To keep up, companies must be ready for a vastly different marketing landscape, according to a survey by ContactBabel. Three trends will have the most influence going forward.

1. Instead of relying on phones, prospects and current customers will be perfectly comfortable with e-mail, text messages, instant messaging and other Web-based communications.

2. They’ll expect businesses to be equally adept, and they’ll expect answers 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

3. Blogs and Web-based communities, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, will increasingly influence prospects’ decisions to buy and existing customers’ decisions to keep buying.

To stay competitive, companies will have to recognize and incorporate these critical success factors:

• They’ll need to change the way incoming calls are handled, giving priority to higher-value customers.
• Prospects and customers will become less willing to wait on hold for answers.
• Customers will want to communicate in a variety of ways, not just on the phone.
• Marketing and service will become everyone’s job as customers will expect immediate and correct answers to their questions.
• Prospects and customers will expect the people they communicate with to be knowledgeable and empowered to make decisions.
• Traditional advertising will have less impact as peer review Web sites and social communities will help drive more buying decisions.

For more background, download “The Customer of the Future” study from ContactBabel-Downloads.com. (Registration required.)