Unlocking Hidden Strategies of Customer Communications to Boost Your Business

Under pressure to generate revenue and increase profits, organizational leaders often choose to reduce cost centers within the organization. Customer contact centers are essential to customer service and long-term growth, but they often fall victim to these cuts. Innovative companies are finding ways to make cost centers profitable or cost-neutral.

The rise of Digital Marketplaces

For example, retailers such as Land’s End and Sears have turned their websites into digital marketplaces, offering carefully selected third-party products and running sponsored ads on their sites. This is one of the ways he says older generations of retailers can compete with his Amazon experience of “everything for consumers in one place.”

This type of shopping experience is becoming increasingly attractive to busy consumers, with the commission income earned from sales on the site, the ability to expand into new retail niches, and the tenacity to keep consumers on the site. There are also benefits for the company. Perhaps there is also the benefit of having access to product and sales data to help inform decisions about future product offerings.

Digital marketplaces have some drawbacks. Customer service support issues with third-party products, potential dilution of established brands, and even the need to monitor product offerings (such as Nazi-themed rings sold at Sears) but, Overall, this seems like a successful way to turn a cost center (ongoing development and maintenance of a website) into a profit center. There will be more to come in the future as customers get used to this.

Customer communication to increase sales

Departments tasked with creating and delivering customer communications would do well to keep this lesson in mind. It is possible to transform customer communications from a cost center (transactional emails and digital communications costing a lot of money) to a profit center. The key is:

· Move customers from printed statements to electronic delivery to save on printing and mailing costs

· Develop clear statement designs that reduce customer service calls

· Implement more self-service features for your customers

· Leverage customer data to engage and deepen relationships with your customers

· Free up space on printed and digital statements for targeted cross-selling of additional products or monetizable third-party offers.

The benefits of this include increased revenue and retention, and the ability for customer service agents to provide a better experience with each interaction. For example, banks and credit unions may include discount offers to encourage the use of debit and credit cards, or healthcare payers may feature informational messages designed to improve the health outcomes of their members.

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Customer engagement platforms leverage technology to engage with customers across touchpoints and provide personalized communications to turn occasional customers into loyal, engaged customers while reducing the burden on customer service teams. Request a demo today to see how Bentech, our customer engagement solution, can help your business.