The Future of Customer Communication With Business Messaging and the Kustomer CRM

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Kustomer recently took the stage at Meta’s inaugural business messaging event, Conversations. The virtual event showcased content for businesses, developers and partners interested in building better and faster experiences on the most popular messaging platforms.

One of the event’s recurring themes revolved around how messaging is becoming essential to solve customer issues on-demand, and as a way to build lasting relationships on channels that customers use every day to communicate with their family and friends. Speakers explored how modern consumers want to connect with businesses at every stage of their journey, from pre-purchase to post-sales support. The easier brands can make it for them to do so, the more likely consumers are to exhibit loyalty. You can access the event on demand by clicking the button or just watch Brad’s keynote video below:

The Future of Customer Connections

With more than 1 billion users reaching out to businesses across Meta’s messaging services every week, brands have a new priority. They need to deliver the same exceptional service customers expect across the channels customers use most frequently, and do it at scale. 

It wasn’t long ago that businesses struggled to keep up with the boom in messaging use. Legacy CRMs were built to manage cases, not customers, meaning that conversations were siloed and the view of the customer was fragmented. CX agents could only see a ticket, notes or an email thread, not a holistic customer journey. Businesses needed to bring those communications together in a single view to accelerate and personalize responses to customer requests.

Today, we want to share a short guided tour of the Kustomer product with IRL examples of how top brands are using it to power extraordinary customer experiences. We’ll show how our founders leveraged 28 years of industry experience to reinvent broken customer service. They poured their collective expertise into the next evolution in customer service – the Kustomer CRM – a CRM for customer service designed to work with the messaging apps people use most – all of them. 

The Kustomer CRM works across all the channels your customers use like phone, email, chat, SMS, and of course, messaging. It brings customer conversations and history seamlessly from each channel into one unified, single-screen view, so agents can treat people like people, and focus on the issues that matter most to your business.

On top of our omnichannel CRM, Kustomer offers advanced AI tools that deliver personal support without agent intervention, and automations that handle problems proactively, before they even come up. If you’d like to see a product tour, access our video demo here.  If not, keep reading.

People, Not Tickets

A look at Kustomer makes it clear that the product is truly about people — not tickets. It’s one of the things that makes Kustomer so valuable to clients like Priority Bicycles. The online bike retailer leverages Kustomer to support customers across any channel, in one centralized place.

For example, a customer can reach out via WhatsApp about a broken bicycle basket. The agent is able to look at the customer’s personal timeline to see his entire purchase history, including the exact details he needed about the bike to replace a broken basket in under a minute. All without ever having to ask for a last name, email or order number — and most importantly, never leaving the Kustomer CRM.

The future of customer communication allows brands to message consumers on any channel, in one centralized place.

How might an interaction like this become even more personalized in the future? It starts with meeting customers’ communication preferences. An agent might offer to video chat and guide the customer through all the steps to install new panniers to a bike.

Ready to unlock a future for your business that supports your customers across any channel in one central CRM?

Excellent Support at Scale

A challenge that many businesses face today is scaling personalized support as their business grows and the number of messages grows with it. One way businesses can scale their support is by using Kustomer’s AI capabilities and efficiency tools to automate some of their most common interactions, without losing that personal touch. 

For example, a customer can reach out to ThirdLove, an online retailer of size-inclusive bras, activewear and sleepwear, to exchange a hoodie she purchased. The Kustomer CRM can identify the word “exchange” using natural language processing and successfully navigate a return by presenting her with a different size. The customer received the self-serve experience she wanted without any repetition or hassle, and ThirdLove was able to deliver the personal support people expect at scale.

What's the future of customer communications? Natural language processing can help brands provide exceptional service.
What's the future of customer communications? Natural language processing can help brands provide exceptional service.

In the future, our messaging-first product, combined with natural language processing, could lead to even more nuanced solutions. 

How might this work? A customer can reach out on Instagram and the entire support interaction can take place there. Kustomer’s natural language processing can detect not only her history and intent, but also her sentiment and her specific issue. The product can then suggest a personalized set of options to solve her problem.

If your organization is struggling to deliver personalized support at scale, schedule a consultation to learn how Kustomer can help.

Proactive Support

We at Kustomer believe the best support experience is one that handles problems before they become problems: proactive support. 

Many people talk about being proactive with CX, but Kustomer delivers for Delivery.com. Delivery.com, an on-demand delivery service for local restaurants and stores, can send an automated message to a customer letting her know the restaurant was out of a menu item she ordered. They can offer a few options to make it right and the customer can choose another menu item while her order is in process.

Using communication channels that customers prefer, brands can proactively send messages, elevating their customer service.

What else will the future hold for customer service and business messaging?

Proactive messaging is a part of the future of customer communications, helping brands grow and upsell.

Proactive messaging can unlock business growth and upsell opportunities. Delivery.com could send a proactive message to a customer about a few of her favorite restaurants, alerting her of new menu options to try. With the right tools this kind of engagement can be both completely personalized and completely automated.

Many organizations are taking proactive actions like the ones mentioned above to meet customers along every step of the customer journey. Want to learn how? Book time with us to find out.

Conversations Are the Future of Commerce

In the future, the brands that stand out are going to be the ones who treat customers like people, not tickets, using a more conversational approach to their interactions. That’s why we built Kustomer, so support teams can deliver meaningful conversations, whether someone is feeling delighted, frustrated or just looking for something new, right there in the channels they prefer. 

Conversations are the future of commerce. And it’s time to start having better conversations with Kustomer and Meta. That’s how you deliver personal, effortless human support at scale, across all of your messaging channels.

Want to learn how Kustomer can help you deliver a modern customer experience? Request a demo here.

Ready to discover how AI + Data + CRM equals customer magic?

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