How to Increase Team and Customer Adoption of Conversational Customer Engagement

Man working on laptop and texting.

There’s a good chance your team has adopted or is planning to adopt a conversational customer engagement strategy—and with good reason. Your teams can build strong customer relationships that last by focusing on person-to-person chats between your agents and customers.  

But if your team hasn’t used business text messaging before, they might not feel comfortable texting customers yet. Plus, getting customers used to replying to your content can be tricky if they haven’t had that option before. 

Read on to learn how to get both your team and customers excited about using business text messaging to connect. 

Increase Team Adoption

Getting your team to use a new tool isn’t easy. But conversational customer engagement strategies rely on business texting solutions. While they are intuitive, you still may run into professionals who need some help adapting. Here are two ways to make adopting conversational customer engagement easier for them:  

Let Team Members Make Choices

Business texting solutions are easy to use. Their interfaces are designed to look like messaging channels that you may be familiar with, like Facebook Messenger. In general, team members should quickly feel comfortable messaging customers through them.

However, it may take some time for some members of your team to get comfortable with your business text messaging platform of choice. Offer them a couple of choices to help them get situated. For example, they should be able to choose between:

  • Using a phone or web app 
  • Accessing your shared inbox directly through the app or through an integration (e.g., Slack SMS or Salesforce SMS)

Business texting solutions offer a lot of flexibility. Letting your team members choose which tools they want to use will help them get comfortable with business text messaging and, ultimately, conversational customer engagement. 

Teach Your Team About Efficiency Tools and Automations 

Another great way to help your team adopt conversational customer engagement is to let them know how they’ll benefit. Business texting solutions offer a lot of features that save them critical time, making their jobs easier while increasing their productivity. 

Top-of-the-line business texting solutions will offer efficiency tools and automations. These can include:

These key tools will help your team members boost their productivity—without extra work. 

Increase Customer Adoption

Nine out of 10 customers want to message your brand. But if your team has just introduced a conversational customer engagement strategy, customers may not know that they can text your team. Here are two key ways to help customers grow used to your new conversational customer engagement strategy. 

Include Clear CTAs

Customers won’t respond to your conversational customer engagement content if they don’t know that they can. In many cases, they may just assume that they aren’t supposed to respond to your content. 

Let customers know that you want them to respond. Add CTAs to each of your texts. Where appropriate, make sure you include:

  • A direct request (e.g., Text us if you have a question!)
  • Expected reply content (e.g., Text us for more information about the webinar!) 
  • Expected reply times (e.g., Our team will reply within 5 minutes!)

These CTAs make it clear to customers that you expect—and want—them to reply to your content. 

Use an Inviting Tone

Conversational customer engagement is all about encouraging customers to start person-to-person conversations with your team. Use an authentic, personalized tone to encourage them to reply to your texts. 

How can your team create texts with inviting tones? Ensure your texts:

  • Are written in a casual tone, similar to how you speak while staying professional. (e.g., Hi there, {{first name}}! I saw your French Stationery order #{{order number}} arrived. Everything look good?)
  • Include plenty of custom fields for personalization (e.g., Hey {{first name}}, do you have any questions about the Sleek Software webinar you attended on {{webinar date}}?)
  • Feature fun items like emojis or GIFs, depending on your branding (e.g., Hi {{first name}}. Janey from Downtown Dental here. Reminder that you’re due for an appointment next month. Would you like to schedule one now via text? 🦷)

Texts with authentic, inviting tones are a lot more likely to receive responses. And starting conversations is exactly what conversational customer engagement is all about. 

With these approaches, your teams and customers will be comfortable with conversational customer engagement in no time, adopting business text messaging into their daily communications—and ultimately better connecting. 

Want more conversational customer engagement tips? Check out our blog.

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