The future of customer collaboration is providing exceptional, memorable experiences that are available to both virtual and in-person participants. To fully engage customers, businesses need to provide a seamless combination of virtual and in-person elements. Collaborative spaces with customers can look like:
- Virtual tours that allow customers to interact with information about your process
- Hands-on meetings that give all participants a chance to contribute in real-time
- Interactive presentations that place the spotlight on your customers
Visual collaboration software, like Alleo, is the key to unlocking your business’s collaborative potential. In this blog, we’ll cover essential elements of collaboration and how virtual tools can improve results.
What Is Visual Collaboration in Business?
Visual communication that’s collaborative in a business setting invites all participants—whether they’re customers or employees, attending virtually or in-person—to be a part of the experience you’re creating. Businesses typically rely on the following visual media to engage customers:
- Boring sales decks that induce yawns rather than excitement
- Company overview videos that feel more like a history lesson than an experience
- Unoriginal icebreaker activities that produce awkward silences
These methods aren’t engaging. According to HubSpot, lack of engagement significantly contributes to customer churn. When customers don’t understand how to use your product or are not excited about it, they’ll stop using it and search elsewhere for a solution. This is the case for 31% of SaaS licenses, which go unused.
Why do traditional methods of collaboration fall short? Because they fail to engage customers. Instead of creating experiences with customers, these communication methods talk at them. Instead, collaborative outreaches should have customers as active participants while enabling success through education.
What Are the Three Elements of Successful Collaboration?
In 2023 and beyond, the future of visual collaboration tools and techniques need to focus on providing engaging customer experiences; incorporating these three elements can help:
- Variety of Collaboration Styles: People have different learning styles, whether that’s by listening, by watching, or by doing. Participation in collaboration works the same way. Customers may prefer jumping into conversations, watching demonstrations, or working together in a digital sandbox.
- Collaborative Equity: You include people in collaboration sessions because they have valuable insight. Ensure that each attendee feels comfortable and has the ability to share their perspective whether they’re in-person or remote. Customers should share their goals, ideas, and even offer pushback in a collaborative setting.
- Digital Storytelling: Stories have been essential to humanity since before campfires. In collaborative settings, stories deliver information, create emotional responses, and build connections between you and your customers.
With Alleo, you gain access to the features you need to appeal to different collaboration styles, enable equitable participation, and create compelling stories—all in a single platform.
What Are the Benefits of Collaboration?
The benefits of collaboration range from better customer engagement to increased retention rates and profits. Enabling customers to actively participate in their journey can result in the following:
- Enhanced Customer Engagement: As mentioned earlier, nearly one-third of SaaS licenses go unused. When customers don’t understand the value they can get from your service, they won’t use it—or explore advanced, premium features. Collaboration includes education to show customers how to get the most from your service, so they’ll see the benefit of upgrading.
- Improved Retention Rates: It’s no secret—satisfied customers stick around longer than unsatisfied customers. While internal collaboration is essential to providing excellent service, businesses often overlook how beneficial collaborating with customers can be. Increasing customer involvement allows your team to discover their goals and how you can help achieve them.
- Increased Profits: It’s far more cost-effective to sell to repeat customers than new ones. In fact, data shows that gaining new customers costs five to ten times more than selling to returning customers. Returning customers also spend an average of 67% more than new buyers. Collaboration with customers drives repeat business, which means higher profits for your company.
With all its benefits, there are still some disadvantages of virtual collaboration. The future of collaboration needs to overcome the following challenges:
- Meeting fatigue
- One-sided presentations
- Cookie-cutter experiences
Up next, we introduce the solution for these challenges: digital collaborative spaces.
What Are the Benefits of Visual Collaboration Tools? See Them for Yourself with Alleo!
The future of collaboration is inseparable from the digital space. Visual collaboration tools enable you and your customers to overcome the challenges of virtual communication, so you can both reap the rewards of collaboration. You need the right tools to capitalize on the insights your team and your customers bring to the table. With Alleo, you can:
- Drive Inclusion: Create multimedia presentations and workshops that engage all participants, no matter how they collaborate best.
- Drive Productivity: Access all of your people, content, and tools within a single platform, so you don’t lose time and focus during transitions.
- Drive Adoption: Encourage attendees to participate with an easy-to-use interface that provides a seamless collaborative space.
- Drive Innovation: Work through ideas with your customers using collaborative tools like interactive whiteboarding and customizable meeting templates.
The future starts today. Schedule a demo to see how you can be a part of it!
