Business Messenger for Multichannel Customer Service

January 27, 2023

In today’s post, we are focusing on a key feature of our new Business Messenger: the ability to manage multiple channels in one dashboard and respond in the channel the customer used to contact you.

Customer Service Confusion

How many ways can your customers communicate with your beauty/wellness/fitness business? Telephone? Text? Chatbot? Email? Interactive voice response? Social media? For many business owners, managing multiple channels has become a full-time job.

It wasn’t meant to be this way. Each platform was supposed to make things easier. In practice, however, the opposite is the case. Two-way SMS, website chatbot and automated phone support systems can make customer service extremely complicated.

Customer Communications Don’t Exist in a Vacuum

It’s not just the communications platforms you have to deal with. Booking and payment systems that are (hopefully) integrated add to the complexity. If your business allows employees or contractors to handle their own scheduling or take their own payments, you have to add that to the mix.

Scaling Multichannel Customer Service is a Heavy Lift

Scaling your business requires scaling your processes. But that’s easier said than done when it comes to your customer service ecosystem. In fact, adding a second location can make customer service exponentially more difficult. You may start using a centrally-managed contact center in an attempt to streamline customer support. Unfortunately, many have discovered that the call center becomes another wild horse to wrangle. This gives beauty/wellness/fitness teams even less time to do what they love – actually serving their clients.

TrueLark Business Messenger is the Customer Service Solution

We have the solution to managing multichannel customer service. TrueLark AI-powered Virtual Receptionist with our new Business Messenger.

Before we discuss Business Messenger, let’s review our Virtual Receptionist, because both components are essential for mastering multichannel customer service.

The first thing to understand is that our Virtual Receptionist has the most powerful AI in the industry. It excels on every level:

Breadth of function – our solution handles even complicated customer requests like multi-guest, multi-service and multi-location appointments.
Natural language – our AI has been trained on over a million words and phrases and it never interacts like a mindless bot.
Level of automation – our solution fully resolves up to 80% of calls without staff intervention.
Integrations – no other platform is as deeply integrated with booking, payment and communications applications.
Customization – we configure our solution for unique business requirements in the beauty/wellness/fitness industry.
Continual optimization – our specialists monitor your system and when it encounters a problem that requires staff intervention, they train it to solve the issue on its own.

Level-Up Your Customer Service

Business Messenger is an add-on to our Virtual Receptionist. It builds on a solid foundation to achieve comprehensive omnichannel customer service. TrueLark Business Messenger:

Consolidation: Allows you to follow up with a customer directly from your TrueLark account using the same channel from which the customer contacted your business.
Prioritization: Provides a prioritized list of only the conversations that need follow-up (you can trust the AI to resolve the majority of conversations). Managing by exception is far more efficient than sorting through every single conversation.
Harmonizes AI and human processes: Allows you to step in quickly when necessary, resolve a single customer query and then hand the conversation back to the AI.
Deeply integrated: Supports any configuration of customer support architecture.

In this article, we focus on number one in the list above: the ability to follow up from one dashboard using the channel of choice.

The Beauty and Simplicity of a Single Dashboard

Imagine gathering all conversations into one dashboard. With a multichannel approach, you can see every conversation along with appointment history and other customer data. Instead of checking each channel separately and keeping a manual log of follow-ups, you can unify all channels. Plus – and this is key – you can respond from your TrueLark dashboard using your customer’s channel of choice.

Provide a Consistent Experience

Text them, call them or respond in your webchat. Business Messenger makes fast, personalized, and accurate communication a reality for every customer touchpoint. This is critical for consistent customer satisfaction and a seamless experience. Responding quickly to a guest using the same channel (as opposed to switching to a different channel) is essential for customer engagement. It also prevents the confusion resulting from multiple phone numbers or email addresses. To provide first-class multichannel support, the tech should be invisible, not a barrier to overcome before getting to the real issue.

Customers expect technology to always work (and are unlikely to take note of new technology unless it malfunctions or interrupts the seamless, friendly experience). (PwC 2018)

Respect Your Client’s Time

A prompt response in their preferred channel shows your guest that you value their time and are actively working to address their needs. Your response won’t be delayed because you have to segment follow-ups by channel or log into a different dashboard. And, importantly, you won’t force them to switch the communication channel to accommodate your system’s limitations.

Prevent Confusion

A unified dashboard helps to avoid miscommunication that can occur when a customer is forced to switch channels. Prompt, personalized communication can set your business apart. After all, you want your core services to define your business – and poor customer communication can detract from that. In worst cases, a booking or payment hassle can drive a customer to your competitor. Frictionless omnichannel customer support lets your core services shine. This is how you drive customer loyalty and customer retention.

Baseline Customer Expectations Have Risen

Rising customer expectations and the ubiquity of digital customer interaction underscore the need for improved service delivery.

“Digital adoption has been a dominant lifestyle force over the past decade, accelerating in importance in the past 2 to 3 years. [In 2023] The CX scales will tip, with more than 80 percent of customers starting their journeys through digital channels rather than in-person interaction.” (Cooper B. 2022, as cited in Swinscoe A,)

Business Messenger empowers you to bring digital omnichannel customer service to the same level as in-person interactions. Furthermore, it can help you improve in-person service because you can rely on TrueLark AI to capably automate up to 80% of digital interactions.

Finally, an Affordable Solution

As many small business owners have discovered, AI-led multichannel support software has thus far been too expensive. TrueLark fills this critical need for local beauty/wellness/fitness businesses. Our AI is as powerful as million-dollar enterprise-level solutions – but priced for the small business budget. Now, local businesses can provide a customer experience on par with companies ten times their size. And when you combine state of the art tech with the personalized service that only a local business can provide – it can surpass the customer experience of a national or global brand. Give your clients the best of both worlds. This can help you prosper regardless of an uncertain economic climate.

In Conclusion

This article is the second in a 5-part series on TrueLark Business Messenger. As explained above, unifying channels into one dashboard and being able to respond in the client’s support channel of choice is just one of Business Messenger’s superpowers. For an introduction and overview, see Consolidate, Elevate and Transform Customer Communications. Check back next week for the third article: Does Your AI Prioritize Follow-Up Calls? (TrueLark Business Messenger Does.)

Would you like to see Business Messenger in action? Schedule your demo today.

Works Cited