Quite predictably, in the upcoming years, customer communications automation will be omnichannel. Marketers strive to pamper customers with an equally smooth and personalized experience whenever they go. Social media, email, phone support, in-store, and other interactions are becoming customer-centric and orchestrated by automation solutions.

New means of communication emerge. WhatsApp, WeChat, and Facebook messengers are gaining importance. Having hundreds of million users, they serve as effective communication channels and alternatives to traditional ways to get in touch.

The approaches to the generation, archiving, and delivery of automated customer communications also evolve. More companies adopt document rendering software to fully automate invoice and PO delivery in retail marketing experience and other fields.

Would you like to know more about the impact of current trends on customer communications automation? Read on to learn the critical innovations across industries.

Top Trends in Customer Communications Automation and New Means of Communication in the Upcoming Years

The process of automating customer communications impacts every field by:

• upgrading retail marketing experience with AI-powered text messages,
• optimizing the work of financial organizations through trigger-based invoice, bill, and notice delivery,
• providing e-commerce businesses with advanced customer service and support capabilities.

Here are the main ways in which modern technology influences customer experience across industries:

#1. Mobile Messengers as New Means of Communication in E-commerce

According to the latest Statista data, over two billion users access WhatsApp every month. Facebook Messenger boasts 1.3 billion visitors, whereas WeChat and Snapchat have 1.2 and 0.5 billion monthly visitors, respectively. This makes messengers an attractive channel to directly communicate with customers, especially in e-commerce.

Online business owners and marketers can leverage customer communications automation to deliver personalized text messages through messengers. These may be order confirmations, shipment instructions, or other common instant messages.

Apart from customer communications automation, some messengers support in-app ads. For example, in Facebook Messenger, you can show ads inviting consumers to initiate a text conversation with your brand. These are new means of communication for more personalized and effective customer interactions in e-commerce.

#2. Artificial Intelligence for Enhanced Retail Marketing Experience

Artificial intelligence is everywhere. It transforms healthcare, automotive, education, bioscience, and other industries. Yet, it also affects such basic things as retail marketing experience.

To ensure a more personalized retail marketing experience for customers, retailers adopt AI solutions to study the buying patterns. AI analyzes purchase decisions and informs retailers which customers are more likely to buy and how to reach them. As a result, sellers can better tailor automated customer communications for a personalized retail marketing experience.

AI also powers chatbots that suggest similar products and allows the retail industry to automate supply chain management and shopping experience. Tommy Hilfiger and Burberry have launched AI-based chatbots helping consumers to navigate their new collection. The AI use options for revolutionized retail marketing experiences, and customer communications are almost unlimited.

#3. Revival of Direct Mail Communications - But This Time Personalized and Automated

Traditional direct mail marketing has gradually lost its positions to more flexible and versatile online communications. But with the oversaturation of the digital marketing environment, the need for alternative communications channels emerges again. That’s when automated direct mail marketing comes into play.

With modern software for offline customer communications automation, businesses can automatically create, print, and deliver mailings. A product like Inkit’s Send delivers automated mail to recipients based on real-time triggers or events. This allows you to launch omnichannel campaigns where direct mail is synchronized with other channels. They ensure tailored customer experience that will matter in 2021 and the years beyond.

Read How Companies Can Benefit from Automated Direct Mail Campaigns?

#4. Official Customer Communications Automation in Banking and Finances

Automation isn’t only about marketing communications. Financial organizations that send tons of documents and official messages are also switching to automated delivery. They use automated rendering software to generate custom PDF invoices, bills, and statements. After the rendering is completed, the documents are stored in the system for further automatic delivery.

Such an approach allows banking and financial organizations to automate standard communications. This helps them cut expenses, optimize their employees’ work, improve customer relationships, and reap other advantages.

#5. Automated Chatbots and Self-Service in Customer Support

79% of customers expect organizations to provide self-service tools. They want to use knowledge bases, online communities, and other information sources to troubleshoot on their own instead of contacting support teams through social networks, phone calls, or website service requests.

Such customer preferences inspire businesses to implement automated chatbots and self-service to improve customer experience. They interact with consumers using automated communications that only guide people, helping them to solve their problems independently.

What Tools Are Necessary to Meet Customer Communications Automation Trends?

To follow the listed trends and leverage customer communications automation, marketing teams need software. Reliable multifunctional solutions are essential for adopting new means of communication and revolutionizing retail marketing experience or other industries.

We have selected the main types of automation solutions that will enable you to keep with the trends. Use them to be among the first who reach customers with unique communication campaigns:

• Marketing automation platform. To automate marketing communications like emails, popup messages, or in-app notifications, make sure to connect a multi-functional marketing platform. Most modern platforms allow you to automate several digital marketing channels at once.
• Customer support platform. For customer communications automation across standard support channels, like phone, chat, or emails, you will need to use a support platform.
• Messengers, including WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, and others. These basic messaging solutions are must-haves in 2021 and for the next few years.
• Document management and rendering solutions. To automate official communications, invoicing, and document delivery, your business needs PDF rendering and document management software.
• Additional marketing automation solutions for offline campaigns. To reach customers online and offline, it’s necessary to adopt mail marketing software that integrates with other marketing tools. By combining them, you will be able to run omnichannel campaigns for personalizing interactions across channels.
  

It is not an extensive list of automation solutions you might need to implement. Depending on your industry, you can adopt AI solutions for automated retail marketing experience or use self-service portals. We recommend analyzing your customer communications automation needs and focusing on the most critical tools.

Check Out 10 Marketing Automation Tools for the Key Marketing Processes

Automating Customer Communications and Retail Marketing Experience with Inkit

Inkit is a reach enablement platform (REP) that provides products for customer communications automation.

Render is an HTML to PDF converter that automatically generates documents for paperless communications. It can automate the creation of invoices, statements, purchase orders, and other official communications. Render is also suitable to generate marketing content in PDF. When Render is combined with Send, the generated documents will also be automatically printed and delivered offline. Send enables you to mail personalized communications based on real-time triggers and events.

Verify is another Inkit’s product that can make your customer communications more effective and accurate. It validates customers’ contact information for order and marketing message delivery. This tool is particularly effective for retailers that send hundreds of products daily.

Inkit also integrates with numerous tools. This way, you can easily connect with different services and implement ultimate customer communications automation.

Do you want to revolutionize your customer communications with Inkit? Contact us to get the demo now.