How Customer Communication is Shifting in the Digital Age

The old rules for how a business contacts customers are out the window in this new digital age. New means and methods for staying in touch with your clients have changed the way that you should think of customer communications. Here are some ways that speaking with your customers has changed due to new technology.

Blogging and Content Marketing

In the past, if you wanted to put helpful information in front of your customers, you likely needed a good printer and bulk mailing. The costs of that add up quickly. Now, you can provide customers with information in the virtual realm, and it costs you much less. By blogging, you can take on the role of a helpful and friendly expert. It is much easier now to be in contact more frequently since it just requires an internet connection and some well-researched and useful content.

Business Text Messaging

Nearly all consumers prefer to interact via text, and business text messaging is a much more direct way to get in touch with your customers. Before, it was rare that you could send a message that instantaneously reached your customers unless you picked up a phone and calling. Now, you can rely on SMS messaging to send short, crisp, and instant messages to your customers. Make sure not to overuse this method of communication because it can become a double-edged sword. However, when used appropriately, you now have the means to give your customers information in an immediate and timely fashion.

Email and Social Media

Email and social media have increased the amount of contact that you can have with your customers. Now, you can keep a virtual running dialogue with clients and potential clients through both of these methods of communication. Social media, in particular, allows your business to show its figurative personality to customers on a real-time basis. Social media can take your communication beyond the more limited print and phone calls that previous communication entailed and make it a dynamic engagement. Similarly, email allows communication to be better customized and targeted than phone calls and postcards.

Organic Search

Organic search requires the content that you post to be relevant and high-quality because it controls whether or not you will reach your customers. In other words, if your organic search ranking is low, customers may not even be able to find you at all. This changes communication by necessitating that it conducted to a higher standard than in the past. Because of organic search, you are not graded on how good your communication is, which leaves you less room for error than in the past. This also means that you are going to have to tailor some of what you put out in the public realm to Google, Bing, and your customers at the same time.

Customer communication has changed dramatically from what it was in previous generations. However, businesses that are adept in this medium can gain a strategic advantage over their competitors.