In cultivating business loyalty, customer service matters significantly to consumers. As many as 95% of consumers assert that it plays an integral role in which brands they engage with, and more than half have switched brands as a result of a negative interaction.

And while most people tend to associate customer service with verbal interactions, written communication is edging its way to the forefront as the preferred customer service medium. More than half of today’s consumers favor interacting with businesses via text messages versus other channels. Many customers also prefer and even expect to connect with businesses through online chat or email.

Clearly, effective customer communication is critical to success—yet many businesses still struggle to meet customers’ expectations in this area. And, some don’t prioritize it at all. Understanding the impact of positive customer interactions and improving business communication with customers can gain your company a critical competitive edge in today’s market.

The impact of positive customer interactions

Employing basic human decency and etiquette should be a given in any interaction. When interacting with customers, however, pleasant and satisfying conversations can create a ripple effect of positive outcomes for your customers, team members, and even the entire company. These benefits are summarized in the table below.

Perhaps most importantly, good customer communication humanizes your brand, allowing you to forge strong emotional connections with your customers. The strength of those ties is what ultimately determines how loyal your customers will be—and for how long.

It’s not enough, however, to merely meet your customers’ expectations. True success requires exceeding those expectations whenever possible—and recognizing that there is always room for improvement.

Five ways to fine-tune business communication with customers

When it comes to refining business communication with customers, it’s important to be meticulous. Continually striving for excellence is the key to providing the best possible customer experience on a consistent basis.

To ensure communication is always improving, provide regular training and tools to help your team:

1. Enhance first impressions

As many as 66% of consumers will not give a business a second chance after a negative first encounter, making those first few seconds of interaction critical for long-term success.

For in-person interactions, this necessitates dressing and conducting oneself appropriately. Over the phone, tone of voice registers before words and meaning sink in. For written communication, the clarity of your writing matters. Proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation are crucial to making a positive first impression, making an AI-based writing assistant especially helpful in this area.

2. Strike the right tone

Encouraging patience and respect in all customer interactions will increase customer satisfaction and help prevent unnecessary conflict. Moreover, cultivating a specific company-wide tone can shape how your company is publicly perceived—and what expectations new customers will bring to their first interaction with your business.

An automated tone detector can recognize the tone of written communication and provide suggestions, if necessary, for revision.

3. Facilitate consistency

Maintaining a consistent, positive tone improves the overall customer experience and can prevent many misunderstandings. Sharing the same information and processes across all channels, meanwhile, is vital for streamlining interactions and problem-solving. 

An internal style guide is invaluable for encouraging consistency across touchpoints. The easiest way to do this is by utilizing a writing assistant tool with a built-in style guide that can be customized to fit your business’ personality.

4.  Prioritize integrity

Team members engaging in one-on-one conversations with customers should be well-versed in how your products and services work, as well as how to troubleshoot common problems. Providing quick, accurate answers is vital to providing quality customer service. When in doubt, customer service representatives should respond with honesty and integrity, even if that means putting a customer on hold or asking to call back later once they collect the correct information.

In situations like these, when time is of the essence, having a written communications tool that provides suggestions in real time can help your team ensure they are conveying the customer’s requested information in the best way possible in a matter of seconds. 

5. Leave a lasting positive impression

A customer who remembers their last interaction with your business as delightful will associate your business with a positive experience, and will be more likely to return at a later date. Even those customers who do not return will be more likely to recommend your products or services to others than someone whose final interaction with your business was negative.

Tone detection and proofreading tools can play an important role in ensuring final interactions progress smoothly with a minimal margin for misunderstandings.

The value of investing in better business communication

Investing in a modern digital communications assistant tool is critical to implementing these business communication strategies in a timely fashion. A comprehensive solution like Grammarly Business combines a number of valuable functions, including grammar and spelling checks, suggestions for improving clarity and efficacy, tone analysis, and more. It even includes an internal style guide feature that will make it easy for your team to always remain aligned with your business’ identity.

All things considered, the more polished your business communications with customers are, the more encouraged they’ll be to continue doing business with you. 

Grammarly Business is an innovative communications assistant tool that offers a number of ways in which to make business communication with your customers more polished. To learn more and get Grammarly Business for your team, contact us today.