WhatsApp, Instagram, iMessage: Meet customers where they are for real-time engagement

When it comes to customer engagement, every business today needs to understand the need for speed. Customers want a response to their question in minutes, not hours. Service agents handling customer queries and chats need answers just as quickly.

Real-time engagement technology and capabilities are a critical differentiator for CX leaders and agents. This is one major takeaway from “The New CX Priorities,” a new report from Freshworks about upcoming CX trends in 2023, based on viewpoints from top leaders in the space.

Investing in conversational messaging and real-time engagement can benefit customers as well as agents.

“For customers, it provides ease of service, combining real-time immediacy with the convenience of when they can respond, a digital trail of the conversation and, when required, self-service options; for agents, it means relief from the pressure of an immediate phone call and access to tools such as grammar checks and language translators,” Brett Frazer, Principal Customer Service and Engagement Consultant at Florida-based BPO Arise Virtual Solutions opined.

Real-time engagement, real benefits

Conversational messaging helps agents and customers to interact in real time, address queries, eliminate misunderstandings, and resolve issues within minutes, if not hours. For businesses, real-time engagement can boost efficiency, provide better customer experience, and increase the rate of tickets answered at minimal costs to the company.

For instance, Indian delivery app Dunzo resolved 48% of their queries using bots, while Swedish fintech firm Klarna managed to cut down their costs by half, with around 66% of their customers adopting chat.

In a competitive business environment riddled with fickle customers and economic uncertainties, companies that embrace asynchronous messaging channels stand a better chance to fulfill customer expectations of speed and convenience. Customers already love their WhatsApp, Instagram, iMessage and sundry other apps that make life easy for them. It’s time for businesses to show some love, too, by making it a priority to bring these into their conversational messaging mix.

If you haven’t already leveraged social media for real-time engagement, it’s time to seize the day. Download The New CX Priorities report today and get started with conversational messaging.

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