Follow up is a major influencer across all industries and levels within an organization. It’s a key influencer in customer care, relationships, satisfaction, brand identity, and sales. Always a powerful tool, follow up was once burdensome, requiring a lot of manpower to administer. Today, the power of follow up is boosted even further – and the manpower involved in considerably slashed – when automating it with a mass notification system.
Let’s take a look at a few examples of how automating follow up with a mass notification system can help organizations achieve their goals:
Enhanced Documentation
With automated follow up, organizations in any industry can gather more customer data and documentation. This data can be helpful to organizations on multiple levels. It can bolster the customer’s persona and legal record.
For example, if a healthcare organization follows up with a patient and he reported not taking his medication as prescribed, that is documented data in the patient’s record. If that patient has a negative health outcome and holds the healthcare organization liable, the organization has data that may or may not show the patient was noncompliant and the negative health event was not in fact due to negligence of the organization.
Improved Outcomes
While automated follow up can help outcomes in various industries, let’s focus on healthcare, once again. The Hospital Readmission Reduction Act imposes penalties and financial consequences to healthcare organizations when there are too many readmitted patients covered under Medicare within a specific time frame. (1)
This incentivizes healthcare organizations to provide top quality care and improved follow up to reduce readmission rates. Automated follow up systems can help reduce readmission rates while also not straining the organization’s resources. Automated follow up calls or emails can ask individualized questions based on the patient’s discharge notes and treatment plan to ensure the patient is feeling well, improving in health, and following orders.
Strengthened Brand Relationships
Automated follow up with mass notification systems can be greatly effective in solidifying the brand/customer relationship. Follow up customer satisfaction surveys can be sent on a regular basis to assess whether the customer is satisfied 5 days, 5 weeks, 5 months, and even 5 years after a purchase or service, for example. Another way to use mass notifications to foster the brand/customer relationship is by automatically communicating company news, new product announcements, and exclusive sales/events, etc. on a routine basis to make the customer feel like a part of the brand’s evolving identity.
Targeted Sales Strategies
For sales teams, automated mass notifications can be helpful tools that boost conversion rates and further leverage qualified leads. Sales teams can use mass notification systems to upsell and pitch additional offers based on customers’ past purchases. Sales teams can also use mass notification systems to measure where their leads are in the buying process: are they hot, warm, or cold leads? It’s also a way for sales teams to offer special events, complimentary items, etc. to stay top-of-mind to their customers or potential customers.
Improved Customer Service
Top quality customer service is the pinnacle any successful company or organization. The way to assess how an organization is doing in the eyes of its customers is to follow up and ask them directly. Mass notifications systems offer an efficient opportunity to do that through automated surveys.
The great thing about today’s modern automated customer satisfaction surveys is that they are user-friendly and convenient for the customer. They can be delivered via email, text, and with many options for recorded voices that convey any company or brand’s unique identity. The easier, more convenient, and more familiar the survey is to the customer, the greater likelihood they will complete it, and the better data the organization will compile to improve customer service.
The Bottom Line
It’s clear that follow up is good for business, and automating it with a mass notification system can give organizations an even greater advantage. If you’re thinking about how your organization can improve its follow up, you might also want to consider how an automated mass notification system can help.