Staying on message with customer expectations

This article was created in collaboration with MessageBird.

The customer experience today is a key component of making or breaking a business. Any successful company knows that simply creating standout products and services is no longer enough; it is the relationship before and after sales that drives long-term growth.

As technology accelerates, it isn’t surprising to see customer expectations follow suit. What might be seen today, won’t be tomorrow, and organisations need to stay ahead of the game to ensure consumers remain loyal.

However, what is expected and what is often delivered is not always on par – especially when it comes to customer service – since in today’s world, customers not only have high expectations from brands, they also expect brand offerings to be aligned to their values, and be personalised.

Danielle Ong, VP of sales APAC, at MessageBird, a company which is on a mission to create a world where communicating with a business is as easy as talking with a friend, said often consumers spend time waiting for a customer service agent, trying to find the right email address or phone number to make contact, or navigating a website to find answers.

Seeing this as a pain-point for consumers and businesses, the company has created solutions to power communication across any channel, always with the right context, and on every corner of the planet.

“The MessageBird’s mission really resonates with me as a consumer, and the idea of helping consumers like me interact with businesses in a more efficient way really excites me,” Ong said.

She added the company is laser-focused on creating a hyper-personalised customer experience over channels such as SMS, WhatsApp, and many other messaging platforms.

“We can connect with customers’ back end data and applications using our low code/no code platform,” she said, adding this means that customers can implement new services using these MessageBird’s platforms in a matter of days, without a massive development effort, and without a team of developers.

“This enables our customers to use our platform to connect to multiple messaging platforms in a very easy way. In fact, our customer just needs to worry about the content of the message and we will send it over whichever platform their customers choose.”

One brand the company partnered with was Aramex. Aramex came to MessageBird looking to manage its increased volume of customer inquiries efficiently, which was taking a lot of time and resources away from their agents. Working with MessageBird, Aramex decided to add a feature to resolve customer inquiries through automation and chatbots on WhatsApp.

Since then, Aramex has achieved 2.7 times productivity and handled 500,000 WhatsApp messages every month. This helped them to retain customers with faster response times, and move closer to their goal of reducing call volume by 80%.

Ong added that despite WhatsApp having an immensely high penetration rate across Asia, very few companies are truly embracing the platform and allowing their customers to interact with them using WhatsApp in an effective way.

Nonetheless, using such platforms also requires brands to play within the rules of engagement – of which the first rule is to get consent through an explicit opt-in before engaging with consumers through these channels.

There should also be a straightforward way to opt out. Brands must also ensure the messages are personalised and relevant, when engaging on platforms such as WhatsApp.

When asked for tips to create a great experience, Ong said brands must truly scrutinise their customer journey to find the areas that cause the biggest friction – and tackle them one at a time.

“Instead of trying to fix the whole journey in one go, take an area or use case that has significant friction and try to reduce that friction using messaging channels, since that is where most of your customers are anyway,” she said.

She added that MessageBird has been able to help customers do that in a matter of weeks, thanks to its easy to use technology and low code/no code tools.

Watch the full interview to find out how brands can create a hyper-personalised customer experience using omni-channel automation platforms.