Text messaging is a communications channel that EVERY business should be considering.
With any business initiative – it’s important to look at it from multiple angles. How will it impact the organization’s:
- Competitive position?
- Bottom line?
- Profile/image?
- Management and staff? Will it add complexity and workload?
- Customers and their experience with the company?
Your Customers
You don’t have a business without customers … so this is a good place to start.
Convenience
An automated response texting solution means that your customer can send a text to your business at their convenience … any time of the day or night. It also means that they can stop and restart conversations when it’s convenient for them.
Self-Service
Texting is a great entry point for self-service capabilities. Many people prefer to do things themselves, whether it’s booking appointments, providing information required for a service quotation, updating their profile and many other things. Customers aren’t put ‘ON HOLD’ … customer satisfaction is increased.
Preferred by many
Texting is a preferred communications channel for many people. Not all, of course, but a significant number. For many of your customers, it’s the primary way they interact with others on their mobile devices. Texting is also non-threatening; some people avoid face-to-face or voice interactions because it can be awkward and uncomfortable. Texting helps build trust and familiarity.
Easy for everyone
Texting is easy for most people; it’s the most-used app on smartphones. What this means is that most people (a wide demographic, from youth to elderly in all income groups) are comfortable with this technology and use it on a regular basis. Very little training, if any, is required! Properly set up systems are intuitive and easy to use. Text messaging allows for natural, everyday language to be used: no long URLs or “asking the question in the right way” is required! I can send a text to a business (that is text-enabled) asking “I need directions!” and the system can automatically recognize that and return a map to the customer.
Your Staff
Critical front-line people that directly interface with your customer.
Relieved
Your team recognizes that a text-messaging channel is beneficial for the business – because they all use it regularly and customers are asking for it.
Fulfilled
It’s tedious and frustrating to continue answering the same, simple questions that customers call in about constantly. If you can off-load a portion of these calls to automation, that frees up your staff to focus on the customer issues where their expertise is required. Staff are more engaged because the tedious and unnecessary communications are reduced.
Familiar
Your staff already uses text messaging personally; they understand what it does and how it does it. Training is minimal because they already understand the concepts.
Prompt two-way communication is a critical part of a positive customer experience.
Text messaging is a preferred method of communication for many people.
Your Business
It makes sense for your organization.
Availability
An automated texting solution extends the availability of your business to respond to inquiries; it’s not limited to your business hours. The system is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year to respond to customers' concerns.
Efficiency
A portion of the common, ‘frequently-asked-questions’ can be handled by the automation, freeing up staff to be deployed to areas where their expertise can be utilized. As well, an operator can manage multiple text conversations effectively and simultaneously … this is challenging for voice calls. Also, there are some very cool capabilities relating to automatic registration and contact management that eliminate the need for data entry or import/export.
Effective
Text messaging is effective: studies have shown that people read messages within 3 minutes (on average). Other studies have shown that people engage with actionable links with a far greater frequency than email.
Image
Your organization’s image improves because people can connect with you using their preferred method. They recognize that you’re investing in the business to keep it current. Your brand image is enhanced. Any time that customer experience improves, customer satisfaction follows … and that’s good for your image.
Staff
When you need to reach staff … either individually, specific groups of staff, or your entire staff at one time … a texting solution ensures that they’ll receive it and read it. It’s far more effective and efficient than email or voice calls. This can have significant benefits when security conditions, critical notifications, and alerts are required. Communications are enhanced. Additionally, the privacy of your staff’s personal numbers is retained. Any business-related texting is facilitated with the system, with a full historic and searchable archive (that is typically not feasible on a mobile device).
Additionally, the privacy of your staff’s personal numbers is retained. Any business-related texting is facilitated with the system, with a full historic and searchable archive (that is typically not feasible on a mobile device).
Risk
With all of today’s technological advancements, it’s challenging to keep up to trends. The special challenge here is that increasingly people expect to be able to communicate with your business via text message. If your competitor already has this capability … you’re at a disadvantage and risk losing customers. Conversely, if you stay relevant by adopting text messaging, you stand to gain market share!
Opportunity
A recurring theme from the above points indicates that improvements in communication, customer experience and customer service can be realized through text messaging, however, there are other opportunities.
Contact capture: Too often businesses give discounts or provide coupons without requiring anything from the prospect. The very nature of the service means that you’ve captured the mobile telephone # of the person that has requested the discount or coupon (and their mobile device is the primary way that they will interface with your business, whether that’s by voice call, mobile website, social media or web search).
Product Knowledge: A simple link on a display can make it easy for your customer to get additional information about the product or brand. This opens the door to respond with an offer or a purchase link!
Revenue/e-commerce: Whether it’s in response to a display (either at your business or from some other source) or a broadcast to a group of customers … this capability is readily available.
Real-time promotion capture: If your customers respond to coupons, offers and discounts … this is a great way for them to be able to capture the offer (and by extension … you capture their telephone #!).
Engagement strategies: A simple way to engage with your customer is to send polls, contests, giveaways ... things that will resonate with your customer, strengthen relationships and build trust.
Achievable
It’s fair to think that adding a text-messaging solution will just be another thing that takes your time, adds to your responsibilities and increases complexity to your life.
It’s true that some systems are overly complex and it requires a lot of time, training and expense to implement. We believe that it’s easy to implement and get started with our solution … because people are already familiar with the concept of text-messaging, the simple concepts we teach are easily comprehended … often training and simple strategy conversations get you up and running within 30 minutes of the service availability.
It’s also fair to consider the cost. We have packages that give you 24/7/365 availability at pennies per hour; from a cost perspective, it’s obtainable for businesses of any size.
Cost is one thing … Value is another. As expressed above, the value (in terms of capabilities, business image, and opportunities) far outweighs the cost. There’s a cost associated with not implementing text messaging as a communications channel in your business relating to lost customers, competitive disadvantage, and customer experience.
A good website, with appropriate prospect capture capabilities, means NOTHING if you don’t respond! At a minimum, people want to know that the message was received.
Many small businesses promote customer service as their priority; this may be true, but if your engagement with a customer or a prospect isn’t responsive, the ‘customer experience’ may still be negative. A positive customer experience starts with excellent communication.
An appropriately prompt reply sends the message that:
- customer service is a priority
- communication is a priority
- someone is listening
About Pulse Retail Systems
We’ve been providing and managing technology solutions for over 40 years, with an emphasis on text message automation and retail inventory management. We have demonstrated strengths in customer service, automation, and scalable systems.
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