The Trends Reshaping Customer Engagement

Like so many things in our fast-developing world, customer engagement has witnessed a revolution in the last decade or so. Customer expectation and behaviour has changed, and it can’t be ignored that this period has run concurrently with the explosion of smartphones and mobile internet.

Customers now expect quick – often instantaneous – feedback. They expect to receive personalised offers based on their preferences. And with the sum of all human knowledge available at their fingertips, they are now savvier than ever. Old sales and service tricks no longer hold water.

Some organisations are nervous about or fearful of this new brand/consumer dynamic. But others are excited by it, and it’s these companies that are more likely to succeed.

The new technologies revolutionising customer engagement

We are bearing witness to a true revolution in how companies both communicate with and sell to their customers.

There has been an explosion in communication channels, with customers moving from phone and in-store conversations to channels like WhatsApp, Viber, Messenger, Line, WeChat and the emerging RCS. What’s more, customers expect companies to always have someone on the end of each of these lines, which, when you’re a global brand potentially dealing with millions of customers, is no mean feat.

In fact, the only way it’s feasible is with technology. New generation chatbots use artificial intelligence to create personalised and surprisingly human experiences for the customer. In fact their capabilities extend far beyond chat, leading and directly managing the purchase process from end to end.

The COVID-19 crisis has accelerated both the adoption of this tech and the way it’s used. With emergent technologies facilitating rich, automated and real-time communication, companies can proactively contact customers through the array of new channels, driving conversations without needing to spend inordinate amounts of time or money to do so. Chatbots, when compared with human customer service reps, are cheap.

A health insurance company, for example, no longer needs a human doctor to attend every consultation. It instead utilises an AI engine to conduct an initial screening, which can collect important data and even focus on specific diagnoses that can then be shown to expert human eyes.

The role of a CPaaS in bringing new technologies together

But how to bring all these disparate parts – from communication channels to AI chatbots – together? The answer is with a communication platform as a service, or CPaaS.

A CPaaS offers a complete and future-proof solution to the communication needs of a modern organisation. It opens up a whole new world of opportunities for companies, particularly in regards to engaging customers, by:

• Integrating the organisation’s systems with the CPaaS platform via a low or no-code interface
• Automating communication through chatbots and AI
• Creating sophisticated flows to enrich the customer experience
• Reporting the outcomes of the interaction in real-time
• Increasing conversions/success by communicating with the customer through their preferred channel

CPaaS are changing the B2C and B2B communication rules. They dramatically increase efficiency, boost customer loyalty and create new business opportunities. And at Soprano we’re proud to be at the forefront of this exciting field.

As one of major players in the CPaaS world, we boast the broadest range of channels and farthest-reaching capabilities, enabling us to provide a total CPaaS solution for our customers, who can in turn offer better communication to their own customers. In a rapidly evolving market, we’ve built a reputation for being innovative and adaptable, outperforming our competitors in offering the latest and greatest CPaaS functionality.

It’s true that customer experiences have changed a lot in the last decade. But in truth, I feel like the revolution has only just started. We can only take guesses as to where it goes from here, but at Soprano we feel that we’ve got a clearer crystal ball than most.

Are you interested in how Soprano could help your organisation better engage customers? Find out more here.

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Customers today expect more from brands. They want sincere and personalised communication, and they want it now. Technology has both heightened these expectations and delivered on them.

Here I walk through the communication technologies, from channels and chatbots to CPaaS, that brings them all together.

#CPaaS #customerengagement #customercommunication