Ways to increase customer interaction

For a long time already, interaction with customers has been one of the most important aspects of every business. When you want to increase the number of new customers, you have to meet their demands. The same goes for existing ones. If you don’t want them to leave you in favor of your competitors, you need to keep them satisfied. In general, this is often accomplished through different communication channels. From traditional phone calls to the website chatbox, you can use them to provide engaging and efficient support. Companies without proper communication will not be able to increase customer interaction and may end up losing valuable prospects.

How to effectively increase customer interaction

In essence, every contact with customers is considered as an interaction. This also implies that customer experience usually starts from the very first contact and goes through the entire interaction. In general, one of the effective ways to increase the number and quality of interactions is to combine different technological solutions. If you want to make every interaction count, you can use the ConvertMore callback widget for WordPress to increase the number of potential clients.

However, the efforts don’t stop there, even if it ends with a sale. After your valuable prospects convert, you still have to invest an effort to keep them. At the same time, it’s necessary to continue finding new ways to bring fresh prospects as well as improve and optimize your existing methods to ensure that customers remain fond of your business.

To help you with your customer relations, here are several ways to improve customer interaction:

1. Become easily accessible
2. Reduce the hold time
3. Go beyond formalities to increase customer interaction
4. Favor real human interaction skills
5. Monitor your interactions
6. Don’t fall back on feedbacks

1. Become easily accessible

To become easily accessible you should utilize more than a few communication channels. From traditional phone calls to emails to social media networks, everything can be useful for getting in touch with your prospects. Especially today when the majority of consumers are using different channels to complete their orders.

For example, if you have a website, you can use it to convert visitors to leads and increase the number of interactions. Whether it is through chatbots, widgets, and callback schedulers on one side. Or, social media buttons and share options, on the other. You basically need to utilize every available means to make yourself available and provide the best possible customer service.

2. Reduce the hold time

The truth is, no one likes to be put on hold. From the customers’ perspective, it means they are going to wait for more than they should. If you fail to answer your callers in a reasonable amount of time, they will easily turn away from you. Typically, the most common situations when this happens are:

• insufficient number of agents and representatives
• a sudden increase in business volume
• all types of incidents
• old and ineffective system

While the proper organization of employees and operations will help, it’s also crucial to invest in quality technological solutions. Especially now when people expect fast and efficient responses due to the lack of their free time. That’s why using the best conversion rate optimization software and premium call systems is the most effective way to provide decent responses and offer quality customer interaction.

3. Go beyond formalities to increase customer interaction

When people need your assistance, they are not really looking forward to talking to bots unless it’s absolutely necessary. What they expect is a person who can offer the answers and provide solutions to their problems. Basically, they want to know a real person is there, and that someone appreciates them as customers.

Skill training for representatives is one way to improve interactions. But, depending on the business industry, there are other means to accomplish the human aspect. You can create a less formal “About Us” page on your website or post pictures on social media of your teams in action. Everything that will show them there are real people behind the business.

4. Focus on advanced interaction skills

When someone calls your company for assistance, they need “real human interaction”. However, that doesn’t always include small talk and a casual approach. They actually need someone with true listening skills, capable of empathy, and eager to help. They want someone who is actually there to help them, not a generic agent who will recite its scripted answers.

This is an especially important aspect if you are providing support on social media and similar communication channels. Anything too formal can be interpreted as insincerity and may even offend them. Also, even if you are wrong, you should demonstrate transparency and not be afraid to apologize. On the contrary, you should admit it and work on finding the right solution. Overall, it shows you care for customers and encourages them to remain loyal.

5. Monitor your interactions

By monitoring and analyzing customer interactions, businesses will be able to identify mistakes. However, besides fixing those mistakes it can also give you valuable insight into new opportunities. To start, you can evaluate your representatives and, if necessary, organize proper training in communication. On the other side, you can take the opportunity to match agents with specific skillsets with appropriate customers. The reason is, not everyone is able to perform the same with technical issues as with simple question answering. If done the right way, this will completely transform your overall customer service for the better.

6. Don’t fall back on feedbacks

If you are looking forward to improving your customer interactions, you will need definitely need feedbacks. However, don’t just wait for your prospects to call on their own. Give them the opportunity to express their opinions and show the level of satisfaction. This can be accomplished with different types of surveys and polls.

For example, ask your customers what they think about your products, ask them to rate your agents after calls, and even for advice about what would they change. Finally, don’t hesitate to reply, whether it’s positive or negative feedback. After all, it’s a good way to preventively discover issues before you lose customers.

Considering how competitive markets are today, the way you talk with customers is an essential part of the business. This is the reason why you need to work on finding different ways to increase customer interaction and show you appreciate them. Besides, by analyzing your interactions you can easily discover alternative options to improve your business operations.