Companies, plagued with unanswered outbound calls, have quickly figured out that phone calls are, well, intrusive. But, they’re realizing online texting is both welcomed and informative.
Imagine this: you have customers in your auto shop who’ve taken time to drive to talk face to face with you about an issue with their car. As you’re talking through the complexities of their engine, the phone is incessantly ringing in the background. Call after call is interrupting your conversation. You know that each missed phone call is potentially a bad online review. And, more than likely, it’s just a customer calling for an ETA on their repair.
But, with online texting, service departments can shave off over 40 hours of work every month, cut back on interruptions, and build customer trust.
Building Customer Trust with Online Texting
The auto service industry measures success by the level of customer trust. What do you do if, as you’re inspecting cars coming in, you discover more issues? Giving your employees’ the ability to effectively communicate these issues is key to profit.
And phone calls and email just aren’t getting the job done.
Don’t feel discouraged. Customer service-oriented businesses, like auto service providers, can increase sales and improve customer satisfaction by adding online texting. When you integrate online texting solutions with your existing business number, your text-enabled teams have direct access to your customers. Think about how much easier it is to keep customers up to date if your employees can text pictures or questions to customers.
The reality is that phone calls and email are slow and inconvenient. Customers and businesses are more inclined to dodge phone calls. Why?
- You’re busy when the call comes in and can’t answer immediately
- Your customers don’t recognize your number – I mean, 8 in 10 Americans don’t answer a call from an unknown number…
- You and your customers just don’t have time for the small talk that precedes the issue
Let’s be real, for everyone involved, phone calls can be annoying — especially if it’s just a call about something simple. I can personally say I’ve let many phone calls go to voicemail to avoid the awkwardness. But, what does online texting offer?
Texting Case Study Example: Big O Tires
In a recent survey, Textel client Big O Tires proved how much time could be saved and profit won by switching customer outreach from phone calls to online texting.
On average, Big O Tires services around 1,064 cars per month. They determined that 40% of those customers weren’t present during repairs, forcing their service department to contact them twice on average. That’s two phone calls for every customer just to get approvals on next steps or provide updates. And just think about how many of those went to voicemail and wasted more time for their employees.
Big O Tires compared sending a text vs. making a call when contacting these 435 absent customers. Here’s what they found:
- The average customer responds to a voicemail in 37.5 minutes
- The average customer responds to a text message in 14.35 minutes
- Average time spent calling a customer: 3 minutes
- Average time spent sending a text message: 1 minute
In addition to those findings, after reviewing each tire center’s Textel usage reports, we found these gained efficiencies with online texting:
- Textel saves 26.82 hours a month on average in gaining customer approvals
- Textel saves 13.3 hours a month on average in sending repair updates
The bottom line? Online texting saved Big O Tires 40.12 hours a month and they were praised for a “quicker response and easier selling” in their outreach to customers.
Putting Customer Service in the Fast Lane
Not only does online texting benefit your business by saving time and making for easier upsells, it also has a huge benefit for your customers. Here’s how:
1. Online texting keeps customers in the loop.
Customers want to be involved. Especially when businesses work closely on their property — like tech repair, building contractors, or auto service providers — customers want to see firsthand what you’re doing.
With online texting, you can keep customers informed on the issues and send real-time updates on progress made. And, if you use a business texting platform, you have a historical record of past customer interactions. So, your service team will always be able to refer to the account and conversation history for customer context.
2. Send appointment reminders with online texting.
Configure auto-triggered texts in advance to remind customers of upcoming appointments or schedule changes. Then, customers don’t have to remember when it’s time for their appointment, like their next oil change. With that, you can avoid costly no-shows by allowing customers to reschedule via text. Your service can stay busy and fast for customers at all times.
3. Promote new deals and offers with online texting.
Dealerships can use keywords and send mass blast texts to generate new sales and promote new offerings. SMS messaging lets your team reach way more potential customers than phone calls ever could.
Ready to start texting? Let’s connect.
This post was originally published on April 15, 2021 and was updated on March 17, 2022.