How To Ace Online Communication

Has your IBD invested in an online presence, but you’re not entirely sure how to maximise it?

Good news: although it might seem a vastly different beast to convention retail, some fundamental principles remain the same. Number one is, of course, customer service. As is the case with most of life, clear, quality communication is key to exemplary customer service. However, here’s where things start to differ significantly between the virtual and real-world of retail, as there really are so many ways to communicate online.

We wrap our heads around some of the best and easiest wins for online communications superstar status. Before we see how and where to communicate, we should firstly understand to whom we are communicating. This helps inform the best communication channels for targeting this customer and the tone of voice and how we target/respond to them.

Understand your customer profile

Knowing who your customer is and what they search for or aspire to improves the likelihood of your conversion. There are some great tools you can deploy online to find out more about your customer. They include:

Data analytics

Don’t get bogged down in big data. Instead, run targeted reports that will give you insights you can then leverage to inform specific marketing campaigns. For example, your report might capture insights such as:

• How visitors land onto your page (through an ad spend, organically, from a direct email, etc.)

• What pages they visit and how long they remain on these pages

• The flow of their journey once online - what might be shaping their behaviour

Customer forms

When it comes to reaching and communicating with your customer online, the wonderful world of widgets can open the door to enormous opportunities and options, including customer forms. These are interactive questionnaires that pose a small number of questions before funnelling the customer to areas of the site pertinent to their query. The secret sauce to successful customer forms is in keeping these questions short and sharp but shaping them in a way that will require a clear and unambiguous answer.

An example of a good questionnaire form on an IBD site might include prompts such as:

• What are you looking for today?

• What type of cyclist are you?

• What is your budget?

Let’s say these three responses lead to a potential customer who is interested in a mountain bike for  €2000 - €3,000. With such excellent insights, you can now target them with a bespoke landing page or, at the very least, more targeted search results.

Online customer service communications channels

OK, now we know more about our customer, we’re in a better position to decide where and how to target them. The main channels that should be available for customer communications are:

Ways to communicate online with your customer

Now we understand the key communications channels available to your site, let’s look more closely at how to leverage them.

Newsletter

Emails are a terrific means to maintain engagement with your database, grow your community, create sales opportunities and maximise conversion. Planning here is key. Images/video content will be acquired, copy will be written and edited in advance, and your social media channels (see below) will be working in conjunction to support any campaigns. If you’re starting out new, it’s a good idea to join up to a whole bunch of databases and see what arrives in your inbox. For successful newsletters, ask yourself questions like:

• How often should I email my database without starting to feel like spam? 
• What should I use email for - to promote sales, to share engaging content, to highlight products available, a combination of all of these? 
• What template/layout best reflects my brand? 
• How can I make this as visually exciting as possible? 
• What snappy subject lines can I use to encourage an open rate?

Once your email campaign is underway, you can use analytics to better understand what is and is not working.

Live-Chat

Immediacy is a valuable commodity. It could be the difference between a visitor to your site leaving, staying and/or purchasing. Live Chat makes customer’s lives easy and gives you instant exposure to them. You can set up your Live Chat so that an automated service funnels their query before it comes to you. EG by them answering a series of very quick prompts, your team member can know what their query is about before connection occurs. Customer satisfaction ratings are high when sites provide this feature.

Service content (FAQs/ contact us)

Customers will typically expect to see both your FAQs and Contact Us details either on the home page top bar menu or at the bottom of the home page as a quick link. Make this page easy to find - visitors expect to see it either in the home page top menu bar or as a home page quick link footer. There are a variety of sources you can use to inform your FAQ, most importantly your customer service / sales team - find out the questions they regularly have to answer. This not only helps you address common pain points experienced by your customers, but it potentially minimises the customer service team workload.

Social media

As we’ve seen above, social media can take many guises. Regardless of the platform, the fundamentals remain the same:

• Always be responsive 
• Ensure the person managing the account is an appropriate spokesperson in terms of your brand values, ethos, tone of voice 
• Maintain professionalism at all times. This doesn’t have to mean being polished and perfect, but don’t descend into an argument for all to see - take the upper road and do your best to show you are trying to resolve a situation 
• Understand which assets work best for what social media (e.g. don't put a wordsmith in charge of Instagram and a graphic designer in charge of Twitter!)

Be aware of the different communication tools you can deploy, depending on the channel.

Blog content

When done correctly, blogs can serve so many purposes. Not only do they help imbibe the brand culture and create a tribe, but they can provide customer service solutions and deliver leads.

Think about how your blog can help your customer. Depending on the content, it may deliver any of the below benefits. However, the ultimate end-goal (and attainable reality) is you can use this as a communications tool to drive visitors to specific products and potential purchases:

• Grow awareness - articles that champion your brand, communicate its vision and everyday achievements, celebrations, news, etc. 
• Educate - informative and original product guides that give the visitor all the information they might need; however, they might want to digest it (video, images, infographics, written word, etc.).
• Engage - where does the heart and soul of cycling lie for your customers? Find it, communicate it and keep them engaged and coming back for more. 
• Inspire - who’s riding what, and what have they got to say about it? What cyclist just won a stage using which equipment? Why is European-made so crucial for this apparel brand? What new technology has been deployed to improve this product? Who just rode through Asia, and how did they do it? Communicate inspiring content to draw your visitor into the charm of cycling. 
• Convert - Buy Now buttons or effective call-to-actions can help turn awareness or engagement into a sales conversion.

Concierge service

An incredibly powerful tool for those who come to you overwhelmed or under-informed. The BikeExchange Concierge service is now an invaluable part of our customer communications. Visitors are asked to complete an online form that captures their intent, pain points etc. Using this, a BikeExchange concierge acts as an expert personal shopper and makes recommendations based on the parameters provided.  This can be available online or via phone call, becoming a voice of reason and expertise that many customers value highly.

Are you effectively communicating with your customer online?
Do you think you could make improvements?

We’re here to help and provide more suggestions and ideas to ensure you hear and speak to your customer in just the right way! Contact us