What is Voice Broadcasting?

Voice broadcasting refers to a mass communication technique that started in the 1990’s. Its purpose is to broadcast messages to hundreds or thousands of call recipients at once, using a centralized system and phone number.

The most common types of voice broadcasting messages involve pre-recorded audio or text-to-speech messages and offer the ability to personalize the message.

In some cases, once call recipients answer the phone, they can listen to the recorded message and interact by pressing keys on their numeric keypad, based on the options provided. The options might range from entering a number from the options provided to entering a sequence of numbers belonging to an ID. The system detects which key is pressed and is programmed to interact and play various messages accordingly.

Voice broadcast is widely used by businesses, as an easy and cost-effective way to broadcast important messages to customers, all at once.

The Benefits of Voice Broadcasting

So, now that you know what voice broadcasting is, let’s take a look at some ways voice broadcasting can benefit your business and help the bottom line:

Wide Reach

You can share your voice message with hundreds and thousands of customers all at once, at a fraction of the speed that human beings would take for the same activity. To add to this, through voice broadcasting you can extend your reach to the non-tech savvy and visually impaired and to those who can’t read due to illiteracy. Voice broadcasting is one of the oldest business-building techniques and a widely recognized medium. That is why it can appeal to many individuals.

Cost and time effective

If you had to make phone calls separately to thousands of customers on your database it would be very timely and expensive. This is where voice broadcasting comes in. The speed, scalability and potential reach of voice broadcast, make it a cost and time-effective solution. It is affordable and can grant you the results that would otherwise take a long time for employees to achieve. At the same time, as calls are made without agent involvement, agents have the time to focus on revenue-generating projects, helping them boost their productivity.

Flexibility

Voice broadcasting can also offer you advanced flexibility since you can place your recorded call according to the customer’s availability without affecting their schedule. And voice broadcast is as flexible for your business as it is for your customers. It gives you the flexibility to choose the way you want to interact with your customers. Messages are easily interchanged, recorded, or altered as required, so agents can send messages to the customers instead of calling. In addition, your business can also generate new messages and start getting them out within hours.

Ιmportant Insights

Voice broadcasting software can provide valuable real-time feedback and call reports. Some of the most important metrics you will be provided with are the number of people who answered your calls, time of call initiation call duration, and the input (numbers pressed on the keypad). Using this data, you can get clear explanations for under-performing campaigns in order to refine your messages and plan effectively.

Brand-building

Your goal is to build a consistent and strong brand. Voice consistency, tone, and message is crucial to that end. This can not be achieved with manual calls, but it can be achieved with voice broadcast. It can offer complete uniformity of your brand image, so you can rest assured each and every customer is getting the same information. By using a recognizable voice to communicate with your clients, you increase the possibilities of building stronger relationships with customers and increasing their trust.

Personal touch to your communication

In comparison to text-based communications like emails or SMS, voice broadcasting is certainly more personal. When people hear your voice, you can show a more personal side of your brand, further establishing that important connection that builds trust. In addition, voice broadcasting helps you personalize the message depending on the type of customer you want to cater to. For example, a new customer can get a different message, while a returning or loyal one might get a different one.

Understanding your audience

Understanding your customers is no easy task. Getting to know what they want, like, and need is vital to your growth. Through voice broadcasting you can easily gain this insight, by asking customers questions about your products, what they like about them and what improvements or additions they would be keen on seeing. This information will give you a deep understanding on their desires and needs so you can fulfill them and continue to solve their problems.

To sum up

Voice broadcasting might be “old school”, yet it is a very valuable tool, solving a number of unique problems that have no other solution. Hence, voice broadcasting services are great in helping businesses and brands reach a larger audience and achieve multiple goals faster and more efficiently. It is time, you start using a voice broadcasting service to scale-up your business by creating value for the customer.

Text-to-Speech (TTS) technology enables businesses to enhance their customer experience. It allows companies to expand their services and support customers’ needs. Latter improvements in technology have allowed more and more companies to use TTS.

What is the TTS technology?

Text-to-speech (TTS) is a model of technology that reads text aloud. It takes the written text and converts it to speech format. You only have to click a button or even just use your fingerprint and TTS will transform written words from any digital device to audio.

Text-to-Speech benefits

• Helps make your content available to people with certain challenges, such as learning disabilities, visual impairments, or literacy challenges
• Multitasking can also be a challenge, so TTS is helpful for people on the go.
• Helps a business to reach a larger customer base and helps businesses get more positive feedback.
• Facilitates reaching customers in multiple languages across different countries, enabling businesses to reach out to customers on a more personalized level.
• Makes automated telephone calls appear more human and interactive, building a positive brand image for a business.
• Minimizes mistakes by enabling companies to monitor the message that has been input and presents more efficiency.
• Reduces manual intervention by automating routine processes, thereby allowing a support team to concentrate on more important queries
• Allows better customer experience by helping businesses to provide secure and effective customer service.

Real-life applications of Text-to-Speech

In order to reach bigger audience websites are becoming speech – enable. That’s the most usual example of TTS technology. Yet, there are many other ways to use this technology across different sectors.

Banking and finance

People that have a problem with reading screens can improve their banking experience with Text- to – Speech. One of the most apparent examples is that it can help ATM customers. Also, it can help customers remove cash, make deposits and check their accounts.
Text to speech can also help banking customers have a better user experience. When people are on the go text – to – speech can really help them use services like stock prices or checking balance.

Health care sector

Supporting elderly or vulnerable patients is the focus of the businesses in healthcare. Enabling voice messages makes it easier for elderly people to receive and understand a message. For example, a business can use TTS to send appointment reminders to patients or even send voice messages that read prescription labels.
For older people and people who are visually impaired reading labels can be really hard. Sending dosage amounts and times with a voice message can be really helpful for them. Also, consider options like voice feedback from health monitors, medical devices, and so on.

Transportation and travel

TTS is great for people on the go. It helps provide passengers with the information they need to safely reach their destination. Passengers on the move need real-time information, and of course, voice announcements help. Voice notifications about flight changes or delays help in delivering an optimized customer experience.

Advertising

Businesses in marketing and advertising integrate TTS technology into their marketing efforts to perform automated personalized calls to segmented audiences and promote related products, services, and events. When it comes to advertising, reaching customers on their preferred channels via their preferred method boosts engagement.

Are you ready to embrace the future?

Are you ready to scale your global voice? TTS is thriving worldwide and is expected to witness significant growth in 2022. Routee has the ideal TTS solutions you need to promote offers and discounts with personalized voice messages.
Use Routee’s extensive language coverage and communicate with clients wherever they are.

Regardless of your business activity, if your company deals with customers and has a customer care department, then you already know that nowadays, clients are more demanding and powerful than ever before. Most of the consumers possess more knowledge than they did previously. Consumers’ voice has power. Customer reviews can make or break your brand’s image. Providing flawless customer service is sometimes even more critical for a company’s reputation than the quality of the product or service itself.

It all comes down to how a business can use the available technological advances and modern communication channels to provide seamless and consistent support.

This post contains some of the best-performing customer service practices using omnichannel marketing that your business can use to meet and surpass customers’ expectations and make a mark.

Provide live chat customer support

The more technology advances, the more impatient consumers become. Most customers request quick resolutions to their issues. Not all customer support issues are routine or can be resolved with the use of an automated workflow. In many cases, customers need human interaction to better express their service inquiries, and the same may stand for the customer support departments. Artificial intelligence, although advanced in many sectors, still cannot 100% replace the human factor. In fact, live chat enjoys a 73% satisfaction level for any customer service channel.

Whether you decide to prioritize your customers based on different customer service levels (e.g., standard, premium, VIP, and so on), or you select to provide all your customers with the exact same level of customer service communication, consider including live chat customer support. Do not get overwhelmed by what you might have heard about implementing live customer support until now. You do not need to have expensive equipment and infrastructure to go live with your customers. Luckily, currently, there are plenty of modern and user-friendly online live chat tools that require no coding skills or on-premises installation but are fully online and subscription-based.

Render proactive responses based on customer interactions 

A most engaging way to provide exceptional customer service is to be present and proactive in the multiple communication and messaging platforms that your customers prefer. Combine your sales and presales efforts by allowing your customer service team to view data of every click, swipe, and tap that occurs on a browser or an app to track customer interactions across channels. This tactic will enable you to get an in-depth understanding of your customers’ struggles, needs, and preferences so that you can be there for them before they even submit a customer support inquiry. For example, if one of your customers starts a discussion in one of the online communities that your customers engage in to exchange information and reviews, you can pop-in and proactively offer your assistance or insight to resolve any issue or answer any future inquiry that may arise from that discussion. Proactiveness will help you improve your customer retention rate. According to Aberdeen Group’s report, companies that provide consistent service across platforms retain 89% of their customers.

Harness the power of customer behavior data

Providing effective customer service comes down to understanding customer needs and behavior. Identifying the basic customer needs and addressing them with the proper customer service leads to customer satisfaction and, consequently, increased customer retention and more conversions. Monitor your customers’ journeys using tracking software to get insights that will help you understand at which phase they are and decide on the optimum course of action to offer them excellent customer service. Customer data can help you anticipate customer needs even before you communicate with customers about a support issue. For example, if your customer data show that customers who purchase product X also tend to buy product Y as well, you can set a customer support flow presenting these customers with the proper way to use these two products together.

Besides, you can use customer data to fine-tune your indirect customer service procedure. Run customer feedback surveys and combine them with website analytics to optimize your FAQs and product documentation.

Build an intelligent email automation workflow

As previously noted in our blog, the email communication channel is most widely used today than ever before. Integrate email with your customer service communication system to easily and effectively manage and resolve many of your customers’ inquiries.

Invest in an email marketing automation platform to effortlessly create email automation workflows and save your customer service representatives a ton of time and effort.

Keep in mind that the customer service email automation flow is not a one-off task that you build, activate, and leave to be. As with any email automation flow, you should steadily return to it, track and measure its health, optimize the email drafts and automation schedule. We strongly advise you to use an actual email for your customer replies that one of your customer service representatives attends daily. This way, your customers can interact with the automated messages that you deliver to them, but also engage in real-time communications for solving their issues as promptly as possible. Focus on using a completely automated email flow for resolving routine issues and interrupt the automated customer support only when dealing with uncommon, complex, or ultra-urgent inquiries.

Enable self-service resolution

A significant number of customers prefer to resolve their support issues by themselves, without having to involve your customer support team. According to a Forrester report, customers prefer to use most frequently knowledge bases of all self-service channels. Besides, an American Express customer service study states that more than 6 out of 10 U.S. consumers say that their go-to channel for simple inquiries is a digital self-serve tool.

Pay extra attention to such statistics, as catering to these types of customers will save you money from heavily investing in your customer service team and will enable you to balance your cost-to-profit ratio. Consider using a frequently asked questions (FAQs) section, a knowledge base documentation, or even a library of knowledge base videos to facilitate customer self-service resolution. Make sure that your knowledge base sections are comprehensive, organized in topics, and easy for your customers to navigate to provide them with an excellent self-service experience.

What’s next for your business?

Less than just ten years ago, the main ways that companies had available for customers to contact them were by phone or email. The customer service landscape has dramatically evolved ever since and mainly in recent years, with the introduction of innovative communication channels and the transition to a customer-centric business philosophy.

Your business has now available not only a plethora of channels to communicate with its audiences -ranging from text messages, voice, email, live chat, to messaging apps, chatbots- but also pioneering online platforms that integrate and combine all of these channels for an elevated customer experience and an unparalleled high-quality customer service. Remember that a consistent omnichannel customer service quality can significantly reshape your business revenue!

How can social media and chatbots boost eCommerce?

“My eCommerce business does not need social media. It is running smoothly without it.” Said no business person, ever, in our digital era. If you want to stay in business, you need to adopt social media. Ignoring it can potentially mean handing customers to your competition.

In the past, companies assumed that if their target market were not in their teens or twenty-somethings, they could ignore social media. That is not the case now. Social media is attracting users of all ages.

Consumers of all ages use social media a lot, for as much as a third of their total online time, for a number of different reasons. These range from searching for brands to communicating with brands. Research from Absolunet shows that 87% of eCommerce shoppers believe social media helps them make buying decisions.

It is clear that social media needs to -if it has not already- become an integral part of the omnichannel strategy for eCommerce. And when combined with chatbots, it can surely provide an even greater boost to eCommerce, making your business feel more personal. In the case of eCommerce, reports suggest that it is the most receptive industry when it comes to chatbots.

So, start integrating social media with chatbots to streamline customer communications to deliver quick support, build engagement and trust, and gain sales opportunities.

Social media for eCommerce

Before we delve deep into the benefits of integrating social media with chatbots, it is necessary to outline the need for a well documented social strategy. After all, you will only be able to enjoy the benefits of chatbots, if you have a clear social media strategy. So, here are some wins you can expect.

Increase reach and traffic to your website

71% of adults with Internet access use social media. Social media is considered one of the most efficient digital marketing methods that you can use to boost your visibility. Social media is also a great inbound marketing tool to get your leads and customers to your site for conversions and sales. As eMarketer reported on the state of social eCommerce in 2019, “Social referral to retail eCommerce sites has grown 110 percent in two years, outpacing all other referral channels.” When sharing content on your social media pages directing to your website, it is a good idea for you to adopt the 80/20 rule. Share 80% high-quality content and resources for your customers in your industry and 20% of self-promotional content.

Boost your search engine optimization

SEO is not just about optimizing your assets (your website or your blog). Social media and search engine optimization now go hand in hand. Your search engine ranking depends majorly on your social media activities. According to your social media activity for your online store, Google grades you on whether or not you are a trustworthy source on the Internet. Since social signals are so important in Google’s algorithms, having an active and regularly curated social account can noticeably help your SEO rankings.

Increase social proof

Social proof is vital for earning sales online. One of the most powerful ways to share reviews is to utilize user-generated content to show how much other customers love a brand and its merchandise. By approaching review sharing in this way, retailers are likely to see an increase in sales. 82% of consumers say that user-generated content is extremely valuable when considering purchasing a product or service.

Increase engagement and loyalty

Remember, social media is about being social. Converting posts to increased traffic and sales, retailers need to engage and connect with followers. The more you connect with your social media followers, the better impression they form of you, the more highly they will think of your brand, enabling your business to build and gain selling opportunities. According to Convince and Convert, 53% of people who follow a brand on social media end up being more loyal to that brand.

Improve customer service

There are a growing number of customers who transact with businesses through social media. Most often than not, they require immediate feedback and interaction. Providing excellent customer service is as demanding as ever before. It would make sense to use your social media presence as a customer service tool to get the chance of resolving negative feedback. For example, you can provide prompt and valuable replies to your unsatisfied customers directly in the comments sections or through the use of social media chatbots.

Social media marketing & Chatbots: The perfect combination for eCommerce

Let us now discuss how the integration of chatbots in your social media strategy can further benefit your eCommerce business.

4 key-benefits for eCommerce when using chatbots

Quicker access to the information customers need

As customers, we have all found ourselves through situations where we cannot find a specific piece of information we are looking for in a website or a social media account. Sometimes we might not even know what we are looking for. Chatbots can easily eliminate such situations.

Chatbots use direct messages to gather information necessary to provide effective support. For example, asking users why they are visiting your page is one question that is likely asked in every engagement and, when automated, it allows users to share the information needed for your bot to better serve them. By asking a series of qualifying questions, you direct users to the best place for them to find the information they want. Consumers seem more prepared and more willing than ever to make online purchases accepting help from a chatbot. With the use of a chatbot, you will place your brand where your customers hang out, online, on their phones, and social media.

Convert users quicker

Having a busier and fast-paced lifestyle, people are more interested in completing their shopping faster and easier. Chatbots help customers in the purchasing process, providing the best matching solution based on users’ preferences so that a customer would not make many efforts to find the right product.

If your main goal is lead conversion, then chatbots are the way to go. Many brands witness significant conversion rate improvement, like Kia whose chatbot converted at 3x the rate of the company website.

Engage Users in a Unique and Personalized Way

In contrast to the traditional customer service via email or the telephone, where questions get routed to businesses, making user experience fairly standard and non-customized, chatbots offer a new, fun, and interactive way for users to engage with brands. Chatbots make life a lot easier for brands, offering a personalized user experience, through one-on-one easy conversations, so that users can understand more about the services, products, applications they are using. By personalizing the questions a chatbot asks, your brand strengthens its ties with its customers, gaining a deeper understanding to create a seamless user experience that will make the whole shopping process much easier for both the user and the business.

Better customer support

The most common practice for using chatbots is for customer service. That is because chatbots embody almost everything that makes customer service excellent. Chatbots automate communication with customers and help businesses save on customer service costs by speeding up response times. They are available 24/7 and can answer most routine questions immediately, freeing up agents so that they can allocate their efforts to more challenging work.

Just take a look at the statistics below:

• Chatbots can help businesses save as much as 30% of customer support costs.
• 69% of consumers prefer chatbots because of their ability to provide quick replies to simple questions.
• 95% of consumers believe that ‘customer service’ will benefit the most from chatbots.
• 90% of businesses report faster complaint resolution with bots.

Combine social media and chatbots to give eCommerce the boost it needs!

Social media is a brilliant resource for getting your business promoted. The benefits of using social media are very promising. By integrating your social media presence with chatbot automation, you can reach customers where they are and deliver a seamless customer experience that will boost engagement and accelerate results.

No matter how big or small your business is, and regardless of its industry, big or small Routee’s experts are here to guide you through automating your social media chatbot communication.

What is a chatbot and how can you use it in marketing?

A chatbot is a software app that companies use for online messaging between them and their customers. The conversation process is an automated communication that usually employs a predefined or conversational AI (Artificial Intelligence) to ensure a personalized customer experience.

You can use chatbots to support and service your customers and to attract people to your products. Including chatbots in your marketing strategy can help you communicate better with your clients and improve customer experience and profitability.

How do chatbots work?

The way a chatbot works has everything to do with its type. The most common types of chatbots are AI and rule-based chatbots. Let’s take a look at both of them.

A rule-based chatbot contains some predefined information that answers correctly to the most common user’s questions (e.g. product price). So, it can provide only particular responses and can’t answer questions that go beyond its knowledge base.

On the flip side, AI chatbots are more interactive and capable of having a human-like conversation. Their database becomes better with every converse they make.

Also, unlike rule-based chatbots, they can pass grammatical and spelling errors, find the correct answer, and continue the conversation.

Steps to Create your Customer Service Chatbot

Create a basic knowledge base

A customer support bot is about providing the right answers to simple, straightforward questions. Unless you are experienced with working with artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and natural language processing, you should keep your technology simple. Unlike AI that recognizes human language and purpose, a basic support chatbot is an interactive platform for customer self-service that purchasers use to self-direct their needs.

So, you should start with naming the questions that your clients most want to be answered. For example, If you run a business that sells bags, some customer questions that might come up are:

• How do I get a bag?
• Where can I get a bag?
• Does it come in other colors?
• How much does it cost?
• Can I make a purchase now?
• How can I pay?

After your customer support bot is ready, you can always change the discussion flow. What is crucial is that you lead your users to a clear goal, ideally resulting in a purchase or the successful resolution of a customer support inquiry.

Write a script

A dialogue flow script should be “to the point”, pleasant, and practical. Here are some tips to keep in mind when writing out these example conversations:

Note the context.

When customers need help they may be in a hurry, feeling frustrated, or even curious and enthusiastic. Being grounded in this context will help you stick to a steady tone and style in your communication.

Write for a person.

Assume that you are writing to an actual person rather than an audience. This will help you write in a way that meets customers’ actual needs.

Keep it short.

What people expect from a chatbot is a brief, helpful conversation. Keep in mind that your clients may be using a mobile device or are multitasking. By keeping your messages short, you will engage customers easier.

Use multimedia.

In our current digital ecosystem, communication is multifaceted. Use images, and emojis to add an approachable touch.

Choose a chatbot platform

Νow is the time to pick software to build and operate your customer care bot. Routee’smessaging app solutions help you interact with clients in ways that affect your whole business. Drive your clients to the sales funnel and increase sales with simple communication.

Build and start your bot

Your customer service bot will operate as the basis for your business’s growth for years to come. It is better to start simple and to continue developing as you continue to gain insights and feedback from your clients.

Ready, Set, Go!

Get ready to embrace the future and include chatbots as a communication powerhouse into your digital marketing strategy to drive the amazing results that go with it. Keep your business available 24/7 and offer to your customers instant and effective support. Find out more information on why chatbots are considered the future of marketing, embrace it, and make your business stand out!