Prioritize Your Channels that ‘Spark Joy’

A quick google search for “does this spark joy?” memes shows how popular this concept has become: Marie Kondo’s philosophy of trashing those things in your life that do not bring you joy.

When it comes to digital communication, it’s not rocket science which channels spark joy, and which do not. There’s a reason that you, as a consumer, screen phone calls: you don’t want to talk to solicitors…you might not even want to talk to your family.

It’s not that you don’t want to keep in touch, though, it’s just that it demands your time and attention that you might want to be allocating elsewhere at that moment.

Messaging back and forth is another story. You can have multiple conversations at once, and keep up to date on each of these conversations regardless of when you are able to respond. You can pick up a conversation hours or days later, right where you left off. It just makes communication easier.

Not to mention, messaging actually does spark joy. You get a little hit of dopamine, “the neurotransmitter that activates pleasures centers in certain parts of your brain,” every time you check your phone and see new messages.

It’s time to leverage messaging in your business.

This trend of ‘sparking joy’ is something that brands should pay attention to when considering the ways that they communicate with their customers. If they are making their customers wait around on hold on the phone, that may very well leave their customer base with a negative sentiment surrounding their brand.

So this spring, it might be time for brands to tidy up their customer service channels and direct more traffic towards those channels that customers want to communicate through, namely asynchronous messaging.

Asynchronous messaging is that mode of communication like iMessage or Whatsapp that allows consumers to message brands via the familiar interface they use to message their friends. They don’t need to wait around for a response, they can pick up the conversation at any point right where they left off.

A bonus benefit is that this messaging interface that supports conversational dialogue is a container for automation. Because of the nature of asynchronous communication, AI and bots can have a massive impact on the backend operations too. Bots are able to still collect and provide information instantaneously, even if it takes a bit longer for an agent to respond.

You can learn more about the power of async with our new ebook: Get In Sync with Your Customers: A Primer to Asynchronous Communication And How It Benefits Customer Service.