Have you explored the best way to communicate with your customers?

Ensuring your actions are relevant to what you do is so important. How often do you go into a public place where there is a notice about Easter Opening hours bearing in mind it is now July.
The same principle applied to how you communicate with your customers. There is no point sending service updates via text to a person who has it switched off and saves the battery for emergency use only!

Preferred Method of Contact
So many places ask for a preferred method of communication but have a system which only uses a generic option, not only does this frustrate customers it also causes complaints as they may not receive your update on a timely basis, due to the phone not being switched on or the email not being checked regularly.
Make sure the options that you offer not only meet the customer needs but work.

Completeness
The communication you send out by which ever method must give complete information, ensure that your messages do not leave any scope for customers to need to ring you, eg ‘we will make a payment on X date’ and the customer is left with the questions of what is the payment for and how much are you paying me. Is it also clear who the message is from, in the days where so many companies can set up solutions for text and direct mail, clarity is key.

Timeliness
If you are using ‘non telephone’ methods to update your customers, make sure that the messages to at the right time, if the customer is to receive their ‘product’ in 3 working days let them know when it will arrive by quoting a date, again, the information may not be received immediately, so if you say today and they don’t realise the date on the email or text is the 1st of May.

Feedback
Try to present customers with an opportunity to feedback to you with their ‘goods’ and ‘bads’ from their buying experience. This will help you understand what works best with the different customers you have.

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