Need to do better with your WordPress Client Communication?
WordPress continues to be the most popular content management system available, with around one third of the total market. Since its launch in 2003, WordPress has dramatically grown in popularity, and rightfully so. The functionality and customization sets it apart from the competition, making it a top choice for anyone looking to manage a website.
Given its popularity and usability, it’s no surprise that many successful businesses and organizations use WordPress for their websites. This is attested to by the fact that many of the largest brands in the world use WordPress, including Facebook, Microsoft and Sony.
While WordPress is certainly a great tool for you if you’re looking to grow your business, it’s not enough to simply have a nice website. In order to get the most of your business’s website you need to make sure that you integrate a strong element of client communication.
Luckily, WordPress provides you with a high level of customization, meaning you can build the client communication structure that works best for you. Creating the right plan, choosing the right plugins, and investing in the right team communication tool can ensure that your website helps you to engage clients and build their loyalty.
Read on to discover more about why good client communication is important, and how to build it into your WordPress website and team infrastructure.
Why Does Good Communication Matter?
First of all, not everyone who comes to your website is a client. Setting up a way to engage with your site’s visitors can help you in the client conversion process, turning passing visitors into dedicated clients. If a website visitor feels engaged, for example through an interaction via a chat plugin, they will be more likely to become a customer.
Setting up good communication channels on your website can also help to improve your customer service. When clients have an issue or inquiry, it’s natural that the first thing they do is open your website for information on how to contact your business. Giving them a straight-forward way to connect with you will allow you to more effectively solve their issues.
If, on the other hand, it’s difficult for them to determine how best to contact you, and they are left to dig through your website looking for the right information, they may very well take their business elsewhere. That’s why creating clear communication channels is so crucial for your business.
Efficient client communication can also brings a range of benefits to your business. These include, but aren’t limited to:
- Increased loyalty
- Increased sales
- Higher likelihood of promoting your business
- More trust in your company
- Higher overall satisfaction
96% of people state that good customer service is an important factor in their choice of loyalty to a brand. Good customer service is also seen as the most important factor impacting trust levels in companies. By improving your websites communication you’ll be going a long way to improving customer service and reaping a wide range of benefits.
Now that it’s clear how successfully managing your client communication is important, it’s time to look into the best ways of doing so.
Engaging with Clients
Simply put, through your WordPress website you should make your clients (or potential clients) feel that they matter and that you want to start a conversation with them. Giving them different options for getting in touch with you and your team will help send this message.
Remember, people’s communication preferences are different. While some clients may love the idea of chatting directly with someone through your website, others may prefer to send off a quick note for future follow up. Giving your clients the choice will help guarantee that they are engaging with you and sharing important issues and information.
Below are the main elements for communicating with your clients through your website. You’ll also find some of the most popular WordPress plugin options to help you make the best choice.
Live Chat Plugins
The best client communication happens in real time, which means adding a Live Chat Plugin to your WordPress website should be a key element to your overall communication infrastructure. Live Chat Plugins allow your clients to easily enter into a conversation with a team member, leading to more quickly solving inquiries than through email.
Keep in mind that there is a growing chatbot field that allows you to utilize AI to engage with customers when a live team member is not available. Chatbots can also help sort customer inquiries to the right person, saving your team time.
Not all Live Chat Plugins support chatbots, so if this is a feature you are interested make sure to research which plugins support it. A note of caution, however, that some customers can easily detect chatbots and could be turned off by them. This may mean that it’s best for your business to wait until the AI has developed further and can provide a seamless experience.
WordPress has a wide range of options when it comes to Live Chat. Below are some of the more popular ones:
- WP Live Chat Support– A free plugin that allows you to connect directly with your site visitors and customers. This plugin allows you to chat either directly (i.e.- without being routed through a 3rd party), or through a hosted server. The free direct chat option is a good choice if you have a small business and don’t expect too much heavy traffic on your website.
- LiveChat– A feature rich paid plugin designed to work with all WordPress site builders. LiveChat allows you to engage customers as they enter your site with a chat box prompting them to connect. LiveChat also provides several apps for your customer service team members to engage with customers, including Windows, Mac, iOs and Android.
- JivoChat– A chat plugin focusing on Omnichannel customer engagement. This allows you to channel all of your different modes of communication through the app, including email, Facebook, phone and live chat. This is a good option if you’re looking for simplicity and consistency in your different communication channels.
- Tidio Live Chat– A plugin that allows you to chat live with customers or use chatbots. Tidio Live Chat stands out with its simple installation, meaning you can get it up and running in very little time. Tidio Live Chat is a good option if you’re looking for a quick install.
These are just a few of the numerous options available. Given the open source nature of WordPress there is an ever-growing amount of plugins available, varying in features and functionality. This means it’s just a matter of figuring out what would work best for you and your team at this point in your business’s growth.
Do you want something free and easy to use to start off with? Or are you ready to invest in a plugin with more features better suited to larger businesses? Once you answer these questions, the choice should be easier.
Contact Form Plugins
It may be unrealistic to provide 24/7 live chat with your clients given the size of your team and budget for customer support, so make sure you give clients other options for getting in touch. Using a Contact Form Plugin is one of the best ways to allow your website visitors and customers to contact you even when a customer service team member isn’t available.
You may want to also be able to gather information from your clients in a more standardized way through surveys and other short forms. Contact Form Plugins can help you with all of this. As with other plugins, the options for contact forms are numerous. Below are a few of the most popular representing the different range of the plugin options:
- WPForms- A plugin focused on simplifying the form creation process with its ‘Drag and Drop’ interface. WPForms provides an easy to navigate user experience and plenty of templates to choose from, making it a good choice if you are looking for a plugin that doesn’t require a high level of technical skill to use.
- Ninja Forms- Another plugin focused on smooth customer experience and a range of features. Ninja Forms comes in free and paid versions, and provides a high level of customizability. With an unlimited amount of forms in the free version, it’s a good choice if you’re looking to start with a plugin that you can upgrade later on.
- HappyForms– A relatively new plugin based on the extensive experience of the Theme Foundry. HappyForms is another user-friendly option that offers free and paid versions. HappyForms is also relatively light on code, meaning it runs smoothly and is a good choice if you’re looking for a simple experience.
In order to make the most of your plugin, keep contact forms simple and non-intimidating. If a client needs to enter too much personal information they may be turned off by your contact form, so limit the fields to the essential information: name, email, subject and message.
Resolving Client Problems
The first step to improving communication, described above, is making it easy and intuitive for clients to reach out to your business. This will provide you with a clear channel for getting client input, but in order to solve their issues, you’ll also need to focus on your team’s internal communication.
Providing good customer service is a team effort, often involving colleagues from across several teams and departments. That’s why an internal communication tool is essential to provide the right communication infrastructure. Using a team team communication tool, for example, can help you to coordinate your team’s collaboration efforts and make sure that they are promptly resolving customer service issues.
With an Enterprise Instant Messenger such as Brosix IM you can manage your team’s internal communication by creating, for example, specific chat rooms or communication channels for your customer service and developer teams to more easily collaborate. This can allow your teams to easily engage on customer inquiries and issues.
This team communication tool also comes with its own Live Chat feature, allowing you to integrate your customer and team communication for more efficiency. Utilizing a feature such as Screen Sharing with remote control can also provide your team with a powerful tool to solve client issues directly when necessary.
The combination of successfully managing client communication and creating efficient internal team communication is a guaranteed formula for success. Both branches of your dual communication efforts support each other and help to give your business an efficient overall client engagement environment.
Final Thoughts
Effective client communication is one of the most important tools you have in your business. If done right, you can build trust and loyalty, increase the chances that your customers will promote your business to others, and, ultimately, increase sales.
Providing the right website and team communication infrastructure can help you in this process by allowing you to more easily solicit client input, and more effectively answer any inquiries or solve any issues clients may have. With your WordPress website, you can choose the communication tools you need from a wide range of plugins providing different types of user experience.
The plugins themselves won’t, of course, instantly provide you with better client communication. Rather, they are tools that your team can employ to ease the process, but how your team members communicate among themselves is just important. Take the time to train your team in customer service, and provide them with the right tools to better collaborate, and you will certainly reap the rewards of effective client communication!
Feel free to respond with some of your own tips and tools for effectively engaging with clients!