seem like a rare commodity but it’s still within grasp for enterprises to build lasting customer relationships. While a range of factors influence buying decisions, it’s clear that companies must strive to meet customer expectations, engage, and be easy to do business with.These target outcomes should form part of communications objectives, with the content and delivery of communications tested against them. After all, the range of communications channels that customers have at their disposal is an opportunity for companies to make their mark. Whether customers prefer to hear from you by post, text message, email, through social channels or a combination of all, each interaction can succeed – or fail – to improve customer engagement.

For them to succeed, multi-channel communications must be effectively managed, with a strategy in place to ensure that the most up-to-date information feeds both the content and the distribution. 

Effective multi-channel management for customer engagement

There are three ways multi-channel communications can improve customer engagement:

Meeting customer preferences: customers are busy people. They want your communications to reach them at the right time, in the right way to help them take efficient action. This might mean an invoice by email, a reminder by text, a brochure they can browse at leisure through the post. The main thing is that customers get to choose how they hear from you and that these decisions are respected

Personalisation: your communications should reflect that you know who your customers are through personalisation and correct addressing. Applying this consistently across all channels needn’t be time-consuming but can make all the difference

Targeted Messages: each communication should reflect an up-to-date understanding of the customer’s account and take advantage of the opportunity to add value. It makes no sense to promote a product to a customer when they already have it; what’s more, doing so is likely to irritate them.

When communications channels are managed independently of each other, delivering against these aims can be a challenge but multichannel output management software can alleviate the hassle.

It streamlines channel management so that communications are sent through customers’ preferred channels. Many elements of the process - such as addressing – are automated and applied across channels to reduce duplication. To send personalised and targeted communications through a range of channels according to customer preference, find out how we can help.