How to Improve Customer Communication Effectiveness in 2026

Published: 16 March 2022

Updated: 5 February 2025

Let’s find out some result-driven tactics.

Customer communication enhancing with Umnico

If you’re looking to improve customer communications performance quickly and boost contact center efficiency in 2026, I’m thrilled to share the perfect evergreen solution: align the communication abilities of your CX team with the preferences of modern clients. In other words, the majority of small and mid-sized businesses should consider utilizing now popular means of communication to address client inquiries/customer requests and generate leads with no hassle.

Historically, many businesses have utilized an inbound sales approach as their primary revenue generation strategy, which is why a robust system that handles inquiries and requests from potential buyers is mandatory for every client-centric company.

Over the last 50 years, customer service and contact centers have shifted from live fielding incoming calls to a mix of different channels, including email, live chats, messaging apps, and social media. Customer behavior has mimicked these changes with demands that now exert more pressure on companies, especially regarding its speed of response and availability on customer service channels.

Thus, it is essential to offer your consumers as many contact channels as you can successfully manage.

Texting takes over but phone calls remain

While in 2019 most clients preferred to communicate with businesses by phone, the trend has been steadily shifting towards texting. In some industries, the share of customers who would choose texting a brand over calling it reaches 75%.

Phone calls still play an important role, especially for older audiences and urgent issues, but they are no longer the dominant communication channel. While calls tend to drive high engagement, many businesses still fail to handle them effectively: 411 Locals report shows that small and mid-sized businesses miss about 62% of calls, costing them conversions and pushing customers toward competitors. As a result, relying on phone calls alone has become a risky strategy.

Phone call response rate statistics. Source: 411 Locals Report, 2016

Customer preferences have clearly shifted toward written, asynchronous channels. Texting and messaging are now widely expected for quick questions, appointments, and updates, while email remains the most commonly preferred channel for formal business communication.

Live chat and messengers have become the preferred option for general inquiries, with usage continuing to grow year over year. Today, winning customer communication is less about choosing a single “best” channel and more about being reachable where the customer already is.

Neil Patel—a well-known digital marketer—mentioned during one of his podcasts that many people nowadays would rather message support or salespeople on social media than wait on the phone to communicate with them. This trend has now evolved into a standard business requirement.

There are benefits from the “text-shift” for sales and customer support teams as well. One sales rep can handle only one call at a time, but can address multiple incoming messages simultaneously. Therefore, in comparison to incoming calls, business messengers and social media might help you generate more sales in a similar timeframe.

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Going omnichannel: сustomer communication best practice

The best practice for strong communications in marketing is utilizing an omnichannel customer experience that connects traditional and popular contact channels to provide a seamless customer journey. While it is silly to deny the importance of fielding incoming calls from clients as a crucial part of business, the impact of social media and messaging platforms cannot be understated. Additionally, offering multiple customer contact channels alleviates the pressure on contact center staff and improves the lead generation process.

Thus, your sales and support team should employ messaging platforms—such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram Messaging—to engage with inquiries directly through chats. Moreover, these messengers and social media channels must be composed within a single interface to, systematize inquiries and visualize all channels at once.

Several incoming message management and communication marketing services have already found their way to the market.

For example, Umnico— an omnichannel messaging service for businesses —provides a robust platform to increase social media and messenger sales while enhancing user support. This multichannel messaging service supports the majority of communication channels including WhatsApp, Instagram Direct Messenger, Facebook Messenger, live chat, and it can be integrated within popular CRM platforms.

Umnico — All-in-one messaging platform with a sales funnel feature

CRM integration can help ensure that leads generated through your lead ad campaigns receive the attention they need in a prompt manner, increasing conversion rates.

A variety of alternative message marketing solutions are available as well, but I can define Umnico as the most affordable option that supports both voice and text-based communication. Furthermore, the solution boasts easy-to-use yet intelligent communication management functionality that can benefit small business endeavors.

Trends in conversational commerce for 2026

People who use messaging on their path to purchase do so for a range of reasons: trust, reassurance, and accountability. Therefore, an incoming message will likely represent the first touchpoint in your customer journey, and businesses should utilize text-based communications to address essential and common client requests—automatically generating leads, scoring them, and then transferring qualified leads directly to sales reps to close the deal at a higher rate.

Instant messengers can also be used to effectively follow up on or re-engage leads, with this approach deemed less intrusive than hot calls and more responsive than email.

However, offering customers a way to complete their entire journey within a single conversation is essential in 2026. Just as implementing the following trends in customer communication.

Agentic commerce. Customer service has moved beyond scripted chatbots to autonomous AI agents that can provide meaningful action, more than just basic responses. These bots can check availability, place orders, process refunds, update delivery details, and resolve issues end-to-end — all within the customer communication channel, without any human-agent involvement.
Built-in checkout inside chat. Every extra click kills momentum. Built-in payment flows in channels like WhatsApp Business and Instagram DMs let customers browse, pay, and confirm orders without leaving the conversation, turning chats into full-fledged sales environments rather than pre-sale touchpoints.
Collecting data by design. With third-party cookies fully phased out, conversations have become the most valuable data source. Preferences, intent, timing, and objections are now shared directly by customers in chat, enabling precise personalization and automation without privacy trade-offs.
Increased cost effectiveness. Companies and enterprises around the globe are aiming to reduce their contact center load with a mix of customer contact channels, including social media comments, business messengers, and live chat —creating a flow of incoming messages that both contact centers or sole entrepreneurs can process with decent efficiency.

Top AI-powered customer communication tools

To maintain high contact center efficiency, a company’s stack of channels must be unified. Here is top software for the job.

	Best fit	What sets it apart
Zendesk AI	Enterprise support	Uses intent detection and AI-based routing to direct complex queries to the right human or automated flow
Umnico	SMBs & mid-market	Unifies WhatsApp Business and over 25 messaging apps and social media into a single inbox at a low cost with automation and AI-bot capabilities
Intercom	SaaS & product-led growth	AI agent speaking 45 languages trained on internal docs autonomously resolves up to ~80% of repetitive support inquiries
Front	Sales & account Teams	Shared inbox with automation and “human-in-the-loop” workflows for deals that require trust and personalization
Gorgias	Ecommerce brands	Deep Shopify integration, AI-assisted replies, order lookups, refunds, and channel-native messaging.

While there is no universal “best” platform, teams must choose an option that is the best fit for their set of communication channels, is most cost-effective at turning conversations into revenue and has the lowest Cost Per Resolution (CPR).

Frequently asked questions

Let’s work out answers to some of the most common questions about current trends in customer communication.

How does omnichannel communication improve contact center efficiency?

Omnichannel communication centralizes all customer touchpoints into one dashboard. Such integration allows agents to maintain context across email, messaging apps, and social media, reducing resolution times and boosting contact center efficiency by over 40%.

Why should I use WhatsApp for Business for lead generation?

With a 98% open rate, WhatsApp for Business provides a direct line to consumers that email cannot match. What’s more, features like "Click-to-WhatsApp" ads allow businesses to turn social media scrollers into verified leads in a single tap.

Can AI in customer service replace human agents?

That’s unlikely. In 2026, AI in customer service is used to "augment" humans. AI handles routine inquiries and data entry, freeing up human agents to focus on complex, high-empathy interactions that drive long-term loyalty.

What are the most popular messaging platforms for businesses in 2026?

Globally, WhatsApp for Business leads the market, followed closely by Instagram Direct Messenger and Facebook Messenger. For B2B, LinkedIn and Slack Connect have become standard messaging platforms for real-time collaboration.

Summing things up

The digital transformations described in the article affect all aspects of our lives, including how we interact with our clients. As messaging can play a role during every stage of the customer journey, you should learn how to introduce your products or services through chats. Likewise, your brand should work to operate multiple channels all in one place to sell your products and provide customer service by scheduling appointments, arranging delivery, sharing information about new offers, and so much more.

Luckily, modern message marketing solutions are available to cope with and successfully overcome related communication management challenges. For example, Umnico, an all-in-one messenger, enables seamless omnichannel consumer communication with 25+ messaging apps and social media platforms, and has reach-out-first and automation capabilities such as triggers, auto-replies, and chatbots. Connect your messaging channels to Umnico and manage all conversations in a single interface — try the platform for free during a trial period.