How to Map Conversational Customer Engagement to the Customer Journey Stages

Woman texting using conversational customer engagement

The customer journey stages—Onboarding, Support, Retention, and Advocacy—probably inform your customer service strategy. They’re also a great tool to refer to when you’re planning how to use conversational customer engagement. 

Conversational customer engagement is useful in the marketing funnel, and absolutely essential during the customer journey stages. It’s a strategy that focuses on building customer relationships through person-to-person messaging. 

Read on to learn how to map conversational customer engagement to the four customer journey stages. 

Onboarding

Onboarding is all about communication. Depending on your product or service, you may have to introduce customers to your interface or teach them how to use it. You may just have to share product information. 

Regardless, conversational customer engagement is one of the easiest ways to help customers become comfortable with your brand. The key is ensuring that each message is friendly and personalized, letting customers know that there’s another human on the other side of the line. 

You can improve the onboarding experience by:

  • Letting customers know that they can receive training support or VIP service through multiple channels (and that they have to opt in first)
  • Sending opted-in customers training tips or welcome information
  • Using an authentic tone, including casual language and emojis when appropriate
  • Introducing yourself or using your signature in initial texts

It’s not enough for conversational customer engagement messages to sound friendly. Each message should specifically invite customers to reply with a clear CTA. CTAs help encourage customers to respond. 

Support

The support phase is all about ensuring customers have the assistance they need, right when they need it. It’s one of the best ways to ensure that new customers stick with your product or service. 

Conversational customer engagement helps you provide fast, convenient support through channels customers actually like to use. 

Your team should be sure to provide exemplary support by:

  • Sending regular messages reminding customers that you’re here for support
  • Including plenty of custom fields so customers know you’re well aware of their past interactions with your brand
  • Accepting messages from multiple channels, including native SMS and other messaging services (Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Apple Business Chat, Google’s Business Messages)
  • Responding quickly to incoming messages during business hours
  • Using both a dedicated during-hours and after-hours auto-reply to let customers know when they can expect a response

Responsive, personalized messages are key to providing support as customers become attached to your brand.

Retention

Keeping customers interested in your brand is an art. It’s also critical to your overall revenue. Long-term customers are more likely to buy your products and share your brand with others. 

Conversational customer engagement is all about engaging your customers. Interacting with them regularly is the best way to keep them interested in your brand. It also encourages them to make future purchases. 

Your team should encourage customers to interact with your brand by:

  • Sending order, delivery, or ticket follow-ups 
  • Asking for feedback
  • Releasing opinion polls about upcoming offerings

Frequent interactions with customers are key to starting conversations that keep them interested and invested. Just be sure that all of your conversational customer engagement content offers value. Customers may unsubscribe from your SMS services if they don’t think your content is useful or engaging. 

Advocacy

Once customers get value from your product or use your service and experience awesome customer support, they’ll turn into advocates. Advocates are critical to your brand’s success. They’ll share the word about your brand for free, and keep purchasing your products in the future. 

Use conversational customer engagement to provide VIP service to your most loyal customers. It’s a great way to check in with them and remind them why they love your brand so much. 

Your team should support advocates by:

  • Sending thank-yous to long-term customers (e.g., customer anniversaries)
  • Asking for online reviews after purchases
  • Letting customers in on VIP events or feedback opportunities 

Your long-term customers are critical to helping your brand thrive. Use conversational customer engagement to make them feel special as they continue to enjoy and support your brand. 

Want to learn more about conversational customer engagement? Check out our blog.

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