Texting is a low-cost, flexible and reliable way to reach customers. So, businesses are jumping at the chance to text their customers. And we can see why! You’re more likely to reach your customer base through SMS messages than by email. In fact, texts are open and read at a rate of 98%, compared to a measly rate of 20% for emails.
But before you go ahead and add business texting, compliance is a critical topic to review. Privacy laws, laid out by the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA) and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), dictate how your business is allowed to interact with customers. Sure they sound daunting at the outset. But, these laws ultimately help you to protect your customers and to build an honest and healthy relationship with them.
First, the basics: what you need to know to stay compliant.
Before I dive into what you can be doing to manage your compliance, let’s review the legal ground rules you need to know to stay in the clear. First, what is the TCPA?
In 1991, the TCPA was created to protect consumers from scamming and spamming from businesses. Under the TCPA, any marketing phone calls and text messages have to follow certain standards to protect customer privacy. These standards protect the consumer, but they also grant your business and phone carriers more credibility, ensuring that you build an honest relationship with your customers and maintain healthy boundaries.
At a fundamental level, TCPA requires that you:
Get consent from your customers before messaging them and also provide a way for customers to opt out.
Disclose the full scope of your SMS communications honestly.
When you follow the best practices to stay compliant with TCPA standards, you’re legally safe. But managing and maintaining them for every customer communication can be tricky. So we’ve put together 5 things you should do to manage compliance and stay legal while texting your customers.
In the last two weeks, I’ve gotten an influx of spammy texts to my phone. But how do I identify that they’re spam texts? There’s always a tell-tale sign. I haven’t agreed to them. If you haven’t given permission to be messaged and if the text offers no way to opt-out, it’s guaranteed to be an illegitimate message. For this reason, and as mentioned by the TCPA, it’s super important to get consent from your customers before sending any messages. And always give them the option to opt-out of hearing from you again.
Sounds easy, no? The tricky part is keeping track of which customers gave permission and which customers have opted out of future messages. Whether you’re sending text blasts with marketing promotions or sending out product updates via a mass text, you have to be cautious to send messages to only the customers who have agreed to hear from you and to avoid customers who have explicitly asked not to receive any messages.
To do so, use opt-in and opt-out management and keep records of which customers you can contact. Life is also much easier with an SMS platform to support you. Some texting platforms can keep track of records for you, so that as soon as a customer responds with “STOP” or “CANCEL,” they’re removed from any opt-in lists, keeping you within TCPA compliance.
2. Automate Confirmation Texts for Double Opt-in
Getting an initial opt-in from your customers is legally essential according to the TCPA. But if you get double opt-in, you create an extra safeguard to protect your customer relationship. Think about it from a customer experience perspective. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been unaware that I gave a company consent to send me marketing emails.
Customers may not remember clicking the checkbox during their checkout giving you permission to text them. Then, when you start texting them, it may surprise them and, perhaps, negatively impact their perception of you. Double opt-in protects you from this by giving customers one more chance to give permission. In your initial text to your customers, include a keyword suggestion like “YES” that customers can respond with to verify they want to hear more from you.
To make it even simpler for your employees and your own management, automate these initial messages. As soon as customers finish a purchase order or request to hear from your customer service team, send an automated message to get a double opt-in. Then your system can know for sure which customers should be on the contact list.
3. Clearly Communicate all Terms and Conditions and Written Disclosures
Once a customer gives you permission to message them, TCPA requires you to be upfront and honest about the purpose of the message. Customers should always know what to expect from you. Include written disclosures and all terms and conditions in your initial text, whether it’s written into the actual text or if it’s linked out.
To stay on top of this, each opt-in message should include info like:
Your business name — introduce yourself!
Purpose of messaging — is it a marketing message? An appointment reminder? State your purpose!
Expected frequency of texts per day, week or month — how often are they going to get messages from you? Be honest.
Access to your terms and conditions — sharing your terms and conditions is a smart, compliant way to remind subscribers about your legal efforts.
Instructions for requesting help — make sure customers know how to reach you and get questions answered.
Instructions for opting out — like I said, always give customers a chance to opt-out.
In the US and Canada, the mobile carriers Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint have established a 10DLC program to regulate application-to-person (A2P) texting from businesses to their subscribers (your customers. The idea behind it is to add transparency into how A2P business texting is used. And that, in turn, helps the carriers provide better protections to your customers and eliminate spam (something we can all get behind).
So, as a part of your texting compliance, registering your A2P 10DLC and classifying your use cases are required. Texting campaigns that aren’t compliant with these carrier requirements can be charged significant carrier penalties.
So how can you stay in compliance and avoid fees? Here are four ways:
Register your A2P 10DLC
Only send texts to people who’ve explicitly opted in to get texts from you
Don’t text about restricted content topics (things like drugs, firearms, adult content, etc.)
Don’t try to evade the regulations.
Ultimately, getting 10DLC registration gives your brand more credibility with customers. You don’t want phone carriers or your customers thinking you’re a scam. Keep up to speed with 10DLC standards to communicate to your customers that you’re legit.
5. Educate and Train Employees
Proper education and training should be a given, but it’s worth noting. As an admin, you can set up safety nets and use technology to support your efforts to stay compliant. But you personally aren’t sending every single message going out to customers. Prioritize consistent training with your employees so they’re aware of legal standards and understand your expectations.
TCPA compliance is incredibly important — not only in keeping your brand legally sound, but also in preserving relationships with your customers. You can’t risk a couple of employees remaining unaware of standards.
So create a clear-cut company policy that details all rules and procedures for sending messages in accordance with the TCPA. Add this policy to the employee handbook and make it accessible in your internal knowledge base. Hold frequent review training sessions whenever there are any regulatory updates. Keep all employees on the same page to stay TCPA compliant.
In the U.S., companies lose over $62 billion a year for poor customer service. And customers today have increasingly high expectations for good service. In fact, teams surveyed by Hubspot agree that customers today are smarter and have higher expectations from customer service than they did even a year ago.
So what do modern customers want?
75% of customers expect service to be faster and more relevant. (Salesforce)
Response time is of the essence. Customers expect low wait times and quick service. (Intercom)
A personalized customer experience is now a must have. (Forbes)
74% of customers want to be able to use multiple channels to start and complete a transaction. (LXA)
Bottom line: Customers care about convenience and speed. Does your call center meet these expectations?
Just imagine: how much more profitable could your call center be if you used every minute of your day well? Where is there still room to increase customer satisfaction? If you saved just one hour a day – how would that impact your bottom line? Every day, call centers sacrifice valuable time to inefficient systems and dated processes. And when your service is inefficient, customers won’t question moving to your competitors.
Don’t lose customers in 2022. Instead, build a loyal customer base with these three call center efficiency tips.
Call Center Efficiency Tips
Tip #1: Don’t Waste Downtime
Call centers can get crazy busy. But, that busyness ebbs and flows. There are going to be those days where there’s just not much going on. What you do with your team during those slow days could make all the difference in your call center efficiency. In fact, wasted downtime in call centers equates to an approximate loss of $11,252 per agent per year in unnecessary operational expenses. Gah!
Let’s just say your team has read and responded to every email and your phone queue is short. Instead of allowing your employees to online shop for a half hour, use the downtime to deliver that personalized experience your customers want. Have agents send out proactive customer service messages to check on customers who have made a recent purchase. Or have agents draft handwritten thank you notes to your most loyal customers to make them feel special.
Maybe use the time to catch up on some 1:1 coaching time with your employees. Have training sessions ready to go so you can pull them out when the day is slow. Set up some time for agents to role play different customer scenarios to keep them on the top of their game. Keep an archive of recorded customer interactions from different channels and start group discussions about what went well or didn’t go well. With these tips, make good use of the spare time in your day and give your call center efficiency a boost.
Tip #2: Automate Tasks to Preserve your Agents’ Time
One of the most valuable call center efficiency tips is to automate wherever you can to lighten your agents’ work load and save tons of time. With modern automation, you can now locate and retrieve relevant customer information while your agents are interacting with a customer. This helps make your customer experience extremely personal.
Bots can help your agents determine a customer’s intent, identify up-selling and cross-selling opportunities, and help with monotonous tasks. With your AI handling the more tedious tasks in your call center, you also lower employee burnout as it frees up your agents to handle more complicated tasks more efficiently.
Integrate automation with your omnichannel communication so your AI can do the work of responding to customers with helpful tips and self-service tools. Set up automated messages via SMS or email to send promotions to customers or scheduling reminders, maintaining a consistent customer relationship.
Tip #3: Add Texting to your Omnichannel Communication to Retain Customers
As mentioned earlier, customers today want to know they can reach you through multiple channels. In addition to keeping customers happy, an omnichannel communication solution also maximizes your call center agents’ time.
But want to make your operations even more efficient? Add texting to existing channels like phone, email and chat. With texting, agents can easily manage multiple conversations at once, decreasing hold time and increasing customer satisfaction. Texting frees up your agents’ time from taking phone call after phone call with your customers. And it saves your customers time, giving them an option to get questions answered fast without waiting on hold or sitting through your IVR system.
Texts have open rates of around 98% while calls and voicemails often go unanswered. All the time you spend leaving voicemails for customers can be more efficient by sending out an automated or copied text message. Texting is personal, flexible, and incredibly fast. And it’s one of the more reliable ways to reach your customers.
Not convinced by the Call Center Efficiency Tips? Here’s what customers think:
83% of customers open text messages within 90 seconds of receiving them.
Around 75% of consumers say they don’t mind receiving branded SMS messages from companies after they’ve agreed to opt-in to the experience.
58% of people say texting is the ideal way for businesses to reach them.
54% of consumers are frustrated when they can’t text a business.
Customers want to be able to text you. And you are more likely to reach them if you send them a text rather than an email. It impacts your wallet as well. It’s much cheaper to handle customers by text than over the phone. A Forrester study found that the average customer service phone call costs about $16, whereas the average text thread costs between $1 to $5 per interaction. With these call center efficiency tips, deliver a better customer experience, meet customer expectations, and save money.
Want to build efficiency and ease into your customer experience? Add business texting to boost your call center efficiency.
This post originally published on December 27, 2018 and was refreshed and republished on April 21, 2022.
When businesses think of delivering excellent customer service, accessibility needs to be at the top of that list. Accessibility can mean many things, but we’re looking at creating greater accessibility for individuals with disabilities in this blog.
In our on-demand economy, it’s never been easier for customers to jump from one company to the next. Almost half of all customers have done it due to poor customer service. When it comes to customers with disabilities, companies are losing about $6.9 billion a year simply because their websites aren’t accessible.
Texting is a quick and easy way to provide better accessibility. Texting creates convenient briges of communication that other forms of communication like voice and chat tools lack. Here are a few reasons why and how you should adopt texting:
Greater Accessibility Than Phone Calls
A phone call can be a non-starter for the deaf, hard of hearing, or those with speech disabilities. Teletypewriters (TTY) and Telecommunications Relay Services (TRS) can help bridge the communication gap by translating speech to text and vice versa, but they come with limitations.
For one, when a customer uses TTY mode on their mobile phone, it might prevent other phone functions from operating, which means a customer may not get an important call or message. Agents may think a TRS call is a telemarketer because they hear “Hello. This is the relay service…”, not realizing it’s a TRS provider relaying information for someone with a disability. Lastly, you’re pushing customers to call you, which drives up call volumes – something you are likely trying to reduce.
Texting creates better accessibility for the Deaf, hard of hearing, and those with speech disabilities, because:
There’s no other technology or services required on the customer’s end besides their phone.
The entire conversation is made through text.
Agents can answer multiple texts at once for shorter wait times.
Greater Accessbility Than Webchat
We’ve talked about the pros and cons of webchat vs. text elsewhere, but not for accessibility. Webchat can be a great resource, but it depends on whether your website is easy for those with disabilities to navigate. Webchat also doesn’t help the nearly 25% of disabled respondents who say they never go online. Part of the reason behind this is that those with disabilities are typically seniors who tend to be on the lower end of digital adoption.
The good news is texting creates greater customer engagement even among older populations. And although older customers aren’t sending anywhere near the volume of texts as younger customers, they are more likely to respond to texts if they do receive them.
Greater Accessibility for Everyone
Texting is the most popular form of communication today. By including texting in your omnichannel contact center strategy, you’re giving every customer a convenient way to communicate with your business. Fortunately, adding another channel for support doesn’t mean more work for your agents. In fact, it can reduce your overall inbound support volume. Here’s how:
Use Text IVRs
Text IVRs operate the same way as your usual IVR, except they’re done entirely through text messages. Best of all, customers can see their text history, which reduces repeat calls if they forget anything.
Use Textbots
Textbots act a lot like chatbots. You can set up textbots to do proactive outreach. For instance, Pearson Education implemented Textel’s textbot to reach out to interested students to qualify them before connecting them to an advisor. Their call attempts dropped by over 90%, but they saw their contact rate increase 225%!
Push Calls to Text
Although pushing calls to text doesn’t necessarily reduce your calls volumes, it can reduce your average hold times. That’s because agents can manage multiple text messages simultaneously. Plus, they can send and receive images, documents, and more to communicate faster.
When you receive an incoming call, give them the option to text instead. You can do this easily with your IVR. Follow these steps:
Give the option to text (e.g., “To text with us instead, press 2.”).
Have the IVR confirm the number your agent should text (e.g., “I see you’re calling from 8015551234. Press 1 if we should text that number. Press 2 to enter a different number.”)
Have the IVR end the call.
Send an automated text message that an agent will text them soon.
Pushing calls to text can decrease calls if you’re tackling common issues in your automated text. For example, the State of Michigan was getting overwhelmed with calls due to COVID. They found that many of the calls were asking questions they already tackled on their website. Using Textel, they chose to callers the option to receive a text that included a link to the FAQs on their website. In the first three weeks of implementing Textel, they deflected over 800,000 calls!
Greater Accessibility with Textel
There’s no magic communication channel that satisfies all your customer needs. Each plays a critical role in providing accessibility. Texting adds unparalleled convenience to your customer interactions and more efficiency for your agents. Textel’s texting platform for contact centers gives you everything you need to connect to users on the devices they’re already using and through the way they’re already communicating.
A crucial part of growing your business requires good communication with your customers. Good communication also means establishing effective and efficient communication strategies to stay connected. Businesses can achieve this and more using business texting. Let’s explore seven ways to use texting for business growth.
Why Use Texting?
While email is useful, only one-third of emails get opened. It’s not as effective as many businesses might think. On the other hand, SMS is becoming one of the most popular communication channels for businesses, with over 3 billion users predicted by 2022.
Texts have a staggering 99% open rate, and they often get opened within three minutes of receipt. What is even more interesting is that people prefer to receive a text message from a company instead of a phone call.
Some benefits of using business texting include:
It gives customers a direct way to contact a company
A text messaging strategy can grow with your company. Using mass or group messaging, you can easily scale your text communications whenever your customer base grows.
7 Ways to Grow Your Business by Texting
Business texting is easy to implement and well received by customers. Here’s how it can increase your reach and your revenue.
1. Mobile lead generation
Phones have become an essential part of life: communication, entertainment, searching on the internet, purchasing products and services. Most internet traffic is now mobile. When potential clients search for local businesses, it’s ideal if they can text you right from your mobile website. Using a texting platform allows your customers to contact you with a single click.
2. Increase conversions with SMS chat
Attracting visitors to your website is one thing, but converting them into leads and customers is a different challenge. A texting platform ensures a direct connection with people interested in your products and services.
3. Book appointments and reminders
For service providers, it can be a hassle tracking and reminding customers about upcoming appointments. Make booking appointments easier and minimize the no-shows with business texting.
Customers who may be too busy to answer a phone call or an email immediately are likely to respond to a quick text. This makes using text messages to schedule, confirm, and cancel appointments much easier. For instance, sending a text as simple as “Please confirm your appointment on Thursday at 5” can be effective to ensure appointments are kept while minimizing scheduling gaps.
4. Direct promotions
Sending offers and promotions is a regular part of SMS marketing. However, it’s imperative to ensure that promotions get to the intended customers and encourage them to act on that promotion.
Business texting immediately positions your promotion in front of your clients. Moreover, with rich media texting, you can send images and videos to entice customers to click on the promotional link.
For instance, a retailer may send the following text message:
“Hi [Customer Name],
A feast of discounts at the Magnolia website! Purchase two pieces of jewelry and get the third for free! Claim this promotion at any Magnolia store until April 30th.”
5. Cross-department communication
Internal communication can sometimes be cumbersome, and it is not unusual for workers to have dozens of unopened emails. In fact, employees spend 16% of their workweek on email—that amounts to approximately 15.5 hours a week.
Texting can reduce the time spent on communications by providing a quick way to get answers, approvals, and signatures. By reclaiming that time, your business becomes more efficient, and staff can review the message thread instead of asking questions a second (or third) time.
6. Improve customer service
When you answer your customers’ queries and questions promptly or send them a text to let them know their order is ready, you’re giving them a good customer experience. Positive interactions, in turn, increases customer loyalty and satisfaction.
A helpful feature that improves the customer experience is self-service SMS. This feature helps customers to resolve many of their questions quickly without needing an agent.
7. Use it as part of your sales funnel
Quick messages can assist your customers during the purchase journey. Push notifications and abandoned cart reminders can help keep your customer in the funnel, guiding them through their purchase.
4 Steps for an Effective Texting Strategy
How can you ensure your business texting strategy is effective? Here are four steps:
1. Use a business texting platform
Implementing a business texting strategy won’t be very effective if you need to do it manually. A business texting platform can make your work much more manageable. With tools to automate and organize business texting, you can quickly scale your marketing up or down, and you can segment your clients with group texting.
Texting is a great way to communicate with customers, but only if you have their consent. That’s why your next step should be building your opt-in list—add a lead form to your website or ask your customers to opt-in for SMS at the moment of purchase.
3. Create great messages
Once you have your list, it’s time to craft some great messages. Write messages that are relevant to your audience and the stage they are in the sales funnel. Mix your messages to include product awareness, improve purchases, or offer tips and interesting information.
4. Measure and revise
A business texting platform has the added advantage of tracking and reporting. Modern solutions use artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities to analyze your business texting activities. You’ll discover how your customers are interacting with you via text and how often they respond. You can adjust your strategy accordingly.
Grow Your Business with Textel
A reliable business texting platform can make your SMS strategy much more effective. Textel is a complete business texting solution that allows customers to text you to your existing phone number. The API and intuitive chatbots seamlessly integrate with your existing CRM and sales solutions to automate repetitive tasks for a seamless SMS strategy.
Learn how Textel can help grow your business by requesting a demo. If you have questions about our leading business texting platform, contact us.
Studies show that text messaging is the most used data service in the world. With over 560 billion text messages sent every month, text messaging is here to stay.
Companies of all sizes are using business text messaging to reach and engage with their customers. Juniper Research predicts the volume of automated text messages will grow 20% by 2022, passing 2.7 trillion, up from 2.1 trillion in 2017. That’s because text messaging gives companies a quick and direct way to reach their customers.
At Textel, we’ve learned that law firms can achieve 8X better response rates by using business texting compared to traditional methods such as email and phone.
How can law firms maximize the benefits of business texting? In this post, we’ll go over the top 5 reasons law firms should implement business texting.
How Texting Helps Law Firms
A text message has a sense of urgency. More people will answer a text from their attorney than an email. Law firms can use texting to:
Generate new clients: initiate conversations and provide support directly from your website
Manage billing: send automated bill reminders
Save time on calls: on average, a law firm that receives 50 calls a day can save an hour and a half utilizing business text messaging
Schedule and confirm appointments: send appointment reminders
Integrating business texting into your communications allows your law firm to conveniently stay connected to customers. Here are five ways text can be used to grow your business, make it more efficient, and improve your response rates:
1. Schedule and Send Out Reminders
Traditionally, law firms call or send reminder emails to their clients regarding important upcoming dates. However, this involves the risk of human error or clients not seeing their messages.
A texting platform automatically sends all reminders for payments, court dates, and appointments, reducing the time staff spends writing emails and making reminder phone calls. Automated messages also reduce the human error factor.
Prevent bill leakage by integrating business texting with case management and accounting systems. This automates the messages into the system, creating a detailed tracking that streamlines billing.
2. Create a User Audit Trail with Conversation Records
Every text that is sent and received via a texting platform is permanently recorded. Since messages cannot be deleted, there is an immutable audit trail. Conversations can be printed or downloaded for your records.
A texting platform provides a trail of proof without paper and keeps your law firm compliant with TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act) regulations.
3. Centralize all Business Texts through Your Firm’s Contact Number, Maximizing Brand Recall
Using a texting platform such as Textel allows you to grow your business and increase brand recognition. Conversations can be started with prospects right from your contact number, reaching people on their mobile devices.
These messages allow for two-way conversations that can lead to converting prospects into clients. The convenience of text messaging gives them the reassurance that you’re taking care of their issues quickly, resulting in a better experience for them. Customers come to recognize and use the same number you promote every day.
4. Collaborate among Team Members through Co-managed Conversations
A texting platform can also improve collaboration. Staff can text as a team using a multi-user feature and communicate with clients in co-managed conversations without using their personal phones. Text responses can be forwarded and automated, simplifying the workflow.
The team functionality that business texting software offers prevents BYOD issues. By keeping everything inside one platform, your firm protects clients’ private details, preventing potential privacy issues—especially critical in a legal setting.
5. Meet a Customer Demand that is Also Naturally Effective
As mentioned in the statistics above, most people prefer businesses to text instead of calling. SMS has an open rate of 99%, compared to the appalling 16% open rate of emails. Case management becomes easier when a firm can immediately reach its customers.
Even better, texting platforms include rich media text, meaning you can request and send documents, images, and video via messaging. Texting creates better and streamlined communication.
Why Textel?
Law firms spend considerable time tracking dates and communicating with customers. A text messaging platform can help make processes more productive, resulting in less time spent on daily phone calls and more time on case management.
Textel’s powerful business texting platform is helping law offices increase productivity and client response rates, saving hours daily by using automated text messaging. Communicate easily with clients, streamline case management, and improve efficiency with Textel. Ready to know more? Book a demo today.
Speed of service is closely tied to customer satisfaction. Customers want a resolution to their issue or an answer to their question right here, right now! And, there’s a clear correlation between customer satisfaction — for virtually any type of customer service — and First Call Resolution (or FCR). Your customers want to know that they can reach you and reach issue resolution quickly.
Contact centers strive for high FCR rates so they can prove to customers they’re able to prioritize and handle their problem fast. Oftentimes, you can improve FCR through focused coaching for agents and strong internal support. But, with some additional technology in place, you can watch your first call resolution skyrocket. Then see your customer satisfaction soar.
First: What Is FCR?
To understand how texting fits into your path to customer satisfaction, we need to define First Call Resolution. Contact centers use this metric to represent how often agents are able to resolve an issue for a customer on the first call or interaction.
According to ICMI, FCR is a metric that reflects how effective your contact center is. A strong FCR rate boasts the experience of your agents and the quality of agent training. It’s the clearest metric for measuring customer satisfaction and agent efficiency. The more issues your agents solve in the first contact, the happier your customers will be. In fact, for every 1% improvement in FCR, there is a 1% improvement in your customer satisfaction.
So, how do you measure FCR? The most accurate way to track the metric is to take the total number of calls resolved in the first attempt and divide that by the total number of first calls. This way you’re not factoring in every single call coming into your center.
When you measure issue resolution, you get a sense for how satisfied your customers are with your service. And when you boost your FCR score, your bottom line will benefit. But how do you improve your FCR easily and affordably?
Integrate business texting into your contact center to improve issue resolution and customer satisfaction.
6 Ways Texting Helps You Improve Issue Resolution
Texting provides an opportunity to solve simple issues during the first interaction without tying up your agents or your customers on a long phone call. Believe it or not — customers want to text your business. According to research, customers prefer communicating with businesses through text rather than on the phone. So how does texting boost your issue resolution? Here’s how:
Texting Helps your Prioritize Issues
With business texting, use automated responses and bots to support your agents and lower call volume. How many calls come into your call center that could be solved with a brief answer, with an article from your FAQ page, or with a stock message? With texting, your customers can request help and receive basic instructions or helpful articles, getting their answer from automated messaging or mass texts.
This way, you triage the most common issues that don’t require a live agent. Funnel the simple requests into texting threads. How does this help your FCR? Your agents are then freed up to take time with the customers who have more complicated issues. They can sit on a single phone call for some time without feeling the stress of an overwhelming call queue.
Texting Increases the Number of Issues Resolved
Many contact centers still focus on handling issues via the phone. But let’s be real — not every issue requires a drawn out phone call. Appointment booking, reminders, and other simple procedures can be done via text very easily. Be preemptive and set up scheduled texts to customers. This proactive customer service decreases the number of customers that have to reach out to you in the first place.
When you add business texting, set up automations to handle low-level issues like sending appointment reminders, scheduling details, or shipping updates and support your issue resolution rates.
Texting Boosts Collaboration and Streamlines Team Operations
With texting, your team can collaborate with ease. The flexibility of a texting conversation lets your team talk about solutions for customers together without the pressing need to answer the customer in real time as on the phone. Let’s take this scenario: your agent, Heather, is on the phone with a customer who has a complicated issue. Heather needs to speak with your finance team to approve the solution for the customer. So, she asks the customer if she can call him back. There goes your FCR.
But, imagine instead that Heather is texting with the same customer. Instead of needing to end the conversation with the customer to reach resolution, she can collaborate with your finance team as she simultaneously talks with the customer. Now, she achieves issue resolution on the initial conversation with the customer and she keeps team operations moving smoothly.
Texting Improves Frequent Caller Satisfaction
Texting solutions save customer data, so agents have the case history at their fingertips when starting an interaction with a customer. This makes frequent callers feel recognized, increasing loyalty. It also provides faster service, improving the rate of issue resolution.
Send Post-call Surveys for Better Customer Feedback
Post-call surveys can help identify the most common issues facing your customers. And, through gathering customer feedback, you can more accurately track customer satisfaction. With texting out surveys, you get access to understand your customers and gauge your agents’ performance.
Multimedia messaging (MMS) lets you send images, documents, and videos via text to aid in quick issue resolution. Your customers can send documentation, forms, take a picture of an item they want to replace, or send a video. And you can do the same!
With MMS, enhance the customer experience and reach issue resolution faster. Using audio and visuals, you improve a simple text, resulting in higher engagement and response from customers. MMS gives customers what they want—convenience—by giving them access to images and audio to complement the text. This way, you support your customers’ satisfaction and achieve FCR.
Improve your FCR with a business texting platform. Solve customer issues, address their concerns, and answer their questions quickly within a single text thread.
