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Beyond the phone and face-to-face, here are some of the leading chat and messaging communication software platforms proven to increase productivity, sales, and overall customer satisfaction. After all, conversational marketing and chat is not a fad.
SLACK
Founded in 2013, Slack is today’s AOL Instant Messenger for business in my opinion. Features like chat rooms organized by channels as well as private and direct messaging help companies converse all day (and night) in real-time. Slack plays nicely with all kinds of other apps like Dropbox and Google and has a slick mobile version, too.
Imagine using Slack accounts and channels to communicate with your key partners like reps, dealers, service folks, etc. It sure beats phone calls and adding to that already stuffed email inbox.
Our TMC team runs on Slack (and so do some of our clients). I highly recommend using this tool in your organization. The benefits are endless. Can you say, ‘bye to emails’? Well, that may never happen but it will highly reduce the amount of clutter in your inbox, trust me.
HUBSPOT MESSAGES
Those of you who are power HubSpot users know about Messenger, an add-on tool in the HubSpot Sales/CRM software that runs on your website and blog.It’s a bit limited in features but plays nicely for those who are looking to start offering chat on their websites. Being that it's part of the HubSpot Sales tools (a paid add-on), it ties in nicely with Meetings (booking calendar invites).
Messages is also intelligent enough to ‘associate’ a visitor with a current contact record. It also captures the chat in the timeline of that contact record providing your sales, marketing, and executive teams complete visibility.
HubSpot realizes that they have some work to do here. There are others that are beating them to the punch.
DRIFT
Ok, I have to say that I am very excited about Drift. This kick-ass messaging app is a hell of a lot more than just chat. Much like HubSpot dominates the ’inbound marketing’ space, these guys dominate when it comes to ‘conversational marketing.'
I don’t know about you, but today I want to get my answers right away and do just about everything I can on a website via chat. It seems like the folks at Drift have conversational marketing well thought out. The moment I started testing it out and using it, I was hooked.
Here’s what I like about Drift:
- It’s everything HubSpot Messenger offers and much more
- It’s simple to add and set up
- Drift has a native ‘bot’ that can be custom configured!!
- It integrates seamlessly with HubSpot, Salesforce, MailChimp, and other platforms
- It offers detailed reporting and analytics
Yeah, I am a bit pumped about the AI/machine learning aspect of Drift. Having a bot taking on initial parts of a chat and routing it to the right person or walking the visitor through the next phase of the buyer’s journey is key.
The fact is, chat/messaging is here to stay. Visitors are tired of submitting forms. Buyers don’t want to wait days (or even hours) to get a simple price request back from a manufacturer, rep, or dealer.
Start thinking about implementing a chat and messaging strategy today.
Want to talk chat/messaging and its impact on your business? Book 15 minutes with me by using my Meetings app below:
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