Customer communication tools you can’t live without in 2024

With the digital transformation upon us, customer communication tools have become increasingly important for businesses. In particular, they play a critical role in facilitating 

interactions with customers, enabling organizations to keep in touch effectively and in real-time.

Over the years, these tools have evolved significantly, moving from simple forms like email and phone calls to more advanced technologies, including chatbots, social media, and instant messaging platforms. 

Looking ahead to 2024, the trend is expected to continue, with more companies adopting cutting-edge digital communication tools to enhance customer experience and satisfaction.

In this article, we’ll take a closer look at the importance of customer communication tools and examine the ones primed to become the most essential in the years to come. We’ll also give you actionable tips on how to choose the right platforms and overcome the most significant challenges inherent in managing them.

What is a customer communication tool?

Customer communication tools are a type of software specializing in organizing and keeping track of messages. These platforms allow companies to respond to customer requests in a more agile and structured way.

With these tools, your team can easily look back on past conversations and quickly grasp the challenges or problems a specific client has encountered thus far. In this way, your reps are effectively leveraging historical insights to deliver more confident, informed, and accurate responses.

Why are customer communication tools important?

1. They facilitate real-time interactions with customers

In today’s fiercely competitive business landscape, customers have sky-high expectations for customer service, and want consistently prompt – if not outright immediate – replies to their questions and issues. By using customer communication tools – like a help desk software, for example – businesses can offer real-time support to their audience, leading to greater satisfaction and lasting customer loyalty.

2. They allow efficient problem resolution

Customer communication management tools allow businesses to collect information in a centralized and standardized fashion, enabling staff to solve problems more efficiently. Additionally, those software platforms can gather valuable feedback from their customers, which can be used to improve products, services, and the overall customer experience.

3. They help consolidate your brand’s image and reputation

Customer communication management tools help support leaders to address issues and concerns before they arise, which can help preemptively stop negative reviews and improve the overall reputation of the business.

4. They efficiently handle multiple communication channels

Juggling live chat, email, and phone communications manually can lead to confusion and exhaustion for your reps, sapping productivity and dealing a blow to morale. Fortunately, with a proper solution, you can take command of all essential channels for your business.

5. They promote seamless collaboration across teams

By elevating the quality of your customer communication tools, you can also improve the interactions among your teams’ members. The software allows them to engage in real-time chat or discuss support tickets with private notes and mentions, fostering a sense of collaboration and a cooperative spirit across your organization.

6. They provide insights into your team’s productivity

Wondering how satisfied your customers are after interactions with your team? Most customer communication tools provide rich insights into your team's handling of customer conversations. You can even conduct instant surveys, capture feedback, and measure customer satisfaction to gather the information most crucial to continuously improving your performance.

Customer communication tools you can’t live without

1. Help desk software

Help desk software is an all-in-one tool for managing customer support. It allows you to track, prioritize, and solve customer issues efficiently. Help desk software streamlines the support process, making it easier for you to be there for your customers when they need you the most.

It’s also worth mentioning that some help desks excel at centralizing requests originating from different tools and customer communication channels, such as live chat and chatbot, consolidating them into a single unified inbox

2. Live chat software

Live chat software is an essential tool for businesses that want to offer real-time support to their customers. It provides a channel that’s seamlessly embedded in the product or company website.

As live chat software mirrors the familiar, natural-sounding communication style found in everyday apps like WhatsApp and iMessage, it’s highly functional and immediately works as a hassle-free tool. It's also a great way to build rapport and offer personalized assistance.

It’s no wonder then, that, according to Statista, the global customer satisfaction rate of live chat users reached 81.1% in 2022.²

3. Proactive messaging software

Proactive messaging software allows you to send targeted messages to customers at the right time, using the right channel. These targeted messages can appear in the form of email, SMS, push notifications, or in-app messages.

This type of software is a powerful tool for engaging with customers, promoting your products or services, and reducing churn. It allows companies to interact with customers during pivotal points in their journey. For example, you can use proactive messaging software to provide helpful articles to customers before they even request assistance. These messages can be strategically timed to a specific stage where support representatives have identified common challenges.

4. AI-powered chatbot software

AI-powered chatbots are virtual assistants that can answer customer queries and provide recommendations. They use natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning algorithms to understand customer intent and respond appropriately. Their primary goal is to provide 24/7 support to customers by providing accurate, timely, and concise answers. By virtue of their 24/7 support and easy access to customers, they also reduce the need for support reps to provide manual intervention.

Our report, The State of AI in Customer Service, shows that 66% of support leaders are excited about leveraging AI and automation to increase team efficiency. And these objectives are hardly distant pipe dreams: a significant percentage of surveyed professionals revealed that they’re already able to offer 24/7 support (44%) and better customer experiences (29%), while also reducing the time spent on manual tasks (28%).³

How to choose digital communication tools to enhance customer experience

When it comes to digital communication, companies have a plethora of options to choose from. Making sure your company selects the right tool for their particular needs and preferences, however, makes all the difference. Here are some useful tips to help you choose wisely. 

1. Define what is relevant for your audience

The first step in choosing digital communication tools to enhance the customer experience is defining what is relevant for your audience. This means understanding who your audience is, what their needs are, and what channels they prefer to communicate through. After you’ve sufficiently answered these questions, find a solution that helps you effectively manage the incoming (and outcoming) messages in an unified workspace.

For instance, if your audience consists of millennials, they may prefer to communicate through social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook. 

On the other hand, if your audience is mostly comprised of older individuals, they may prefer email or phone calls. By understanding your audience, you can choose the right customer communication tools that cater to their preferences.

Regardless of your target group, you should look for tools that simplify the processes that go into interacting with your customers. 

2. Evaluate your ability to be consistent throughout the customer journey

Consistency is key when it comes to producing an amazing customer experience. This means ensuring that your customer communication tools work together seamlessly and providing a steady journey across all touchpoints.

For instance, if you use chatbots for customer service, make sure that they’re integrated with your knowledge base and CRM system so that customer data is consistent across all platforms. It’s also useful to connect your bots with your help desk solution, thereby eliminating silos throughout the customer journey.

3. Consider the personalization possibilities 

According to our Customer Service Trends Report 2023, 82% of support leaders say that customer expectations for personalized support have grown over the last 12 months. However, over half of the teams surveyed (54%) still lack the tools they need to actually provide the tailored assistance customers are looking for at scale.⁴

Therefore, it’s crucial that you consider choosing customer communication tools that allow for personalization by automatically adding your customer's name, company, fallbacks and other variables to each message.

4. Evaluate your integration needs

Picture this: a seamless process that consolidates all customer interactions into a single platform, eliminating the need for support reps to toggle between tools to address requests coming in from various channels.

The goal? Optimization, with a clear vision of providing a genuine omnichannel experience. Imagine a scenario where a customer initiates contact via email and later switches to WhatsApp to discuss the same issue. Thanks to the integration capabilities offered by the top digital communications tools, support reps can effortlessly maintain context without missing a beat.

These tools can also leverage existing customer data to produce more detailed, engaging communication. They’re capable of crafting personalized proactive messages tailored to the customer's plan, usage patterns, and other important characteristics. 

Achieving this level of sophistication in your communication requires seamless integration, which makes all this valuable information readily accessible within a single, centralized communication tool. In essence, integration becomes the linchpin for a more streamlined, responsive, and personalized customer experience, and that's what you should be looking for in a customer communication tool.

Companies that communicate effectively with their customers

As a comprehensive solution, Intercom unifies help desk, proactive support, and live chat within a single, powerful platform. Businesses that harness our integrated capabilities elevate their customer service experience.

These success stories spotlight the transformative impact of a unified approach, showcasing how Intercom's cutting-edge features empower organizations to connect, support, and thrive.

1. Amplitude

Based in California, Amplitude is a product intelligence platform that provides digital product tools that help teams run and grow their businesses.

Before adopting Intercom, Amplitude’s marketing team utilized one email solution, while the support staff used a different tool for live chat. To streamline its teams’ respective processes and enhance customer engagement, Amplitude sought a unified platform that could improve efficiency, enable interactive experiences, and effectively connect with customers across various channels.

Amplitude began using Intercom to power customer success messaging. Since first implementing the platform, it’s expanded its use of Intercom across a number of teams, leveraging it to engage with customers throughout the entire lifecycle.

By combining Intercom’s in-product messaging capabilities with Amplitude's rich user behavioral data, the team can reach customers in the right place, and with the right message, to drive action.

Results include:

• $1 million saved thanks to automation

• 11% lift in product activation

• 25–30% higher engagement rates

2. Motosumo

Founded in Denmark, Motosumo is a health and wellness company that offers interactive, community-based, and instructor-driven workouts that its members can enjoy anywhere.

Motosumo encountered difficulties in handling customer conversations before adopting Intercom for communication purposes. The absence of a support conversation management platform resulted in time-consuming manual assignment of interactions to team members.

To enhance operational efficiency and the customer experience, Motosumo sought a unified communication platform that could seamlessly integrate with their existing tech stack.

The company successfully leveraged Intercom for support and engagement, connecting all core customer communication tools and enabling multiple teams to operate from a single platform.

By managing support conversations through our Inbox solution, Motosumo’s team enhanced collaboration, efficiently tracked customer interactions and history, and delivered quicker resolutions.

Additionally, they used our outbound messaging features to connect with customers on their preferred platforms, driving heightened engagement across various channels.

Results include:

• 93% CSAT

• Up to 50% open rate on emails triggered based on user action

• 200% increase in trial-to-paid conversion using Series

Meet Intercom, your customer communication hub

As this article has hopefully illustrated, customer communication tools are increasingly becoming one of the chief cornerstones of a great experience. Whether it’s to resolve a specific query, recover a request for assistance made in the past, or anticipate needs from your audience, these platforms are essential for the efficient functioning of your business.

The good news is that you don't have to pile up thousands of tools to achieve your communication goals. With our help desk solution, you can get more done, faster.

If you want to resolve complex issues quickly with tickets optimized for team collaboration and real-time customer updates, start a free trial or ask for a demo. We’ll be glad to show you how our top-notch tools can revolutionize the way your company communicates. 

Sources

1 Statista, Global customer satisfaction rate with live chat usage from 2015 to 2022.

2 Intercom, The State of AI in Customer Service. We commissioned an independent market research firm to survey a random sample of 1,013 global support leaders and practitioners. The margin of error for this study is +/- 3.7% at the 95% confidence level.

3 Intercom, Customer Service Trends Report 2023. We asked 1,700+ customer support teams across the world how they’re meeting the challenges and opportunities of 2023.