You launched a web app or product. Youa''ve got customers. How do you communicate with them?
We found a pretty good balance between Twitter, Email, and IM to communicate with our Verify customers. This setup helps us drive conversions, build relationships, and take care of all the bugs and feature requests to stay ahead of our customers.
Chat - helps convert users
We use Olark to chat with customers on the Verify site. It does wonders to help convert website visitors into paying customers. About 80% of all questions come from people browsing the tour pages trying to learn about Verify. People usually have very specific questions about capabilities of the tool. Chat enables us to answer basic questions but also ask what the website visitor is looking for and how she hopes to use Verify. Chat allows us to get into the heads of our customers and figure out what they're thinking as they are browsing the website the first time. We try to build a personal connection with the customer and guide them through the sign-up process.
To sum it up, use chat for:
- converting visitors into customers
- answering quick questions about capability of the tool
- getting inside the website visitors head to understand why they engage or not engage with your service
Email - helps to clarify problems
We use support email for bugs and feature requests for Verify. Email is an asynchronous form of communication where you can take your time to investigate the issue or the problem the customer is reporting. Unlike with chat you do not have to respond right away, you can fully investigate the issue, fix it if necessary and come back with the best answer possible for the customer. We use Gmail for all of our email and found that email is a great way to keep track of feature requests. We have labels for a''requesteda'', a''working ona'', a''resolveda'' for feature requests which makes it very easy to keep track of all the requests we get day to day. Labels are also great to use for documenting bugs as a''newa'', a''working ona'', a''fixeda'' to give us an idea of which issues we need to be working on week to week.
To sum it up, use email for:
- responding to customers reporting bugs
- keeping track of bugs and feature requests
Twitter - helps with marketing
We love to use Twitter for talking with people and making connections. We have a separate handle for each one of our apps: @Notableapp, @Verifyapp, @Bounceapp, @Clueapp. We answer every tweet about our products while trying to strike up a conversation with people tweeting about us. We usually tweet back and forth with folks about their work, what they are working on at the moment, what they are using our tool for. This helps build excitement around our customers and users. We also hand pick positive tweets and follow up with those folks for interviews and testimonials for our blog.
To keep people engaged we try to share at least one useful article about building products every day with our followers. Twitter helps us show our customers that we've got a beat, wea''re listening, and we want to connect. We have at least 50 conversations going with various people on any given day through Twitter.
To sum it up, use Twitter for:
- building relationships with people using your product
- asking for testimonials from excited tweeters
- sharing interesting and insightful articles
Thata''s how we keep our customers engaged and happy. We're curious to hear how all of you are communicating with your customers? What do you find works better for you and why? Leave us a comment.
