Written by
Nahim Ali
How is your business communicating with your customers? When you’re going through the process of getting them booked, are you speaking to them on the phone, via video call, email, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram DMs?
This video will give you some insight into what works and what doesn’t work so well so that you book more clients.
The way that you want to communicate with your customers and the way that your customers want to communicate with you isn’t always the same. But the way the customer wants to communicate with you takes priority.
I remember a very successful SMP clinic. They just wanted to communicate with customers via email because the owner of the business was socially anxious and he felt comfortable that way. But his conversion rate collapsed because customers don’t want to talk to you via email. It’s slow. It’s impersonal. It just doesn’t work very well for conversions.
A lot of customers don’t want to talk on the phone anymore. We live in an age where communication is changing. And I understand that a lot of artists, what they want to do is get the customer on a video call so that they can get some face-to-face time with the client, do a consultation and have a look and see what work needs to be done so they can provide the right advice. A lot of customers are anxious about phone calls. and they certainly don’t want to do a video call.
So is it ideal? No. Is that the way the world is now? Absolutely. It doesn’t mean the client is any less serious. It just means that you have to adapt and understand that all clients are different.
So what about all the other methods? Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp. What’s the best way? How you communicate with your customer might be influenced by how you found them in the first place.
For example, if you’re running facebook ads, it’s possible that the first communication is through facebook Messenger, so the conversation can naturally start that way. My advice would be to move them as quickly as you can over into a more personal method. You know, if you’re running ads and you’re communicating with them via facebook message, it’s not you as an artist who’s communicating with them, it’s your business page. It’s not very personal.
I would move them over to WhatsApp. If you use whatsapp in, you know, where you’re located, WhatsApp is great because It’s a micro commitment from the customer because they have to disclose their phone number to communicate with you via WhatsApp. If the conversation starts through Instagram DM, that’s a little bit more personal. It feels more personal than messages from a Facebook page, but it’s still not 100% ideal.
My advice is to have a specific sales strategy. However you communicate with customers, your ultimate goal is to channel them down one path. And the advantage with doing that is that you can manage the customer journey. You can have a set process.
So for example, when you have the customer’s WhatsApp number, you can then have a chain of copy and paste items that you send that customer. That could be a really good testimonial video, or it could be a link to a page on your website that has lots of information about how the process works. Could be some reviews, could be your gallery page. know you’ve got then a way of making sure that that customer sees all the best things about your business before they make a decision as to whether to use you or not.
So I would certainly recommend taking them down a specific dedicated channel. Instagram message is okay. Facebook page messages, no. I would say whatsapp or instagram message is going to be the best way. Or if you can move the customer over to SMS, SMS is always good.
And I will argue that email is okay if you’ve had a face-to-face or a phone conversation with the customer.
The bottom line is guys, how the customer wants to communicate with you is very likely to be through some kind of direct message mechanism now. Whether that’s WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram Messenger, it’s not going to be a call or email as often as maybe it has been in the past.
I would look at your process and make it more intentional. Rather than having conversations with customers on a thousand different platforms, use those as entry points, channel them through to one particular route that you want to take them and make sure that using that route, they get access to your best assets as a business. Reviews, your best photos, videos, whatever it might be.
Maybe do a video of you. “Really glad you reached out. This is me. This is my background. Really looking forward to helping you.” That kind of stuff goes a long way.
Any questions? Comment on this Instagram post, it’ll be interesting to hear your views.
