How do the best conversations go? When there is a mutual exchange in a two-way interaction, with both parties leaving satisfied. That’s why SaaS businesses are interested in conversational messaging with their customers, to enhance customer engagement and loyalty.
Rather than blasting out promotional communications or one-way transactional messages, high-performing SaaS companies are giving customers the option to interact. These companies are using platforms to launch conversations that help them learn more about their customers and provide a better standard of service.
For SaaS companies that must regularly interact with their customers to increase customer retention, conversational messaging is a great way to build customer relationships.
What is Conversational Messaging?
Conversational messaging is a one-on-one communication between the SaaS business and customer that can occur over any relevant platform. It’s different from live chat because conversation history is saved and the interaction can occur asynchronously. The participant can close the message window and still be able to access their history any time, anywhere.
Conversational messaging may or may not involve chatbots, which can increase the efficiency of the conversation and help you serve more customers. For the SaaS company in the business of building customer relationships, conversational messaging tools are a vital way to engage customers, solve their problems, or get them to take action.
Think about the customer who encounters a problem with your SaaS app. They can send off a message to your support team, and continue with their day while they wait for a response. The support team replies on the same messaging channel, and the customer engages until they’ve reached a solution.
The Benefits of Conversational Messaging
Customers are seeking highly personalized interactions with companies. Let’s say you want to introduce a new feature. Your customer success team can share the news with customers through conversational messaging platforms and interact with them about it, thereby increasing feature adoption. Conversational messaging gives customers the opportunity to engage with your CSMs and achieve higher satisfaction.
1. Gives customers a direct line to your company
Conversational messaging makes customers feel close to your SaaS company. They can use the channels that they normally frequent to interact with family and friends, removing the usual barriers between business and customer. Businesses are no longer bombarding customers with messages, but instead opening up a more productive dialogue.
2. The channel is instantaneous
As soon as a customer sends a message, the business can reply to them. Equally, when businesses reach out to customers, customers can respond and thus engage in a conversation. Messages are sent back-and-forth in near real-time which gives customers the support they need while enabling them to feel close to the business.
3. You can offer more human-like support
When customers are messaging your business throughout the duration of a conversation it’s much more like speaking to a real human because it’s how people actually communicate. Even chatbots can simulate natural conversation and give customers a more human-like experience.
4. It’s more convenient for customers
When customers are contacting you on their preferred channel this results in a better customer experience. Convenience and speed are two critical factors in determining a customer’s satisfaction with your brand. Customers can send a message now to start a conversation and then return to it at their leisure.
How to Implement Conversational Messaging
1. Personalize the experience
Conversational messaging means you have access to all sorts of data and history about the customer. Use this information to personalize the product experience and show customers you have an understanding of their relationship with your brand.
Customers expect businesses to know who they are and they won’t appreciate being forced to repeat information. If they have encountered the same problem with your software before, express your deepest apologies and make sure you follow up to get to the root cause.
2. Create realistic expectations
If you are using chatbots, make sure this is extremely clear to the customer right from the beginning. Customers get frustrated when they are trying to reach a real person and instead are obstructed by bots.
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If it’s going to take a little while for your agents to get back to them, make sure you inform them of the likely wait times. Setting expectations with the customer improves the experience and shows that your business is aware of their needs.
3. Always respond promptly
If you can, make sure to respond to your conversational messages as promptly as possible. This is especially important if you open up the conversation, as your reps shouldn’t be taking a long time to reply. Customers appreciate it when you value their time and treat them as more than just a number.
SaaS companies with speedy response times will outperform the competition, because customers who are dealt with quickly are less likely to consider other options. Keeping your customers satisfied with fast responses is a critical part of building the customer relationship.
4. Speak to your customers like a human
No customer wants to interact with a robot. Keep it professional while at the same time building a conversation, just like the name suggests. Make sure to use your customer’s name and use language that the average person will be familiar with.
You can even include images and GIFs to make the conversation more engaging, but make sure you don’t overdo it. Take the lead from customers when it comes to expressing yourself through conversational messaging, matching their tone and level of formality.
Wrapping Up
Conversational messaging is the route to building more personal relationships with customers, which is great news for SaaS companies who are operating on the subscription model. Any method that enables customers to feel closer to the business is an important part of engagement, loyalty, and satisfaction.
Conversing one-on-one with your customers is much more personal and deepens the experience that the customer has with your company.
