3 Key Takeaways From Inbound 2019

Last week, some of the Tribute team attended INBOUND, an annual conference in Boston filled with actionable education, endless inspiration, human connections and amazing keynote speakers. After those four and a half days of straight learning (and a bit of fun), we left Boston with over 32 pages of notes on how we could improve our client marketing strategies as well as our client experiences.

As we’re sharing these visions with the rest of our team and our clients, we wanted to touch on a few of the major takeaways that can be useful for everyone.

Key Takeaway #1: How to Eliminate Friction and Build a Modern Customer Experience

When you think of a customer experience you had with a company that created friction between you and affected your willingness to continue a relationship with that company, what does that look like to you?

It could have been an experience where:

• You felt like you had to jump through hoops in order to cancel no-longer-needed services
• You didn't feel like you were being heard or that your problem was being solved
• You received a low-quality product that was oversold on a website or through a sales process

Keeping those feelings in mind, let’s look at some new ways of offering a frictionless experience for your customers to ensure you don't provide a similar experience to what you had.

Steps to Create a More Frictionless Customer Experience:

1. Identify Friction: Use feedback from customer surveys and internal team feedback to locate areas of friction for your customers. Then, categorize the trends and make action items where appropriate.
2. Define Frictionless: Decide internally what a frictionless experience looks like. Come up with the ideal solution and determine benchmarks you can use to measure your success.
3. Fight Friction: Look for ways to create ongoing efforts to fight friction. What can be automated to help you achieve success?

One last thing to ask ourselves about creating a more modern, frictionless experience for our customers is, how can we implement self-service? Today's customers want to engage with your company THEIR way.

Take a look at a few big company websites like Amazon, Chewy, and HubSpot. They offer easy "one-click" ways to purchase products, multiple ways to communicate with support depending on the user's preference, and easy ways to upgrade levels of service -- all without being forced to talk to a salesperson.

Key Takeaway #2: The Importance of Chatbots in 2019

Have you ever asked yourself, “If our website is getting all this traffic, why aren’t we getting more leads?” Try this question instead: “Where could we improve to make it easier for website users to take advantage of our services?”

In this digital age we live in, prospects and customers alike want to be served immediately. If they're on your site and can't get the answers to their product or service-related questions within the first few minutes, they're likely off your site and onto other sites to find the solutions to their problems. To retain more of those answer-seekers, consider adding chat options.

There are two types of chat experiences that your company can start utilizing:

• A live chat box that alerts your customer service or sales team when someone is reaching out
• A chatbot that is built with automated responses based on keywords the website visitor is using, such as “sales” or “products” or “schedule”

Utilizing chatbots for customer services helps eliminate friction in the customer experience. It also helps to qualify more leads through the sales pipeline before your sales team puts too much time and energy into them.

Fact: 53% of consumers say they’re more likely to shop and purchase from a company they can message.

Key Takeaway #3: Don’t Just Create a Company Culture, Create a Customer Culture

Think about how much people LOVE to post about a fun (or not so fun) experience with a company on social media. Whether it’s to brag about a giveaway they won, swoon over an Instagram worthy store front, or share an event that they're enjoying, people love to do your marketing for you.

So, how can you get your customers to start sharing their experience on social media? Start by building a customer culture. Some questions to get you thinking about what yours might look like:

• What did they love about their initial experience with you and how are you encouraging them to share that organically?
• Are you celebrating their successes as much as you’re celebrating your own?
• What makes your company REMARKABLE to work with over your competitors?

While we learned so much more during Inbound, these are some of the tools and ideas we are most excited to work with.

Want to learn more about inbound marketing or get help on implementing any of these into your strategy? Book an appointment or schedule a web marketing checkup today!