Investing in new technology for your company is daunting. Your executive team wants to be sure the money is worth spending. You want to have all the best features included. You need quality design that integrates with existing software. It has to be approved by everyone — your IT, sales, marketing, support teams all have to be in agreement. When you’re getting a new text messaging service for business, how do you find the balance with all the things?
Take a deep breath — it’s possible. Firstly, it shouldn’t be too tricky to agree that your business needs a text messaging service. It’s the future of customer service. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2025, 80% of customer service teams will be using SMS and messaging. But, it’s not just useful for customer service. Business text messaging can benefit everyone in the organization. And, your customers want it. Here’s what I mean:
So, it’s time to start your journey to find the best text messaging service for your brand. To help, we’ve gathered together some essential steps and features to make sure you’re getting the right text messaging service for business.
Step 1: Get buy in
Buying new tech is a lot to ask for. So first, get a text messaging service for business that meets multiple departments’ needs. New technology can take some time to adopt. Before you dedicate the resources for onboarding, strategy and building new SOPs, make sure you have buy-in from every team that the new service will impact.
Here’s how in three easy steps:
1. Send out surveys
Every team will have different wish list items for the service you commit to. For example, your sales team may want a service that helps them manage opt-in and opt-out lists with customers so they know they can confidently send out promotional texts without legal trouble. But, your customer service team cares more about having a text messaging service that integrates well with your CRM so they have a better sense of each customer’s history.
So, send out surveys to each team to gather the list of “must-have” and “nice to have” features so you can be well informed as you shop for a service. Be sure to gather information from customers as well to get a sense for where this channel would fit into your customer experience.
2. Set a couple meetings to talk through hopes and dreams together
After gathering survey data, have managers of each team meet together to swap results. Give time to talk through what each team ideally wants from the text messaging service. Be sure to share hopes and dreams and address potential pain points the new tech could solve or bring about. Spend time envisioning the future use of the service as a company to know you’re all on the same page about how it will fit within your customer experience and your larger company goals.
3. Map out training needs
Let me tell ya — adding new software can be a nightmare if you don’t have the right help along the way. A new text messaging service for business may cause some upheaval to your internal processes. And, it will definitely require a re-education for existing and new employees. It’s not always comfy to be taught new things.
Before you commit to a technology, get information on whether the company you’re buying from will provide training and help tools for your employees…or if you’re left on your own. How much will the company be involved during implementation? Are they flexible if you need to make changes and tweaks along the way? Will you get personalized training for your employees? Or will they just send you training material and videos to teach your team yourselves?
Get all the facts about the process of implementation and training. Then, map out with your management team to establish how training will work for sales, marketing, customer service, etc.
Step 2: Get the right features
Once you have everyone’s wish list items, now you need to wade through the massive lists of features to figure out which features are essential to have. Well, let me help you out on the technical side of things to prioritize some essential features. Look for:
Opt-in/opt-out management — so you can stay compliant and organized.
Contact management — so your customer history and contact information is easily populated when agents are interacting with a customer.
1:1 and 1:many texting — so your sales, marketing, and customer service teams can chat with just one customer at a time, or send out blasts to all of them!
Detailed reporting with historical data and analytics, preferably integrated into your native CCaaS platform — so your management team can track customer satisfaction and metrics across all of your channels.
Automations like bots, keywords, autoresponders and even things like triggered sends and templated responses could fall in this category — so your team can simplify processes and reach more customers efficiently.
APIs for customization and integration to use with your existing systems — so you’re not forced to change *everything* with the implementation of texting.
Step 3: Make sure it’s easy to use
It’s essential to test out multiple services to find the software that will fit your company best. More than anything, make sure the text messaging service is easy to use for your business and your customers. Texting is supposed to be efficient, and effective.
As of now, 77% of consumers have a positive perception of businesses who use text messaging services. And ideally, 64% of consumers prefer texting instead of a voice call for customer service needs and another 81% are frustrated being tied to a phone or computer in order to reach a company. The reason customers prefer texting is because it’s fast. As seen in the graphic below — it takes mere seconds for someone to respond to a text, while email takes much longer.
What’s the point of adding texting to your business if it’s going to be clunky and slow to use. The goal should be to find a system that is easy to use and well designed. Test out different services before implementation to make sure that it’s easy to use for your team and for your customers to make for the smoothest transition and best customer experience.
As many as 97% of Americans own a cell phone, with U.S. cell phone adoption nearly doubling over the last 17 years. Over 2020 and 2021, smartphone usage specifically has skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic, with most people relying on texting to stay in touch. Businesses have taken notice. More and more companies have adopted business SMS to reach their customers.
But it’s incredibly important that businesses stay compliant with their use of business SMS. Customers expect that you respect boundaries and follow best etiquette… and the law requires it. We’re here to help you stay in line with standards, help you follow best practices, and ultimately, help you retain more customers.
If you reach out to customers via phone, you have to be compliant through the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). Ultimately, this law covers what types of interactions need written consent from your customers. But still, it can be pretty daunting to figure out what is or isn’t appropriate when using texting for your business.
To help you wade through the specifics of the law, we’ve put together some helpful guidelines and advice so you can stay compliant with your business SMS and grow a healthy relationship with your customers.
The Basics: Some Do’s and Don’ts of Business SMS Etiquette
How do you want your company to be perceived by your customers? Follow texting etiquette to protect the customer relationship and maintain customer satisfaction. Stay conscious of how your texting is being received by your customers. For instance, sending a text to customers every day would likely leave them with a bad taste for your brand. Respect basic standards to avoid driving away your customers.
Get Consent
Before you even start texting, you have to get permission from your customers. According to the TCPA, customers mustgive businesses “express written consent” before that business sends them a business SMS message. Even the first one!
Make sure customers opt into texts from you before sending anything. Use a basic keyword response or a web form to receive permission from customers. Consider getting a double opt-in by giving customers one more chance to confirm they want texts from you within your initial text to them.
For instance, in your initial text to your customer, send them a reminder like this: “You’ve opted into SMS services. Please reply with YES to confirm. Text STOP to unsubscribe.” This lets customers know exactly what they’re signing up for. Opt-in doesn’t need to be complicated, but it is essential.
Introduce Yourself
Once you have permission to text, give them a heads up of who they’re interacting with. Not only is it just courteous, but it’ll help you keep spam away from your name. Your customers may see a text come from an unknown number and feel very wary of responding to it. Introduce your business in texts to customers to ensure a better customer experience. Some state laws even require it.
When you send an initial text, include your business or program name. Maybe even have the exact employee who’s interacting with a customer include their name for a personal touch. In addition to stating your name, it’s also a business SMS compliance guideline to include your contact information. If your customer has a question about a promo text or a sale, always make sure they know they can call you to verify the text.
Stay Honest
We get enough dishonest design and marketing in the world. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve clicked on an email, only to then have to sign up for a newsletter or fork over my credit card info just to get the promo. How often do you get spammy sales calls to your phone? If you’re like me, it’s almost daily. We’re all a bit wary of being duped by companies trying to sell us things over the phone. You don’t want your company to be seen as one of these dishonest brands.
Your customers want to know that they can trust you to be honest with them. To stay compliant and trustworthy, be honest and clear with your customers over business SMS texts. Be especially careful to avoid certain sales and promotional information sent over text.
For example, don’t hide a sales pitch within a text giving an appointment reminder. And, don’t share inaccurate information over text to get a customer to call you back. Stay honest and your customers will rely on you.
Respect Boundaries: How to Not Annoy Your Customers
Staying compliant with business SMS requires you to respect your customers’ personal boundaries. No one is going to like getting a telemarketing phone call at 10 p.m. And, no one wants a business to text them more than their best friend or their mom does. That’s for sure not going to make a sale. Staying compliant includes avoiding annoying customers. Find the balance with your customers to keep them interested in your brand.
The Texting Window
It may seem common sense, but your customers don’t want a text from you in the middle of the night about an upcoming appointment or an issue with their order. According to the TCPA, companies can only text customers between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. This is what we call the “texting window.”
Regardless of where your company is located, you can’t text customers outside of this window. In some states, there may be even more limitations as to when you can and can’t text customers, so verify the specifics to make sure your business’s SMS stays compliant.
Honor Opt-Outs
Don’t be clingy with your customers. Always respect the customer’s desire to opt out of texts with you. In order to stay compliant, you have to give customers the option to stop hearing from you. And then, you need to leave them alone. With every text sent, give customers the chance to text a keyword at any point to take them off your lists for future text blasts. Perhaps let customers text a variety of different keywords — like STOP, CANCEL, OPT OUT — to make opt-out as simple as possible.
After that point, those customers who have opted out shouldn’t receive any texts from you unless they give consent again. So, it’s really important that you keep records of everyone who has opted out. Some business SMS platforms, like Textel, manage the opt-out list for you and won’t even let you send a text to a customer on that list, even if you accidentally try.
Business SMS compliance doesn’t need to be tricky. Respect your customer, keep it simple, and seek a healthy customer experience for success.
The average person checks their phone160 times a day, and nearly half of people say they have to check in on their device before their feet hit the floor for the day. Text message marketing is the clearest route towards customer engagement.
It may surprise you that business texting has a 209% higher response rate than email, phone calls, and even Facebook messages. This is an unmatched level of customer engagement.
For years, marketers have relied on email to reach customers. Email offers a huge user base, a massive return on investment (ROI), incredible speed, stable costs, and the ability to own the relationship with customers. Why make a switch to text message marketing? Because, text messaging enables companies to deliver fast and convenient service. And, it results in an average of 25x more ROI than email campaigns. Crazy, right?
Text messaging allows for faster communication in real time between your business and your customers. This supports your customer service team in reaching customers quickly.
Text message marketing increases sales. People read 95% of all texts they receive, meaning SMS helps you reach a highly engaged audience interested in investing in your company.
That’s all good and dandy. But, how do you know whether text message marketing is right for your company and your customer base? To help you decide, we’ve outlined 6 signs that tell you it’s time to invest in text message marketing.
1. Your IVR is bloated and your abandon rate is sky high.
Research says the average call center picks up ~200 calls per day, ~1,000 per week, ~4,000 per month, and misses 48 calls per month. That’s nearly 50 customers lost each month. No one likes to get stuck in phone call purgatory with holding music on repeat. Most customers in that position just abandon their efforts or spend their time clicking through your IVR system to kill time.
Text messaging gives customers another option. If your IVR is filled to the brim with customers waiting in line to talk with an agent, allow customers to deflect to SMS. Then, your customer service team can help customers within a text thread to answer their questions, provide updates, or schedule appointments fast and flexibly.
2. You want to interact with customers on a human-to-human, 1:1 level.
Text message marketing is a personal form of communication. Think about it: text messages are more relaxed than a phone call and significantly less intrusive. For most people, texting is a form of communication they use with people they know. And, text message marketing is far less stuffy than blasted email campaigns.
For customer service and for marketing teams, text messaging lets you interact with your customers on a 1:1 level. For example, instead of calling your customer to remind them of an upcoming appointment, you can send a quick text message that they can read when it’s convenient for them. Or, send out your promos and coupons via text. This process can even be automated to save you time and money. Then, if a customer responds back, your texting team can be there to help.
Text messaging gives you a convenient way to still maintain a personal relationship with your customers.
3. You need to reach a ton of people, really fast.
Text messages have amazing engagement numbers — we’re talking 98% of customers opening messages within just 3 minutes. Text message marketing is an incredibly effective way to reach a lot of customers fast.
If you’re like me, promotional emails get archived or missed in your email account. Text messages are just hard to ignore. They immediately pop up on your phone screen. And, they sit in the same inbox next to a message from your mom and your best friend. How can you not open it?
Maybe you need to send a proactive blast message about a sale or a promo. Perhaps you want to send out a mass of appointment reminders to customers. Text messaging lets you and it lets you know that you’re actually reaching your customer base.
4. You need to know more about your customer satisfaction.
Your customer satisfaction score (CSAT) is one of the most important indicators of customer intentions and customer loyalty. Knowing your CSAT helps your entire business predict growth and revenue. Your marketing team needs to know where to lean in to best reach customers. And, your customer service team needs to know where there is dissatisfaction with their service level. But, how does text messaging help you track your CSAT score?
Text message marketing, as mentioned earlier, lets you reach a lot of your customers fast. If you’re unsure how your customers feel about your brand, texting customers may be the easiest and most reliable means of collecting that data. Use text message marketing to send out CSAT and Net Promoter Score surveys to customers who have opted into communications from you. Or have your contact center team send them after a customer service interaction.
5. You need a fast and flexible way to chat with customers.
Customers today want fast and reliable customer service that doesn’t interrupt their daily lives. Text messaging allows your customer service team to deliver that kind of service exactly. Texting is immediate, meaning your agents can have a real time conversation with a customer to help them solve an issue.
Over text, agents can answer questions and quickly send helpful self-service articles or how-guides in real time. With texting, customers and agents can send images and videos back and forth to reach issue resolution faster. Yes, the same can be done over a live chat. But, in addition, texting gives customers and agents flexibility.
Customers don’t have to be stuck in front of their computer to get their issue resolved. They can be out grocery shopping or be on a road trip and actively get customer service help. Text message marketing is easily accessible and incredibly fast, pros that no other channel can offer.
6. You need to grow your customer base.
Text message marketing lets you own the relationship with your subscribers. What does that mean? No data privacy issues and no third-party intervention. When you collect a phone number or email address from a customer and have received opt-in permission from customers, you own the information in those text threads. That means you can communicate with your opted-in subscribers at any time without interruption.
Unlike on some email and messaging apps, algorithms can’t get in the way of deciding when or how those customers will see your message to them. With text message marketing, you’re guaranteed to grow your specific customer base and communicate with them specifically.
According to Consumer Reports, 75% of customers say they’re “highly annoyed” when they can’t get someone on the phone in a reasonable amount of time. Long wait times are a pain for customers. In fact, lack of speed and effectiveness is among the top customer frustrations in the U.S. Make use of IVR deflection to SMS texting to reduce this frustration.
It’s safe to assume most customers have experienced the irritating hold music that just goes on and on and on with no faster way to get a hold of an agent on the other end. Within the call center, though, agents are all hard at work, desperately trying to get through the never ending list of waiting calls.
Everyone loses. Customers are annoyed dealing with the long wait. Agents are overworked and exhausted by the incessant phone calls. And, managers stress as their quarterly KPIs and metrics take a hit. How do IVR and texting offer a solution?
How Texting Fits into your IVR Strategy
IVR is an incredibly useful tool, up to a point. It lets your team gather customer information, route customers to the correct agent or department, and offer customers some self-service tools. This naturally manages high call volumes. But, what happens to those customers who need to talk to a real person and not a recording or a bot? What can you do when customers make it through the IVR menu and may still be sitting on hold for too long?
Text can be used as an IVR bailout. Imagine this: your IVR has directed a customer to your customer service call team. Your agents are trapped on phone calls dealing with some tricky customer problems. But, on your IVR, you have another option. It tells your customer, “Call volumes are unusually high and wait-times are long, would you like to continue this conversation over text? If so, press four now.”
With a push of the button, customers no longer have to sit on the phone and wait. Instead, they’re directed to your texting team — a group of agents ready and able to help customers over text. Your customers can get the help they need with flexibility and ease. Sounds great, right?
So, how do you provide IVR deflection for customers in a way that best supports their customer experience? We’ve got 4 best practices for IVR deflection to SMS to make the practice smooth.
Best Practice #1: Know Customer Intent
Before moving customers to text, gather basic info to know their intent in reaching out to customer service. Knowing what the customer wants from their interaction with customer services is vital. Before IVR deflection, make sure the IVR gathers customer contact information so the agent helping them can pull up customer history prior to responding to them. Agents can then go into the interaction well prepared to make the conversation more personalized.
If possible, get a sense for the kind of issue a customer is experiencing. For complex issues, it won’t be possible to get specifics. But, customers can at least let you know in the IVR whether this is a billing issue, shipping issue, product issue, etc.
Best Practice #2: Get Opt-in Approval
Once a customer has chosen to move from IVR to text, your agents are able to send an initial response to the customer’s question. But, they’re typically restricted from continuing a conversation in the future without approval from the customer. Sending texts to customers without an invitation can lead to legal trouble and can just get annoying for your customers.
To avoid annoying them, automatically send an opt-in survey to customers that have chosen IVR deflection to SMS. This way, within the text thread, they can approve any continued conversations with your team via text.
Best Practice #3: Map Out the Full Experience
IVR deflection to SMS needs to find its place in your overall customer journey. Map out when you will give customers the option to text within your overall IVR journey.
It may serve you to introduce the option of text later in the customer IVR journey. Perhaps you don’t have a full texting team set up yet and are wary of overwhelming them. Maybe you want to be sure you’ve given customers self-service options first. Or, you want to gather as much info as you can about the customer’s issue before you let them hop off the call. The IVR journey will look different for every team, so take time to analyze your priorities and needs and plot out IVR deflection to fit your ideal customer journey.
Best Practice #4: Test, Test, and Re-test
IVR is tricky and there will inevitably be hiccups in the early stages of rolling out IVR deflection. It is not worth rolling out IVR to text if your customers will end up with a worse customer experience as a result. Take time to test out the workflow and technology over and over.
Test it yourself and from different phones. Test out different use cases by having agents role play as customers. Poke holes in the testing phase to identify where it needs fixing. How else would you know about any unforeseen kinks in the process?
Imagine if you could send a message to all of your customers at once…and they actually open and respond to it. How? It doesn’t matter how many email campaigns you send to your customers, it still feels like only a quarter of them see the message. What’s another option?
If you’re like me, the Promotions tab on your Gmail account is stuffed full with unread messages from business (nearly 8,000 for me — agh!). But, my text messages are all read almost as soon as I receive them. I’m not alone. SMS marketing texts have a 98% open rate compared to email marketing. And, as many as 60% of customers read those texts within 1-5 minutes after receiving them. That means that when you send texts to customers, all the hard work going into your messaging actually pays off.
Business texting and SMS marketing services guarantee better customer experience. Consumers today want convenience, flexibility, speed, and personal service. Texting answers all of these demands. As many as 75% of clients want to receive offers via SMS and 91% of consumers claim they’d opt-in for text messages from brands. That’s huge!
So, how do you harness all of that potential and expand the power of your SMS marketing services? Read through these 6 tips to boost your customer experience and satisfaction.
1. Send Exclusive Deals and Offers via Text
One of the best ways to incentivize customers to opt into your SMS marketing services is to use texting as a way to deliver exclusive deals and offers. Send out text blasts to send promotions and info on sales. Or, pair your welcome email to a new client with a welcome text. This makes for a nice surprise. Include an exclusive offer as incentive for signing up and send the discount code or link via SMS. Your customers will appreciate the deal and will be more inclined to make a purchase.
2. Let Customer Book or Alter Appointments via Text
I’ve got phone phobia. I hate making phone calls, which is surprising considering I used to work in a call center. But, if I can avoid making a call to customer service or to book a doctor’s appointment, I will. Offer the option for customers to book and alter appointments over text.
With this, you get rid of the hassle of tracking down customers to remind them of upcoming appointments by sending a quick text. You don’t have to deal with no-shows or scheduling phone calls and your customers will prefer the convenience.
Instead, let customers schedule, confirm, cancel, or change an appointment by responding. Use simple keywords for customers to reply “YES,” “CANCEL,” or as the image above shows “C” to confirm and to ensure appointments are remembered and accurate in your schedule. If you offer two-way texting (which you should), your customers can also make edits to their appointment with a few texts back and forth with a customer service agent.
3. Answer FAQs and Offer Service
Use your SMS marketing services to support existing customers. When you onboard a new customer or send out a mass text, give customers a way to reach out to you. Believe it or not, customers today don’t just want to receive texts from you, they want to be able to text you back. At least 78% of people wish they could have a text conversation with a business. Just as you would with booking and changing appointments with customers, extend SMS into your customer service and support.
Assign a texting team to support customers, answer FAQs via text, and be available for help. Help customers know they can reach you by deflecting calls to text through your IVR or live chat software. Your customers will appreciate the ease and flexibility of the service and your call center agents will love the lowered call volume.
It can be pretty scary to make a big purchase, place an order, and trust that the package will make it to your door. Especially with expensive items — a new mattress, a kitchen appliance, a TV — I’m much more anxious about online orders and shipping. You hear horror stories about items never making it, or getting stolen from off a porch. Relieve that stress and open communications with your customers with SMS marketing services.
With an order confirmation, give customers the option to receive confirmation by text and get shipping updates along the way. That way, customers stay in the loop. They can see if that TV shipping from New Jersey is on its way and can plan their life around the arrival of their purchase.
5. Build in a Personal Touch by Recognizing Special Occasions
Texting lets your business reach customers in a personal way. As I said before, customers are much more likely to see and open a message received by text. You can reach that phone that’s always in their back pocket to help them feel seen and remembered by you.
Just as you would with a welcome offer, send out texts to recognize special occasions. Give customers an exclusive deal on their birthday or on the anniversary of their sign up and let customers know about the gift with a text. Show your customers they matter by sending a little love by text.
6. Gather Feedback and Reviews
How can you really support your customers’ experience if you don’t know what they want? Customer feedback and reviews are vital to navigate your future business strategy. You have to see where you can improve and assess customer satisfaction to understand internal operations and goals. And you have to know what they like and don’t like in your product to set your product roadmap. Then you have to know their expectations and future demands to create relevant content. Every part of your business needs customer feedback for future profitability.
Ultimately, reviews not only have the power to influence consumer decisions but can strengthen a company’s credibility. Reviews have the power to gain customer trust, and they encourage people to interact with the company. In fact, according to recent surveys by BrightLocal, as many as 98% of consumers check the reviews of a business before engaging with it. And, 75% of consumers take into account the number of positive reviews before engaging with a business. How do you gather that feedback?
SMS marketing services provide an easy way to gather customer feedback and reviews. Send out a simple one-step survey to assess customer satisfaction. Or, after a customer completes a purchase, shoot out a text with a link to review. Maybe pair the completion of those surveys and reviews with a deal on a future purchase to gain participation. You’ll be more likely to hear from customers and will get valuable insight to improve your customer experience.
