Why Voice Messaging is An Essential Channel for Customer Engagement

Voice messaging is an essential channel in an omnichannel communication strategy. Voice offers this natural, effective, and professional experience for many businesses offering customer support.

For years, organizations have focused their sole attention to implementing digital communications channels that promises fast resolution to customer inquiries, reduce costs, and increase customer engagement.

The added pressure to deliver a seamless customer service has become the norm with the ever-changing needs of the digital customers.

If you are using a multichannel approach to communicate with your customers remember to personalize customer engagement and if you aren’t already doing this, include voice messaging as an additional channel to your mix.

Now, let’s see why we think voice messaging is an essential part to increase customer engagement.

The Role of Voice in Customer Engagement

Customers nowadays want to communicate with businesses anytime, on multiple channels, and without interruptions. Ideally, they want to be contacted at their preferred times and on their favourite channels.

Voice as you might have suspected is an important channel that adds to an optimal omnichannel experience.

Let’s see how exactly voice messaging transforms customer engagement.

Firstly, voice messaging is an instant form of communication technology in which messages are sent via voice media. So, you can either send outbound voice messages in the form of voicemails, or you can have customers call in.

Whatever the case might be, voice is mostly used to solve a pressing issues, notify clients of important information, or to collect feedback.

Secondly, every successful business is heavily reliant on good customer service. But with that comes a few challenges that you might experience.

1. Managing high-volume calls
2. Inefficiency of IVR (Interactive Voice Response) systems
3. Low customer satisfaction

Let’s see how these challenges affect call centre’s performance and how voice messaging solutions can fix these issues.

How to Solve Contact Centre Challenges

1.     Managing high-volume calls

Everyone is familiar with contact centres whether it was you calling in as a customer trying to solve an issue, or you were on the receiving end.

High inbound volumes is a persistent problem in call centres. This might depends on seasonality, promotions, problems with systems, and other reasons.

With 92% of customer interactions happening over the phone, you want to get your inbound calls under control to deliver the best customer experience and call resolution.

High inbound calls are often tied to other customer service metrics such as first call resolution, average call duration, and average speed to answer.

So, imagine your customers’ expectations are to pick up the phone, share their problem and get it fixed in one call. According to the State of Global Customer Service Report, 33% of consumers say that the most important aspect of a good customer service experience is resolving their issue in one interaction—no matter how long it takes.

If you fail to meet you basic customers’ expectations repeatedly, you will eventually lose them as customers.

How to fix this

A few ways to fix this is to:

• Offer self-service resources
• Provide omnichannel support
• Build a live-chat tool on your website
• Utilize IVR systems
• Predict customer behaviour
• Make first contact resolution a priority

2.     Inefficient IVR systems

IVR systems are a way to reduce high inbound volumes and improve customer satisfaction all together.

Allowing customers to select from a list of automated prompts in order to be routed to the most appropriate source can be effective if done right.

Unfortunately, it’s easy to overcomplicate menus and offer bad encounters.

If your IVR is too complex, people will hang up. Dealing with frustrated customers is not ideal for any business. As a matter of fact, at least 42% will hang up if they are put on hold.

How to fix this

Think about everything that might confuse customers or might make them feel frustrated. And eliminate it.

Simplify your IVR calls by limiting the number of menu options to the essential. This means the only options that will solve the customer’s inquiry.

Offer a call-back option and prioritize first contact resolution to make people feel like they called in the right place.

Additionally, have your customer support line open 24/7 to make your customers feel like they can reach out when they need you.

3.     Low customer satisfaction

Voice messaging services can improve first time resolutions and contact centre call avoidance which can increase customer satisfaction.

Quality is important at every customer touchpoint, so make sure you eliminate all points of frustrations for customers.

How to fix this

Test all options and events occurring during a customer phone interaction to make sure all options are working fine.

Routine during a voice call ensures that the customer gets linked to the right department or agent, so make sure the transfer is done successfully.

Don’t miss on asking for feedback on the latest customer interactions. Listening to your customers’ feedback can pinpoint the issues that need to be fixed, removing any disfunctions from your IVR journey.

Tips for Increasing Customer Engagement with Voice Messaging

Now that we’ve established the value of voice messaging in increasing customer engagement, let’s see how else you can enhance customer journeys. Here are a few tips to embed in your voice messaging solutions:

• Simplify complex menus and scripts
• Lower your transfer rate
• Personalize conversations
• Know your customers’ information
• Humanize scripts
• Brand your calls
• Train your agents
• Offer assisted service and self-service options

Moreover, if you want to enable customer self-service through voice messaging services, consider AI-enabled voice bots to allow people to interact in real-time.

If you are looking for a unified voice messaging experience, consider VoiceSage for your omnichannel communication needs. We can enhance customer engagement and provide superior contact centre results, helping you reduce frictions and customer frustration.