In a study performed by Oracle on customer experience, 74% of executives reported that they see a direct link between the quality of their customer experience and the rates of loyal customers. We all know that customer loyalty should be the goal — considering loyal customers spend 67% more than new customers. How does business text messaging fit into that goal?
Let me paint you a picture:
You order a new piece of furniture for your home, wait two weeks for it to arrive, and as you start to assemble it, you realize… it’s missing three vital parts. Great. Now you have to deal with the headache of reaching out to customer service: waiting on hold for an hour, drafting up an email that (hopefully) receives a reply within 3-5 business days. Or, you can pick up your phone and shoot a text right to a customer service agent. Which would you choose?
Business text messaging offers a solution to customers (and not just those with phone anxiety like me). Ultimately, it provides a better customer experience, which lends way to more loyal customers for your business.
Let’s take a look at five specific ways business text messaging improves your customer experience:
1. Texting lets your customers send you product or service questions.
Have you ever gotten stuck in the maze of an FAQ page? Link after link to the next self-service article and you still can’t find the answer to your question. In those moments, you don’t want to have to pick up the phone and call customer service just to ask a simple question.
But, business text messaging gives customers a simple way to send a quick question and get a quick answer, improving their customer experience and saving them hassle.
2. Texting encourages personal and effective communication with your customers.
Let’s be honest. The formality of emailing can get tiresome. When you want a direct answer, it’s a pain to write up an email with all its bells and whistles. You obsess about how to avoid sounding passive aggressive in your request, then you’re paranoid that a misplaced comma will create the wrong impression. It feels less personal and takes more time.
Texting cuts through the formality with your customers. It lets your agents create a friendly upbeat tone as they help customers. And, you can have an active two-way conversation. Texting your customers empowers agents and customers to solve problems, ask questions, and get real-time reactions.
3. It lets you send quick, helpful reminders to assure your customers you care.
Proactive customer service leads to a better customer experience. It helps your contact center avoid pain points with customers and saves customers time and energy by anticipating their needs. How do you proactively show customers you care? Business text messaging lets you send helpful tips and reminders and check in on customers in a non-intrusive way.
86% of small business owners who use text messages to communicate with customers have seen higher levels of engagement. Texting your customers can support your goal to build customer loyalty.
4. Business text messaging makes gathering customer feedback easy.
72% of customers will share a positive experience with 6 or more people. On the other hand, if a customer is not happy, 13% of them will share their experience with 15 or more people. In general, customers won’t tell you they’re unhappy. In fact, only 1 in 26 unhappy customers will actually complain. The rest? They just leave.
Gathering customer feedback is an essential piece of crafting a strong customer experience. And text messaging makes it easy! How many surveys have you sent by email that go to a customer’s spam folder or quickly get deleted? The fact is, customers are 4x more likely to respond to a text than an email and will do so quickly. Use text messaging to gather feedback to quickly gather more responses from your customers.
5. Text messaging customers improves your agent efficiency.
Your contact center agents have a lot to juggle during a shift — maintain their KPIs, avoid abandoned calls, answer x amount of emails, keep customers happy …it’s overwhelming. Imagine how discouraging it is for agents to be on the phone with customers, and then to watch another call come in, go on hold, and maybe get abandoned. In these moments, both your customers and your agents lose.
But, with business text messaging, agents can get a conversation started with a customer quickly and answer questions while also answering phones and emails to other customers. When you can text customers immediately, customers avoid waiting on hold or for a call back. These few saved minutes can save you from a bad customer review.