Complete guide to conversational messaging in 2024

Overview

75% of modern consumers report that they consider fast response times as the most important aspect of the customer experience (CX). Thus, real-time messaging channels such as live chat and SMS have overtaken email and other traditional communication methods as the preferred means of interaction for the majority of today’s customers. Conversational messaging should serve as a central component of any organizations’ customer support, marketing, and sales initiatives, as it promotes real-time responses, enhanced personalization, and improved overall efficiency.

Today, we’ll take an in-depth look at what conversational messaging is, the benefits that it can offer to your organization, and some best practices you can employ to maximize its potential.

What is conversational messaging?

Conversational messaging is an engagement approach that prioritizes real-time interactions between businesses and customers using text-based platforms. Unlike more antiquated forms of communication, conversational messaging is characterized by its immediacy and informality.

At its core, this type of messaging promotes enhanced two-way communication, allowing both parties involved to actively participate in the exchange of information. This means that not only can messages be sent from the sender to the receiver, but responses can be promptly received, creating a continuous flow of dialogue. These two-way interactions invite greater interactivity, improving engagement levels and the overall user experience (UX).

Benefits of conversational messaging

The immediacy and personalization capacity offered through conversational messaging allows brands to enhance customer satisfaction in a manner that’s difficult to achieve through traditional communication methods. These characteristics aim to strengthen engagement efforts, build relationships, and enhance operational efficiency, thus empowering employees and promoting a better CX for end-users.

Improved customer engagement

Conversational messaging can strengthen customer engagement initiatives through its immediacy and accessibility. By leveraging these solutions, businesses can provide instant support, ensuring that customer inquiries are addressed promptly. This rapid responsiveness instills confidence in a brand, as it shows consumers that their needs are being prioritized.

Furthermore, conversational messaging facilitates ongoing relationship-building beyond just transactional interactions. By regularly engaging in real-time conversations with individuals, companies can gather feedback, address concerns, and proactively engage with their audience. This continuous dialogue allows organizations to better understand their customers' evolving needs, enabling them to adapt their offerings and outreach strategies accordingly. 

Personalized service

AI-driven technology in conversational messaging can analyze user data, such as past interactions and purchase history, to deliver highly relevant responses to customer queries. By simulating human-like communication, AI-based tools can provide recommendations and assistance in a manner that’s tailored to each individual’s needs.

Conversational approaches also enable companies to initiate proactive interactions with customers based on their preferences. By leveraging data analytics and automation, businesses can send personalized messages at strategic moments in the customer journey, such as post-purchase or when an individual shows interest in a particular offering.

Build relationships

Organizations are empowered to let their brand personality shine through conversational messaging, helping to forge emotional connections with their customers. By infusing their communication with a distinctive tone and voice, companies can humanize their interactions and cultivate a sense of belonging among their audience. Whether it's through witty banter or empathetic responses, businesses often use conversational messaging to convey their brand identity and build a sense of community with their customers.

Moreover, conversational messaging allows companies to demonstrate their commitment to customer success by providing ongoing support and guidance. Offering proactive assistance, educational resources, and personalized recommendations in real-time allow individuals to make informed decisions and achieve their goals.

Better communication

Active listening and thoughtful engagement are often enhanced through the use of conversational messaging, as it provides a structured framework for B2C interactions. Unlike face-to-face conversations or phone calls, where interruptions can be common, conversational platforms allow individuals to review messages at their own pace, ensuring that each point is thoroughly addressed. 

Additionally, the asynchronous nature of conversational messaging enables participants to formulate in-depth responses, gather additional information, or consult with others, resulting in more well-rounded discussions. 

Reduced ticket volume

Conversational messaging promotes preemptive issue resolution, which serves to reduce the need for support tickets. Through proactive outreach, businesses can address potential issues before they arise, preemptively providing customers with relevant information or solutions. By keeping individuals informed throughout their journey, companies can prevent potential problems from escalating, minimizing the overall volume of inquiries and improving customer service efficiency.

Improved overall efficiency

By consolidating various communication channels into a single platform, organizations can streamline communication workflows and reduce the complexity of managing multiple channels. This unified approach not only saves time and resources, but also verifies that all relevant communications are easily accessible.

Conversational messaging enables businesses to automate routine processes as well, creating availability for more strategic initiatives. Through the use of chatbots and AI-powered assistants, businesses can automate routine interactions, data entry, and appointment scheduling, empowering employees to focus on activities that require human judgment and creativity.

Conversational messaging best practices 

In order to maximize the potential of your conversational messaging approach, it’s important to understand how to optimize it to best suit your unique organizational needs. For instance, if you’re experiencing difficulties building meaningful relationships with individuals, you may want to focus on creating more robust customer profiles to provide live agents and chatbots with more information to pull from.

Offer multi channel support

Utilizing several channels for conversational messaging enables companies to diversify their communication strategies and maximize their reach. Each channel offers unique capabilities that can be leveraged to deliver different types of messaging. For example, while live chat may be ideal for engaging with individuals in real-time, social media can be better suited for publicly interacting with users and possibly attracting new customers.

Moreover, relying on a single channel for customer engagement leaves organizations vulnerable to potential disruptions, such as message deliverability issues or changes in social media algorithms. By diversifying their communication methods, businesses can maintain consistent communication with their audience, even if one channel is down.

Leverage personalization 

Dynamic content generation, where messages are crafted based on user input or real-time data, is often leveraged to drive personalization efforts. For instance, companies can use interactive chatbots to collect user preferences and generate responses based on that information. This approach also enables organizations to adapt their messaging to changing circumstances, ensuring that communication remains relevant over time.

Additionally, conversational interfaces that simulate human-like interactions can tailor communication to the unique preferences of each individual. By using natural language processing (NLP), businesses can create chatbots and virtual assistants that respond to user queries in a conversational manner. These tools can personalize responses based on context and past interactions, providing a more engaging customer experience.

Be smart with automation

Automation is often employed to contextualize messaging at scale, allowing companies to deliver targeted messages to individual users. Through data analytics and segmentation, brands can automate the delivery of personalized content based on a variety of factors.

AI-powered tools can be used to optimize workflows as well. By implementing automation rules, organizations can expedite the routing of inquiries to the appropriate departments, ensuring that each user receives a timely and relevant response.

Align messaging with brand tone

It’s paramount that companies establish clear brand guidelines that outline the tone and voice they want to convey in their messaging. Whether it's formal, casual, or humorous, defining a consistent, distinct tone ensures that all communication aligns with a brand's values and personality. 

That being said, some businesses may wish to adapt their brand tone to different customer segments. For example, while their overall voice may be friendly and approachable, brands can still adjust their tone to suit the expectations of a more formal audience or communication channel.

Gather feedback

Organizations often incorporate feedback prompts directly into the conversation flow, seamlessly integrating them into ongoing interactions. For example, companies can use chatbots to request feedback at key touchpoints, such as after completing a transaction or interacting with customer support. By soliciting feedback within a natural conversation, businesses capture valuable insights while the user's experience is still fresh in their mind.

Also, rather than relying on traditional survey methods, organizations can use conversational interfaces to create more interactive feedback experiences. For instance, they can send users a series of prompts via messaging apps, allowing individuals to respond with options such as buttons, emojis, or text inputs.

Pick the right messaging platforms for your business

First and foremost, it's essential to understand your customers’ preferences when determining which channels to employ as part of your conversational approach. If your audience consists primarily of younger demographics, messaging apps like WhatsApp or Snapchat may be most effective, while older demographics might prefer SMS.

Next, consider your communication objectives and the capabilities offered by different platforms. Evaluate whether they support chatbots, multimedia messaging, or integration with other business tools. You may also wish to consider factors such as messaging volume, scalability, and security requirements to ensure that potential platforms can accommodate your organization's growth trajectory.

Implementing conversational messaging

To start, companies should define clear objectives for their conversational messaging efforts, such as improving customer service, increasing engagement, or driving sales. By establishing specific goals, businesses can align their messaging tactics with overarching goals, while also measuring the effectiveness of their strategies over time. Once this has been achieved, organizations will need to identify the most appropriate messaging platforms to support their approach. This involves understanding their target audience's habits, as well as evaluating the features provided by different platforms. Whether it's deploying chatbots on messaging apps, integrating live chat into their website, or using SMS for customer notifications, brands should utilize the channels that provide the necessary functionality to meet their requirements. Finally, it’s paramount for businesses to generate engaging content that resonates with their target audience. This might involve designing interactive experiences or leveraging personalization to tailor messaging to individual preferences. Responsiveness is also a vital component of messaging efforts; 90% of customers report that an immediate response is essential or very important, while 85% desire proactive communication.

Begin implementing conversational messaging into your business with Freshworks!

Freshworks Customer Service Software serves as a full-feature messaging software that empowers brands to communicate with customers on their websites, mobile apps, social media, and more. Freshchat offers useful features like 24/7 chatbots, web widgets, and polyglot capabilities, allowing organizations to provide around-the-clock engagement on any digital channel and from wherever customers may be. Additional tools such as IntelliAssign and live translate verify that conversations are always directed to the most appropriate agent, while allowing them to respond effectively no matter which language an individual prefers to use.

Satisfied client Pearl R. sums up Freschat’s intuitive interface and robust insights best, saying, “The interface is so simple that even agents with no experience using chat support tools can use it. It's very easy to use, it's fast, and all information about the customer is there. It lets you know which page the customer is chatting from, the product they are interested in, their location, and even the device they are using which is very important especially when handling tech-related issues. Their customer support is very helpful, too!”