Every conversation matters when we are talking about the Business-to-Consumer process. Customers are unaware of how busy you may be. The expectation is that you will begin their buying journey with a positive attitude and your full attention to answer any relevant questions they have.
In the case of sales, the first interaction with customers is crucial. As they wait for you to respond, they have the time to consider hundreds of other competitors, or write a bad review because you did not respond in a timely enough manner. Businesses only have one opportunity to charm the customer when making a first impression. It is important to build on the positive first impression in order to ultimately close the lead.
The first point of contact with the customer is typically through online communication channels. Thus, companies need resources to help maintain high-quality customer service.
The pandemic has demonstrated how impactful digital sales can be through online communication.
We would like to share several insights based on our knowledge and experience at Impel, highlighting the elements that make online communication between Business-to-Consumer more persuasive.
It is important to consider the following:
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The place of the Conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) Assistants – their advantages and challenges.
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How technology can help businesses spend fewer resources while improving the quality of online communication has become an inevitable necessity in the modern world.
Your first reply must meet several criteria. The list of the requirements might be extensive, and vary depending on the situation, but we are going to highlight the four most important requirements based on our data.
1. Response Time
The first and essential standard is IMMEDIATE response time because:
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The topic is ‘hot’ for customers while they are inquiring; The late reply decreases the chance of customer engagement.
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Customers are doing their research, looking at competitors with the same product or service, and could easily change their mind. Your competitor with a faster response time and better customer service can take advantage of gaining customer trust and satisfaction while they wait for your response.
Additionally, customers don’t stop researching after your business’s operating hours. In fact, many people don’t begin tackling their personal needs until after work. Purchasing a car is a major investment that often leads people to start their buying journey after hours. Impel statistics show that on average, 40% of the leads (New + reply to an ongoing conversation) are made after working hours when dealerships are closed.
Impel’s Sales AI is very convenient and can assist in supporting your human team. A fast reply is one of the most important steps in the sales process, however the immediate response is not valuable or worth sending if it does not answer the customer’s questions. Thus the first response back to the customer needs to be well-thought-out and curated to fit the customer’s needs. Sales AI responds intelligently within one minute to every lead, 24 hours a day, seven days a week so that a customer is never left without ever receiving a response.
2. Exhaustive content, but not too much
Nobody wants a reply that does not include the requested information. With a customer initiating the conversation, it is important to build the relationship by directly answering the customer’s questions in the first response back.
Here are some guidelines to successfully build a relationship with the customer:
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Be as specific and responsive as possible, but keep it brief! For example, if a customer asks what the price of the car is, answer that question directly, and only add a call-to-action or additional information after directly responding to the customer’s specific question.
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Always reply to customers in a timely manner. If you need to research an answer, first notify the customer and explain that you or someone else is working on responding with the information that they requested. This helps you keep the conversation warm while you or your teammates assist you in finding the answer for the customer.
Impel’s Sales AI is the conversational AI solution to providing customers efficient and specific answers as it communicates with the company team when human expertise is needed. Our data has shown that directly answering customer questions will result in a positive customer experience with increased engagement and loyalty. As mentioned above, 40% of leads are made after companies’ working hours, and 30-40% of AI scheduled appointments are scheduled after working hours. With Sales AI customer appointments can be scheduled and implemented into a CRM system at any time.
3. Call-to-Action
The next step in gaining customer satisfaction is ensuring a smooth journey by instructing them how to move forward in taking action. It is important to strategically plan when a clear call-to-action such as scheduling an appointment or buying a car is presented to the customer. Customers do not have conversations about buying an automotive vehicle on a daily basis so it is important to prioritize customer satisfaction by guiding them through the process.
The better you handle your customer communication, the fewer miscommunication errors you have with your customer. Although it may be challenging to close every lead, it is important to always continue working towards closing each inquirer. If the customer abandons the conversation without the desired results, follow up until they re-engage and continue where they dropped off. However, you must be careful when re-engaging.
4. Topic-based FOLLOW-UP
Following up on the customer is a mandatory part of the sales conversations. Impel statistics show that more than 60% of engagement happens with follow-up messages. It is important that the follow-up message does not look like an automatic email that is sent to hundreds of people. The message must be tailored to each customer’s conversation history and should have a clear call-to-action to help continue the conversation.
Most of the conversational AI tools have basic features in this direction, such as:
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Ability to send follow up messages automatically;
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Ability to define follow up sequences in advance;
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Ability to schedule follow up sending time;
The final essential feature of an automatic follow-up system is the ability to send specific topic-based follow-ups. There is currently a major lack of human-like follow-up sent by conversational AI. The advancement is that it can generate and send a follow-up message based on topics discussed before the customer abandoned the conversation. Following up automatically with the content tailored to each customer situation makes an immense difference in how customers perceive your willingness to continue the relationship with them. It was our goal from the very beginning to have a follow-up system that would have specific, tailored content for each conversation and for each customer, that is why we created Sales AI.
Every conversation matters! No one can perfectly predict which lead ends up becoming a consistent customer, thus each customer lead should be treated equally. With conversational AI tools like Sales AI, you can improve communication and customers’ overall satisfaction with your business.
Learn more about Sales AI here.
