Knowing when to talk is vital for great CX

It goes without saying that communication is one of the key pillars of great CX. Of course, you talk to customers for different reasons and through different channels. The bulk of that communication—naturally—happens before the sale because that's when you get to tell your customers what problems you can help them solve. For that reason, you might focus a lot on your marketing content. However, to strengthen your relationship with your customers further, you need to make sure that you talk to them even after closing the sale.

Your customers are certainly going to talk to you when they need support or service, but there are certain occasions where you can proactively talk to customers to ensure their experience is smooth throughout their journey. Let's look at a few such places throughout this article.

Onboarding

Most customers, if not all, require some level of hand-holding when they try out a new offering, so make sure that your communication with them is effective at that point. This doesn't necessarily mean that you assign a human agent to every single customer right from the beginning; you can instead communicate by presenting useful information at the right places within your offering, which can be in the form of tooltips and in-app walkthroughs.

By communicating with customers at the onboarding stage, you ensure that they don't feel lost or helpless. You'll be able to tell them exactly what they can do and how they can do it. Of course, there are certain details and procedures that can't be communicated through tooltips or information bubbles. That's why you need to talk to customers through the next place, which is the...

Knowledge base

A knowledge base is a central repository of help resources that can guide your customers through specific actions and procedures. Let's call the knowledge base a place for on-demand talking; that is, you don't proactively talk to customers through it, but you're available for them and talk to them through help content when they need it.

Make sure that you have a comprehensive, easily accessible, and regularly updated knowledge base that contains help resources in different media—not just text. This is important because different people learn differently, and since that's likely true of your customers as well, it's imperative that you cater to their varying learning needs as well. You can also go a step further and set up a multilingual knowledge base so that your customers across the globe can access the same knowledge in the language of their choice.

Feedback implementation

Another point where you should proactively talk to customers is after you implement their feedback. You may think it's not important that you let them know, because they'll see the changes themselves. However, when you directly inform customers that you've made a certain change or addition based on their feedback, it assures them that their voice was heard and makes them feel valued.

Say, for instance, you run a survey to collect customer feedback, and a majority of them want a particular addition or change in your offering. If you implement the change, it's important to let customers know about it. Convey the news at least to those customers who took the survey. What if a few customers have paused using your offering or put some spending on hold just because that particular change matters a lot to them? It's when you let them know about the implementation that they'll be able to proceed.

Service outages

Another important instance when you need to talk to customers proactively is when an unexpected or unplanned event like a service outage occurs. Those are situations when your customers have no idea what's going on and are badly in need of answers. At times, these outages can bring entire businesses to a standstill—and that's not a nice position to be in for a vendor/service provider. Nevertheless, communicating with transparency and empathy at such times is essential to keep customers calm and retain their trust in you.

It's vital to acknowledge that there's an issue and that you're working on fixing it. Your customers aren't looking for a minute-by-minute update; they just need to know that you're aware of what's happening and to get a clear picture of when the issue can be resolved. At times like these, make good use of your social media accounts and user community, because those are the ideal channels for communicating during such emergencies.

When facing unreasonable/rude customers

Every business occasionally faces rude or unreasonable customers who believe they were wronged and expect the moon and the stars as compensation. You can't afford to be silent with such customers, especially when they go ballistic with your team members. If you stay silent during such negative interactions, your employees might end up thinking that you don't support them. That might make them less committed to work, which in turn might affect the experience they deliver to other customers.

Therefore, never be silent with rude customers. You shouldn't reciprocate the rudeness you receive, but you should be assertive and reiterate the facts. Apologize and make amends if the mistake is on your team's side. If the mistake is on the customer's side, politely refute their claims by presenting strong and relevant evidence. Being silent during negative interactions only worsens things by not providing closure to both your customers and team members.

Now that you know of some places where it's essential to talk to customers, keep in mind also that it's much more important to listen to them. By actively listening to your customers, you can understand their requirements more clearly, deliver exactly what they want, and strive to provide a consistently positive experience. So, though you need to talk to customers proactively, there's one place where you shouldn't—and that's when the customers are doing the talking.