What Rakuten Viber Tools to Use at Each Step of the Customer Journey

A customer journey is a path that a buyer takes from initial awareness of a product or service to eventually becoming a paying client. It involves every touchpoint that a shopper has with a brand before they make a purchase. This includes everything from their first discovery to the moment they receive their package in the mail or walk out of the store, how they interact with the product after the purchase, and if their experience is generally positive or negative.

Understanding customer journey helps businesses optimize their marketing so that they can deliver the most relevant messages at each stage. Its steps vary depending on a product or a service, but there are some common phases that all marketers take into account. Each of these steps presents an opportunity for brands to nurture their relationships with buyers and create a lasting connection.

The purchase path is no longer linear. Customers interact with so many touchpoints and make decisions in milliseconds. Still, the core steps of the customer journey remain the same, no matter how squiggly the journey might be:

1. Awareness: A customer becomes aware of your brand and your products/services. They may see an ad, read a blog post, or hear about you from a friend.

2. Interest: He or she compares different items and narrows down their options. This is when they may do some research online, read reviews, or check prices generating interest.

3. Conversion: A customer decides to buy from you. They add a product to the cart, fill out their billing information, and complete the payment.

4. Loyalty: A shopper continues to use your products and becomes a loyal customer. They may refer their friends, write positive reviews, or evolve into a brand ambassador.

In this article, we talk about how you can use Rakuten Viber for Business at every step of the way to get your clients' attention and drive conversions.

Awareness

Rakuten Viber offers a variety of features for you to reach and engage your target audience. With our platform, you can create a public account for your business, send messages to customers, and run marketing campaigns. 

Rakuten Viber Ads is one of the best tools for creating awareness. The targeting options let you choose the audience you want to reach, including by age, gender, and location, as well as by interests. You can also create and run personalized campaigns, including with context-relevant creative and offers.

With Rakuten Viber Lenses, you can express your identity in a modern and engaging way. Create branded filters and lenses that can be used by your customers when they take photos or videos. This is a fantastic way for your clients to interact with your business in a new and unique manner. 

Rakuten Viber Stickers are an excellent instrument to go viral. There are a few ways to use them to build brand awareness and get more customer attention:

• Create original stickers with your logo or mascot: You can make a huge impact with branded stickers. Make sure all images are high quality and visually appealing, as this will ensure they get used often.
• Tell a story: Rakuten Viber Stickers can be a great storytelling tool. For example, you could create a series of images that show the history of your company or the evolution of your product. This is a surefire technique to generate buzz and get people talking about you.
• Link a Sticker pack to your communication channel: This is a great way to get more exposure to your existing Chatbot, Channel, or Community on Rakuten Viber. You can quickly grow your audience by having users subscribe to your channel after downloading your Sticker pack.

There are endless possibilities for how businesses can use Rakuten Viber Stickers to build awareness. The key is to be imaginative and think outside the box. This will help you build brand loyalty and keep people coming back for more.

With Rakuten Viber, you can contact a large audience quickly and easily. Our platform has hundreds of millions of users worldwide, which is a lot of potential customers you can reach with your marketing messages. It is a perfect tool to use to get viral and make people talk about your products.

Interest

The phase when customers are actively evaluating their options and weighing which product or service is right for them is extremely important for brands. This is where you need to make sure your offers are unique and catch the eye of a buyer. Personalization is key – it gives your clients an exceptional experience they will remember long after they've made a purchase. With Rakuten Viber, you can easily send tailored messages to potential customers based on their interests and preferences. This helps create a more meaningful buyer experience and can ultimately lead to more conversions and sales.

One of the most popular ways to engage with potential buyers during the Interest phase is through Rakuten Viber Promotional Business Messages. Promotional Messages keep your customers informed about the latest offers, deals, and special occasions. They can be sent to individual customers or to groups of customers. The benefits include:

• Cost-effective
• High reach
• Easily trackable
• Real-time engagement
• Customizable messages
• Personalization
• Integration with CRM or CDP, and more.

Be there for your potential customers when they have questions or want to learn more. Rakuten Viber provides two unique solutions to engage in a conversation: Conversational Business Messages and Chatbots.

Conversational Business Messages let you connect with your customers directly in Rakuten Viber, and not only through text but also with images, videos, and files. It is a great way to answer customer’s questions, resolve issues, and provide support – all in real time.

Rakuten Viber Chatbots provide 24/7 assistance and support, without the need for human intervention. Chatbots can help to choose the right product, manage orders, receive upsell and cross-sell offers, and answer FAQs.

Another tool to provide your customers the information they might need to know about your brand is a Commercial Account. It hosts business information, services, and chats on Rakuten Viber under a single business entity. Since Commercial Account is searchable, users can initiate conversations with brand representatives and ask their pressing questions from the convenience of their favorite messaging app. 

To make sure your brand remains top-of-mind at this important stage, add Rakuten Viber Ads to the mix. They are highly effective, multi-format, and versatile. From post-call pop-ups and marketing content on the Rakuten Viber Explore page to non-intrusive notifications in Business Inbox, Chats, Calls, and More screens, there's something for every brand and every product. This is a perfect opportunity to cut through the noise and get your potential audience's attention.

Conversion

In order to drive sales, you need to create a seamless and convenient purchase experience. There are many Rakuten Viber tools that can be of use during this critical phase.

Just like during the Interest phase, driving conversions can be done through conversations.

First, you can automate your shoppers' journey with Rakuten Viber Сhatbots. HubSpot Research Customer Support Survey shows that 82% of consumers expect immediate responses to their queries and requests, so using fast and AI-powered visual assistants will help you provide better service. Conversational Business Messages are essential if you want to make sure the cart abandonment rate is within reasonable limits. 

Read our article How Rakuten Viber for Business Can Help With Cart Abandonment.

Congratulations! The purchase came through. But it is not the end of the customer journey.

Users want to stay in the loop and receive timely updates. That’s why Transactional Business Messages come in handy for informing your customers about their purchases and deliveries. You can let them know about order status, shipment details, product warranty, and more. 

And when it comes to payments, Payments on Rakuten Viber is a new solution that allows people to create a digital wallet within the app instead of switching to a different one (first launched in Germany and Greece via a waitlist in July 2022, now available in Greece and being gradually opened to all). We give brands the opportunity to offer special deals to their customers when they use our new tool. Brands will be able to receive payments from their clients via Rakuten Viber in the future.

Loyalty

This phase of the customer journey is all about keeping your clients happy and motivating them to return. Plus, this is the stage where you need to think about how you can encourage your buyers to spread the word about your business to their friends and family. The best way to do this is to provide an excellent shopping experience throughout their journey and after the purchase is made. If people are happy with your brand, they will be more likely to tell others about you.

This is another use case for Conversational Business Messages, as they are perfect for building lasting customer relationships and nurturing loyalty. Some of the main benefits of using Conversational Rakuten Viber Business Messages include:

• Improved customer satisfaction: Shoppers can get the answers they need when they need them and leave feedback that can be used to further improve customer experience.
• Increased trust: People are more likely to stick with a brand that offers timely and efficient assistance and asks their opinion about the services.
• Optimized processes: By integrating Business Messages with your CRM or CDP system you can save important details and analyze conversation history with your customers to offer better support in the future.

Retention with the help of Rakuten Viber Chatbots 

Chatbots can offer a wide range of services, from answering simple questions to providing support, and even selling products. They can significantly increase customer satisfaction and loyalty while reducing costs.

And if you can keep your clients happy and keep them coming back, you'll be well on your path to success!

Case Studies: How Brands Use Rakuten Viber

Take a look at some of the best examples of businesses that have used Rakuten Viber to reach audiences at different stages of the purchase journey.

The Primer Group of Companies, a retailer in the Philippines that distributes consumer goods from different brands, used personalized Promotional Business Messages to boost customer interest and sales. With the help of Rakuten Viber's messaging partner Infobip, Primer sent e-vouchers for its e-commerce site Bratpack to its customer base. This resulted in a 401% increase in sales and a 53% conversion rate.

Leroy Merlin, Europe's largest home improvement retailer, was looking for ways to improve customer service at checkout and increase basket size. It turned to Rakuten Viber’s official messaging partner M-STAT and chose Rakuten Viber Business Messages for communication with customers, which helped them achieve both goals. This campaign resulted in 300% faster customer service and a 20% increase in basket size. 

DExpress, an express courier service based in Serbia, turned to Rakuten Viber to enhance its communication with customers by letting them track and manage their deliveries. With the help of our trusted messaging partner Akton, D Express started to send automated and personalized messages via Rakuten Viber updating customers on their delivery. A customer could reply whenever it's convenient and get more information or have the shipment redirected at their convenience.

D Express achieved a delivery rate of 85%, 15% higher than before they started using Rakuten Viber. The result was an improved service, an enhanced customer experience, and a higher level of trust and loyalty among D Express' customers.

With Rakuten Viber, companies have a powerful tool at their disposal to create awareness, be available at a discovery and interest phase, drive conversions, improve customer service, and increase customer loyalty. All with ease, convenience, and efficiency.