Is Customer Engagement Software Worth It For Local Businesses?

Customer engagement software helps businesses improve every interaction they have with their customers. It can automate and streamline communication that takes place online and via mobile devices – which is how most interactions take place today.

These tools improve how your customers see your business and can also save time for your team while winning you more customers. 

In this article we’ll cover:

• What modern consumers expect
• How software improves every step of the customer journey
• Your return on investment
• Features to look for

‍

What Modern Customers Expect

Expectations rise every year with consumers expecting personalized, instant responses and excellent service.

Here are a few examples of what your prospects are expecting, backed up by statistics:

Immediate responses: 90% of customers rate an “immediate” response as essential or very important when they have a customer service question. 60% of customers define “immediate” as 10 minutes or less (HubSpot Research).

Convenient communication options: 2 out of 3 people would take their business to a company that offered text messaging as a communication channel (G2).

Plus, we know it’s worth it for businesses to rise to these expectations. Research by Bain & Company indicates that businesses can grow revenues between 4% and 8% above their market when prioritizing better customer service experiences.

With the rise in automation, even local businesses can meet those expectations with customer engagement software.

Software Improves Every Step of the Customer Journey

The right software improves your customer experience at every point in the customer journey. 

Naturally, customer satisfaction is every local business’s ultimate goal. Enlisting software to help can make it easier to give every customer a personalized experience.

So what is this customer journey we’re talking about? It can be broken down into the following 4 stages. At each stage, here’s how a customer engagement platform can make the journey easy, personalized, and positive.

1. Discovery: It should be easy for a prospect to find your business. Software can help you generate a strong web presence from lots of positive reviews that provide social proof of how your business helps customers grow.

2. Consideration: When a prospect discovers your business, they start to investigate right away. Using a webchat on your site helps start conversations and answer questions quickly. 

3. Conversion: The right software can move a conversation from webchat to texting right away, which is more convenient and personal for the prospect. It can also send automated text and email marketing sequences to help convert them.

4. Growth: Once someone becomes a customer, there are unlimited opportunities to give them a great experience. Software makes it easy for a customer to stay engaged with your business in the ways that are most convenient for them. It also helps gather their feedback so your business can constantly improve.

Features To Look For

Here are the top things you’ll want to look for when selecting a customer engagement software that will give you a strong return on investment:

• Automates complex work like sending appointment reminders and requesting reviews and surveys
• Personalized so every communication feels like it’s coming from a real person
• Integrated with systems you already use like your CRM, POS, or EHR so you can use data points like appointment status to trigger messages
• Gives insights into opportunities for improvement by sending out surveys and keeping a pulse on customer sentiment
• Scalable and easy to set up, whether you’re using it for 1 location or 1,000
• Allows collaboration within your team by assigning messages to the right person instantly

So, Is It Worth It For Local Businesses?

Local businesses typically operate on tighter margins than larger businesses. That means it’s even more important that every customer has a positive experience at each touchpoint. Positive customer experiences help you keep more happy customers, who in turn help you bring in more business. 

Customer experience software makes it easy to automate and personalize your interactions so you can get and keep more customers.

Every dollar you spend should go towards growing your business – which you can do with customer engagement software. Using a software like Swell helps businesses see a quick return on investment. Plus, Swell is the best customer engagement software that’s built and priced for local businesses.

See An Example of Great ROI In Real Life

Check out a customer story to see the ROI one local business realized with Swell:

Hounds Town Doggy Daycare gained 175+ new customers for new locations through the power of positive reviews.

Call us at (844) 560-2626 to ask how your local business can attract and keep more customers with Swell’s customer engagement software.