There is no denying that our lives have drastically changed since the pandemic. Employees who earlier were having trouble adjusting to working remotely, have now accepted it as a part of their lifestyle. A lot has changed with the remote working lifestyle – from the way work is done to the way things are communicated.
With the need of the hour, people have moved from communicating in-person to working on a digital platform. Unfortunately, despite the various benefits of the work-from-home culture, it has also led to the creation of some imbalance between one’s personal and professional lives. While people battle to create harmony and balance between both, the other major drawback of working remotely, namely the drastic decline in human interaction takes a lead. The major reason for the reduction in human touch is the digitalization of communication across touchpoints. The human touch might have declined but the communication received has not, as a matter of fact, they have skyrocketed like never before throughout digital platforms.
Making Messaging More Effective – Empathy and Personalization
Being flooded with several messages on daily basis has made it difficult for people to focus on every message, and they respond only to the ones they feel some connection with. The major outcome of any digital communication platform is the way communication is perceived by the receiver. There can be a huge discrepancy in the way the communication is intended and perceived.
A major concern of organizations since the onset of digital transformation has been the sense of disillusionment that customers face when greeted by a pre-recorded message or chatbot. With the latest developments in customer communication management, reducing the displeasure of customers is gradually becoming easier.
In order to bridge this gap, innovators have made digital platforms capable of sympathizing, reacting to emotions, and personalizing communication.
In the midst of this, empathy emerges as a key factor to win the attention of people as it means the communicator is stepping in their shoes and understanding the situation. It generates a sense of humanness in communication.
Humanizing communication and emulating a sense of empathy allows customers to feel like the organization that they are investing their trust in, truly understands and cares about them, their grievances, and providing the best possible customer service.
Communication Management – How do organizations cope?
Communication may look just like a message or text, but it has a lot of power. It can make or break a brand image and an organization’s relationship with its customers. Continuing the conversation with customers has become an important aspect of managing and sustaining a relationship with them. There has been a huge shift and acceptance in the digital space which has resulted in an increase in the number of digital communication platforms and touchpoints. It has been a task for organizations to address and manage the increasing digital platforms along with the existing traditional platforms. Organizations can no longer treat managing communication across touchpoints as an optional process, as it can have a major impact on the customer’s overall relationship and its lifecycle. Apart from the communication being in channel-friendly & appropriate formats, it is important to unify and personalize the message & content for an effective and impactful result.
Customer Communication Management – The tech behind the scenes
The newest trend in customer communication management is the ability of a platform to do behavioral conditioning and empathize with the receiver throughout the customer lifecycle. The communication cycle processes have seen a lot of advancement in the digital communication space due to the various emerging technologies such as Machine Learning (ML), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Natural Language Processing (NLP), and Robotic Process Automation (RPA).
These technologies have helped organizations to streamline various communication cycle processes. While machine learning helps to predict and identify patterns, RPA automates redundant processes so that less time is spent on monotonous and manual work. Similarly, artificial intelligence helps to provide a human touch to the communication or content generated. It understands human behaviour and personalizes communication accordingly.
Natural language processing, a subset of artificial intelligence, equips the platform or machine with the ability to process languages, speech, and text. This helps organizations to understand the customer and create more empathetic, interactive communication. Interacting with bots is a common phenomenon today, as every L1-queries organization has implemented bots as the first point-of-contact for customers. But even while communicating with bots, customers expect that the bot should understand their tone and communicate with them in a more humane way and it should not feel like they are talking to a robot. And thus, organizations are spending humongous amounts to incorporate more human-sounding bots, which can empathize with customers, apart from personalizing communication.
To summarize,
Emerging technology has helped organizations create more dynamic communication, as incorporating empathy is not just a need of the hour but also a step towards disrupting the customer experience. AI, ML, NLP, and RPA have brought personalized messaging and communication management to a pivotal point, but there is advancement yet to come. This advancement is bound to increase customer satisfaction by incorporating the processing of emotions and giving customer communication a more human touch.
