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Cultivating Your E-Experience: Responding to Consumer Communications

Personal, timely, and attentive responsiveness to consumer communications is a key component to consumers' e-experience.

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Updated:

September 6, 2023

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Effectively responding to online consumer communications is imperative for cultivating a positive consumer experience. Effective response communications start with a solid understanding of the types of needs customers have and communication and customer types. These topics are covered in Cultivating Your E-Experience: Understanding Aspects of Customer Communications. Continuing from there, understanding communication tools, preferences, and expectations and then developing a comprehensive response plan will position you to ensure that the online customer communication experience you provide meets your expectations.

Tools, Preferences, and Expectations

Research has found that consumers are less likely to purchase from businesses that don't answer questions or engage with the public on social media and that they are more likely to buy from businesses they can reach on social media. Social media is just one communication tool that consumers have at their disposal. Other tools available for online communication and providing customer care include:

email
social media
live chat
online portals
online forms
text/SMS
messenger apps
online review sites.

For the online consumer, all of these options are at their fingertips and it is their expectations for customer care and their preferred method(s) that matter most – not yours. As seen in the figure below, the percentage of consumers who use and prefer email for communicating with businesses is far greater than that for each of the other communication tools shown. And while most consumers will use the other tools shown, their preference for using them is far lower.

Chart showing Percentage of customers who use and prefer different online tools for communicating with businesses — Data Source: Salesforce, State of the Connected Consumer 2018.

You should, however, keep in mind that communication tool use and preference will vary with demographic characteristics such as age, education, income, or other factors. For instance, a majority (52%) of Millennials/Gen Z prefer communicating with businesses via social media while only 14% of Baby Boomers and 29% of Gen Xers share the same preference (Salesforce).

Each communication tool carries with it an expectation regarding responsiveness that you need to be aware of, however, in general, the quicker you respond, the more favorably you will be viewed. Where the choice might once have been between a written letter that would requires days, if not months, for a response, or a phone call where if you were lucky to get the correct person on the other end when you called, online customer care channels bring with them an expectation of immediacy that must be recognized.

For consumers who email a business, half (50%) expect a response within 24 hours (Anonymous). A quicker response is required on social media where 80% expect a response with 24 hours and 42% expect a response within one hour (Amaresan). Social media tools should be viewed individually as well since how they function varies greatly across platforms. A majority of Facebook users (85%), for example, expect a response within six hours while 64% of Twitter users expect a response within one hour (Amaresan). Live chat, as implied by the name, carries the quickest response time expectation of under one minute (Amaresan).

If a consumer has a question and contacts you but doesn't hear back for several days, what's the likelihood that they've moved on – perhaps gone to another business that either had that information readily accessible or quickly responded?

Consumers' experiences communicating with other businesses develop their expectations for future communications. Large companies such as chain restaurants and airlines have dedicated customer service and social media departments monitoring and responding to customer service comments and complaints. Not only is it important to understand the implied response times for each tool, it's important to know your audience. For instance, are your customers familiar with the demands of farming, particularly within busy periods? If not, are your response timeframes clearly visible online or should you consider adjusting someone's work responsibilities to ensure timely communications?

For example, Facebook provides users with information on how quickly businesses respond to private messages (not comments on page posts). If you receive private Facebook messages, it will pay to ensure that you have resources in place to quickly respond – for example, a mobile device with notifications turned on or scheduled times in your day to check your social media.

Response Planning: Develop A Customer Service Framework

With an understanding of expectations regarding response times and what the impact of not responding to customers could be, let's turn to the development of a customer response plan. Below are some questions to guide you in your development of a response plan. Your specific business and past experiences may present you with additional questions and answers that you want to build into your plan.

Select Response Planning Questions

Who will respond? What is the chain of command?
How quickly will you respond?
What will you respond to?
What documentation is necessary? Will you require receipts, return of product, etc?
Is there a limit to what will you do, or offer, to resolve complaints?
When will you take a conversation offline?

With answers to these questions in mind, you can prepare yourself for responding to customers using the following five-step process.

A Response Process

Listen. Make sure you understand the type of interaction and need of the customer. With customer questions, take the time to understand their questions which may require you to try to learn where and how they are getting their information. This will enable you to assess their needs – rational, emotional, or social – and most effectively address any concerns that they have and earn their trust.
Acknowledge. It's always best practice to acknowledge a customer communication. For compliments, a simple acknowledgment along the lines of "thank you for the kind note" is all that is needed. This lets the sender know that you received and appreciate their message. When confronted with a question or complaint where a response will require you to do some work (perhaps you need to ask others for information) or more time than you have at hand, take a moment to quickly let the sender know that you've received their message and will be in touch. When you do this, provide a time frame in which you know you will be able to respond.
Ask Questions. If a question or complaint is unclear or requires more information or details, don't be afraid to ask follow-up questions. Think about how in-person conversations take place – there's a dialogue between the people involved. If the additional information or details will help you to provide an answer or solve their problem, let the customer know. Don't use questioning as a stall tactic though.
Respond. Make sure you actually respond to the individual that sent the compliment, question, or complaint. This may seem obvious, but sometimes things get pushed off or forgotten about. Make sure that your response completely answers the customer's question or addresses their complaint, using any additional information you may have asked for. Use an appropriate tone in your response communications. Judging tone in written online communications can sometimes be difficult but try following the lead of the customer to hit the right note. For instance, did they use capital letters to express frustration or anger? If so, using emojis in a response likely wouldn't be welcomed as it may appear that you are being dismissive of their complaint.
Follow Up. There will be instances where you will want to follow up with consumers. It may be that they had a unique question or criticism that requires time to pass before being able to determine if your response or solution met the customer's needs. Following up with sincere interest to whether the customer's issue was resolved satisfactorily demonstrates the value you have for your customers.

Dealing with Complainers

Not all communication will be positive and how you react and address any negativity is important – it may be a defining moment for your business. Having a well thought through response plan in place can ease some of the anxiety that you may experience when a complaint or attack is lobbed at you. A more detailed response process of responding to complainers includes three additional steps.

Step-back before responding
Respond to all criticisms
Thank the complainant for their feedback
Ask questions
Decide if conversation should be taken offline
Provide information
Apologize when necessary
Follow up after implementing a resolution

It is important to respond to all complaints, particularly when dealing with complaints posted on social media, as you recall from earlier that consumers are less likely to purchase from businesses that don't answer questions on social media. Sometimes, however, you will find it more productive to invite the other person to connect with you offline, perhaps by phone, to facilitate a more personal and detailed conversation to allow you to come to a resolution. The public nature of social media can be unnerving for dealing with complaints, but calm, professional, and suitable responses can win over both the complainant and other followers.

If you have family members or employees who are handling or managing your communication channels, ensure that you have provided guidance and trained them on the customer service and care framework that you have put in place. Employees should feel empowered to respond and care for customers. You may find it helpful to develop a flowchart – such as the example below – to guide yourself and employees through responding to different types of communications.

Answering people on social media flowchart — Source: SocialforthePeople.com

Summary

Personal, timely, and attentive responsiveness to consumer communications is a key component to consumers' e-experience. By understanding the online communication tools that consumers use and prefer and their expectations for responsiveness, you can develop a comprehensive response plan that will position you to ensure that the online customer communication experience you provide lives up to your in-person standards and expectations. As you work to cultivate the online experience you provide to consumers through your responses to their communications, keep these two points in mind.

Focus on online customer service communication as a competitive differentiator. One reason the buy local movement is popular is because consumers like to know the person(s) from whom they're buying. You can bring the same focus on relationships to your online interactions with consumers. When you're separated from individuals by a computer screen it's easy to put off replying until a more convenient time or to send short, clipped responses. However, by being personal and personable, you can build trusting relationships with your customers and followers that they will appreciate and value.

Define a process and framework for dealing with customers. How, and when, will you respond to requests? What's your strategy for dealing with complaints? Creating a response map may be useful, as you'll want to have a consistent response strategy for everything that comes your way, even praise. With some aspects of your response strategy, such as response time, it may make sense to make this known upfront to your customers with short notices on your website and social media pages, or through an automatic reply.