Streamlined operations and demographic data collection
About 211 HeartLine 211 HeartLine is a non-profit service that connects Oklahomans to essential resources. With a database of 1,141 provider agencies representing 9,864 vetted services across 37 counties, 211 HeartLine’s resource specialists connect community members in need to the help they need at any hour of the day. In the event of emergencies, like the COVID-19 pandemic, 211 HeartLine is available 24/7, 365 days a year, to offer specialized triage and screening services. They also provide an online Community Needs Dashboard that serves as a tool for provider agencies and community leaders to identify trends, needs, and gaps in services.
Industry: Non-profit social services
Location: Tulsa, OK
Contact Center Size: 65-70 seats
Use Case: Increase brand awareness, streamline operations, compliant communications
Product: Textel Conversations integration with NICE CXone
The Problem: 211 HeartLine Needed a Channel to Proactively Share Services and Resources With Their Community
In February of 2020, Eastern Oklahoma, still thawing from a debilitating winter storm that left thousands without water in Tulsa, faced mass shutdowns. Along with the rest of the country, Oklahoma was navigating the unknowns of the early COVID-19 pandemic and an ensuing uptick in unemployment.
More than 100,000 people reached out to 211 HeartLine for help in those first few weeks. Some needed assistance with utilities, and others with rent. And still more needed help accessing medical care.
Michael Coonfield, Director of Strategic Operations, and Ashlie Casey, Program Director for 211 HeartLine, knew they needed to be more proactive in supporting and educating residents about the services that were most relevant to them.
“It’s those instances where we want to notify them of disaster relief resources immediately,” Casey explained.
They needed a way to promote their brand and to get information out to their community through a channel that would actually reach them — via text. And ideally, they were looking for a texting solution that would be able to extend the functionality of their existing contact center platform NICE CXone. They needed to simply add to the workflow they had in their contact center. And as luck would have it, the Textel integration with NICE CXone came to the rescue.
The Solution: With Textel, 211 HeartLine was Able to Spread Brand Recognition While Supporting Their Workflow
Once Textel was implemented, 211 HeartLine began building a texting contact list. They promoted texting at every touchpoint with their customers — on their website, in video, in their IVR messages, and with every caller. They saw immediate results, adding over 20,000 users to their text subscription list and retaining nearly all of them.
“Out of the 20,000 subscribers we send text messages to, we may get 40-50 people unsubscribe each month,” Coonfield said. “That’s only a 0.2% unsubscribe rate, which is fantastic for us. And we still have a whole lot more people sign up to replace the customers we’ve lost.”
To measure the impact of their texts, 211 HeartLine would include unique links for each text message. This helped them know which messages make a difference. Texting their customers was working. They found that anytime they sent out a text message, they would quickly see a spike in web traffic and an increase in call volume. The word was getting out!
“We gained a lot of brand recognition when we added texting,” Coonfield said. “We could send our logo and social media links within a message, so our customers always associated our texts with our logo.”
Textel has allowed us to reach people instantly with information that can positively change their lives.
Ashlie Casey, 211 HeartLine
And with greater recognition, their customers were noticing the wealth of information that 211 HeartLine offered.
“There are a lot of customers subscribing to texts and engaging with our agents more than ever before,” Casey added. “Textel has allowed us to reach people instantly with information that can positively change their lives.”
Textel Helped 211 HeartLine Streamline Their Operations
With the Textel Text Bot integrated in NICE CXone, 211 HeartLine could speed up their processes as agents managed inbound texts. When a customer texts in, the Text Bot gathers the necessary customer demographic information, then routes the text to an agent to help with referrals, making for a smoother, streamlined operation.
“With the integration between NICE CXone and Textel, our contact center agents can easily manage texts in the same window they use for chats,” Coonfield explained. “So, they see no difference between the two skills. It fits right into our workflow!”
According to Coonfield, this lets them also be more strategic with their texts. If agents are slammed with incoming calls, texts can help to drive incoming traffic to the website or relieve agents of the monotony on the phone.
Textel Helped 211 HeartLine Communicate Freely and Stay Compliant
211 HeartLine found ways to strategize their SMS campaigns. With Textel, they worked out a calendar to send blast text notifications so they could strategically reach their users during the busiest seasons.
By segmenting lists for outbound Blast texts, they can target a specific segment of their users, like a specific county, to communicate needs that are relevant to that region.
Then, depending on the text’s importance, 211 HeartLine coordinates their social media marketing (Facebook, Instagram, etc.), newspapers, and news channels to align with the text notification, ensuring customers get the same information on all fronts.
In the meantime, 211 HeartLine could trust that they were staying within TCPA compliance using Textel’s opt-in/opt-out management tools. When a user unsubscribes, Textel automatically removes those customers from the master list, keeping 211 HeartLine legally in the clear.
The Result: With Textel, 211 HeartLine Expanded Brand Awareness and Text Adoption
Gained 20,000 text subscribers.
After they added texting, 211 HeartLine saw their contact list grow exponentially, gaining 20,000 text subscribers. This let them expand their outreach, offering more essential resources and information to their community.
Lowered unsubscription rate to 0.2%.
211 HeartLine noticed the popularity of texting with their customers, seeing only a 0.2% unsubscription rate with their texting list. Using Textel, it was easier for them to offer value to their customers, reaching customers in their preferred channel of communication.
Streamlined operations and demographic data collection.
With the help of the Textel Text Bot integration in NICE CXone, 211 HeartLine could rely on automations to gather essential customer data before routing the customer to a live agent. They were also able to stay compliant using opt-in/opt-out tools to manage their subscription list.
About 211 HeartLine 211 HeartLine is a non-profit service that connects Oklahomans to essential resources. With a database of 1,141 provider agencies representing 9,864 vetted services across 37 counties, 211 HeartLine’s resource specialists connect community members in need to the help they need at any hour of the day. In the event of emergencies, like the COVID-19 pandemic, 211 HeartLine is available 24/7, 365 days a year, to offer specialized triage and screening services. They also provide an online Community Needs Dashboard that serves as a tool for provider agencies and community leaders to identify trends, needs, and gaps in services.
Industry: Non-profit social services
Location: Tulsa, OK
Contact Center Size: 65-70 seats
Use Case: Increase brand awareness, streamline operations, compliant communications
Product: Textel Conversations integration with NICE CXone
About 211 Virginia 211 Virginia has served the Commonwealth for over 15 years, connecting the community with essential resources. 211 Virginia is a free and confidential service offering access to crisis and emergency counseling, disaster, food, health care, insurance, stable housing assistance, employment, veteran, family services, and more to a wide population. 211 Virginia is the Commonwealth’s largest information and referral network available for social services. With an easy-to-remember three-digit dialing code, 211 Virginia connects people with help, 24 hours a day, 365 days in the year.
Industry: Non-profit social services
Location: Roanoke, VA
Contact Center Size: 25-50 seats
Use Case: Reduce call volume, increase text adoption
Product: Textel Conversations integration with NICE CXone
The Problem: Overwhelmed by a Surging Call Volume, 211 Virginia Struggled to Keep Up
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, 211 Virginia was prepared to meet the inevitable increase in community needs. By June 2021, the state of emergency was lifted, but another variant of the virus was on the rise. And the team at 211 Virginia saw an unexpected and dramatic rise in inquiries again. Relief services and eviction and utility moratoriums were set to end, placing thousands of renters in Virginia in a crisis. Then, with COVID numbers continuing to rise with the delta and omicron variants, 211 Virginia was in over their heads.
Their contact center was setting records for the number of inquiries they were receiving; their call volume was escalating.
As a result, abandonment rates skyrocketed, community needs were unmet, and their agents had to ultimately suspend collecting demographic data to keep up. Overall, 211 Virginia saw an 18% increase in call volume and a 34% increase in unmet needs through 2020 and 2021. They needed to find a solution to juggle the intake.
The Solution: 211 Virginia Team Added Texting to Reduce Call Volume & Solve Operational Pains
With such a significant increase in inquiries, 211 Virginia needed to find a way to lower its call abandonment rate and provide its inquirers with an additional, more flexible communication channel. Meanwhile, their contact center specialists were overwhelmed, drained by the endless incoming calls.
They turned to Textel for help. In May of 2021, the 211 Virginia team went live with texting, adding Textel to their existing NICE CXone platform in their contact center. In the first year, they saw an increase from initial inbound texts averaging around 580 texts to receiving an average of nearly 14,000 incoming texts. That bump in volume made texting their second preferred communication channel in just one year.
Specialists think of text as a little bit like a break from being on the phone. They don’t have somebody in their ear, but they’re still doing their job.
Margaret Telsch-Williams, 211 Virginia
Texting Supported Internal Operations and Employee Engagement
Textel’s product integrated with 211 Virginia’s existing NICE CXone platform. This made implementation and adoption simple. The contact center staff, varied in its age demographic, took on the learning curve of the new technology and found texting to be a helpful break from the phone.
Because of the nature of calls 211 Virginia receives, it’s important that their employees are mentally prepared to support crisis and emergency situations. “Specialists think of text as a little bit like a break from being on the phone,” said contact center director Margaret Telsch-Williams. “They don’t have somebody in their ear, but they’re still doing their job.”
According to Telsch-Williams, the community resource specialists look forward to handling incoming texts, avoiding the “wear down” and mental burnout parts of helping customers through crisis moments. Texting gave employees a breather and variety in their day, breaking the monotony of talking non-stop or listening to callers who are upset and stressed themselves.
211 Virginia said their texting inquiries take almost twice as long as a call to resolve. This may sound like an issue operationally, but in reality, the interruptions in a texting conversation made it possible for 211 Virginia to help more people simultaneously. Once they found a workflow, specialists could handle multiple text threads at the same time. And, the 211 Virginia team was able to care for multiple inquirers and support their own employees in the process.
Texting also fixed the problem of collecting demographic data. “We have a series of demographic questions we have to ask incoming callers,” Telsch-Williams said. “But when we got our texting set up so that it automatically asks those questions for us via text, that helped us greatly in terms of the duration of time that an inquiry takes. By the time a caller connects with a specialist, we already have so much information on the caller, allowing us to get to the heart of their needs right away.”
With texting, 211 Virginia was able to relieve some of the stress from their overwhelming call volume and streamline operations, driving efficiency in their contact center.
Texting Met the Unique Needs of the Community
211 Virginia’s mission requires them to be available at all hours in the day, every day of the year, to support anyone who calls. Often, their callers are in distress, navigating homelessness, job loss, and/or financial and emotional stress. Many of their inquirers are feeling ashamed and anxious when they reach out to 211 Virginia. By adding texting as a channel, 211 Virginia noticed how texting supported their community’s unique needs.
“A lot of our inquiries are personal and confidential in nature. And some people are not doing well when they reach out,” explained community engagement manager Amanda Holcomb. “Many are ashamed in their situations, so it’s hard to ask for help. But it’s a lot easier when your identity is a bit more distant than with a voice having to share that information. Some people are more likely to send a text or a chat or an email than they are to call because it feels a little less direct.”
Telsch-Williams added that texting is helping their most vulnerable community members navigate a scary and stressful time in their life.
“We had somebody who was texting us from the bathroom of a hotel room. She was actively homeless, but was staying in a hotel,” Telsch-Williams said. “Her kids were in the bedroom area and she was texting us from the bathroom. She was crying, needing help, but didn’t want to be vulnerable or fall apart in front of her kids.”
“With texting, though, she could reach out for help and could do so quietly with us,” she added. “We were able to give her information on how to find housing and how to fix her situation. She didn’t know what to do. She had never been through this before. But because she could reach out over text, she was able to have that moment away from her kids to breathe, problem solve, and still receive help.”
The Result: With Textel, 211 Virginia Cut Down Call Volume and Boosted Efficiency
Increased text adoption by 400%.
211 Virginia saw their texting skyrocket in just one year. The organization went from averaging 579 inbound SMS messages annually to 13,838 messages annually. Inquirers were eager for a channel that offered more flexibility than live chat or a phone call and more anonymity when navigating crisis situations.
Texting became the #2 preferred contact method, second only to their phone line.
After one year of use, texting became the second preferred communication channel in 211 Virginia’s contact center. With overwhelming call volumes following the COVID-19 pandemic, inquirers could choose texting as a more flexible channel to reach out for help and resources.
Streamlined operations and demographic data collection.
Since Textel is fully integrated into NICE CXone, their existing contact center platform, 211 Virginia adopted the new texting process quickly and easily. And with an added channel relieving their phone lines, the team reduced call volume, giving agents a break from the phones. They also figured out how to streamline data collection, creating a faster and more personalized user experience.
About 211 Virginia 211 Virginia has served the Commonwealth for over 15 years, connecting the community with essential resources. 211 Virginia is a free and confidential service offering access to crisis and emergency counseling, disaster, food, health care, insurance, stable housing assistance, employment, veteran, family services, and more to a wide population. 211 Virginia is the Commonwealth’s largest information and referral network available for social services. With an easy-to-remember three-digit dialing code, 211 Virginia connects people with help, 24 hours a day, 365 days in the year.
Industry: Non-profit social services
Location: Roanoke, VA
Contact Center Size: 25-50 seats
Use Case: Reduce call volume, increase text adoption
Product: Textel Conversations integration with NICE CXone
Time is money. It’s a cliché, yeah. But think about it: How much time and call center efficiency is your team losing in a day to long-winded calls? What about the endless games of phone tag, calls sent to the wrong person, or clicking around outdated or irrelevant software just to find updated customer information?
Consider how you’re using time in your call center and you’ll find that call center efficiency drives both customer retention and profitability. By giving more time back to your call center agents, you save (and make) more money.
According to a recent survey by PwC of 1,300 global CEOs, 77% say their primary focus is creating operational efficiencies and driving revenue growth. Leaders recognize that making processes run smoothly will improve their business and contribute to a better customer experience all around.
But, where does this extra time come from? What processes need to be smoothed over? With a few tricks up your sleeve and some operational changes, your call center can improve efficiency. To help, we’ve gathered a few handy tips to make sure your call center efficiency flourishes.
Call Center Efficiency Tip No. 1: Clean up your agents’ workflows.
Imagine this:
A client calls in — they need the documentation and follow up notes from their latest appointment with you. When you go to look for it, their profile wasn’t updated. So you go to the folder that holds all customer notes. But when you open it, it’s an utter mess. Maybe you can reach out to the manager the customer had met with. How did they say to reach out? By Slack? Can you transfer the call straight to them? Or is that a big no no. Meanwhile, the customer is sitting on hold, growing annoyed.
Unfortunately, this scenario is all too common for call center agents. One of the trickiest things about being a customer service rep is finding the information you need to help your customer. According to Aberdeen, agents spend 14% of their time looking for information to help customers.
Daily, agents also face roadblocks in their work. As many as 39% say that it’s tough to collaborate, 26% say they’re dealing with outdated tech and 25% don’t have real-time access to relevant data. All of these roadblocks waste time and harm customer relationships. So what can you do?
Take time to clean up processes and workflow for your call center agents. Here are some areas to focus on:
Develop a clear organizational chart. Make it clear who is responsible for what, what resources are available to agents, and how they should be contacting outside help when it’s needed. Meet with team leads in other departments to establish what will work best across the company. Breaking down those silos between teams will also build internal support between departments.
Decide how you will prioritize support. Do you help customers on a first-come, first-serve basis? Or can you prioritize by customer issue, status or channel choice? Know how you’ll determine these things so you can organize your team around your customer needs.
Regularly clean up. Use idle time as a team to clean up files and resources or set a quarterly goal to update info. Make sure internal tools, customer profiles, and your knowledge bases are up to date.
Use self-service tools to take some of the pressure off your agents. Build an FAQ page or help guides and videos to send to customers quickly to answer their most common questions.
Call Center Efficiency Tip No. 2: Train for the team you want to be.
Let me give you a tip: call center efficiency is not only about how your agents perform. As the manager, you’re responsible for training your team to be the best they can be. During initial onboarding and whenever you have downtime as a team, prioritize training. Use any spare time to train and coach to be the team you want to be.
Here are some ways to do just that:
Run through workflows together and role-play different scenarios so you know your agents know what to do in different situations.
Create training resources — e-books, videos, and internal articles — to serve as a reference for your agents.
Set team meetings monthly or quarterly to talk through new issues or scenarios that your team is encountering. Or take that time to train on new technology or processes to make sure you’re always on the same page.
Set up 1:1 meetings as often as possible to check on individual agent performances.
Call Center Efficiency Tip No. 3: Lean on automation when you can.
Automation technology is becoming increasingly popular in call centers. Automation, when used wisely, makes tedious tasks manageable for your call center team. Free your agents from menial tasks like routing customers on call to the right person, sending self-service articles to customers, or auto-filling customer information. Bots are ideal for guiding customers to serve themselves. Then, no customer gets neglected or left waiting in the process.
When your agents aren’t bogged down with tedious duties, they have more time to focus on complicated customer interactions. A robot can’t always help customer situations when empathy and emotional intuition are needed. But they can help your team prepare for each interaction by predicting how customers will respond to an email or on a call. Automation is available for you to cut out the tedious and tricky elements of call center work, leaving space for better agent performance, efficiency, and development.
Call Center Efficiency Tip No. 4: Add texting to your omnichannel solution.
Customers want to reach your business in the way that’s most convenient for them. Your goal is to offer a customer experience that meets your customers’ needs, and a seamless omnichannel solution lets your customers choose their preferred communication channel and know there won’t be hiccups along the way. My tip for better call center efficiency? Add texting to your suite of channels.
Pew Research estimates that texting is the most widely and frequently used app on a smartphone, with 97% of Americans texting at least once a day. (But let’s be honest — most of us text way more than once a day.) For a more efficient call center, add texting to optimize your agents’ time. Texting is a fast and flexible channel for both your customers and your agents. With texting, your team can help multiple customers on text threads simultaneously instead of being trapped on the phone with just one customer at a time.
This inevitably lowers your call volume, opening up time for agents on the phone to help the more complicated customer cases via phone.
This post originally published September 20, 2018 and was updated on June 30, 2022.
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.
Considering the different channels available to customers, phone and email are…well, not so popular. In recent years, live chat has become the leading digital communication method for customers, with 42% of customers preferring live chat compared to just 23% preferring email. And, chat has the highest satisfaction levels for any customer service channel, at 73%, compared with 61% for email and 44% for phone.
But, what about texting? Being so similar, texting and chat can get mixed up. Is there really any difference? Do you really need texting if you already have chat functionality? Don’t they meet the same expectations for customers? Not quite.
To save you time, we’ve made up a comparison of the two to see how they are similar and how they differ. Then, your team can assess where to invest to meet your customer’s preferences.
Chat vs Text: Similarities and Differences
Chat vs Text: let’s cover some of the ways chat and text are similar:
Both channels offer asynchronous communication styles (sort of…I’ll touch on this more later):
With both chat and texting, your customers are able to take natural pauses in the conversation. They aren’t obligated to sit on hold for who knows how long, and then obligated to sit through a phone conversation. With chat and texting, customers have more flexibility to multitask — and so do your agents!
Both channels let agents manage multiple conversations at the same time:
Like I said, multitasking! With both channels, agents can talk with a handful of customers, making for a more productive contact center.
Both channels invite a more casual tone of conversation:
Unlike email, chat and texting cut through the traditional formalities of customer service interactions. Short snippy messages and fewer salutations and signatures make for an all around more relaxed conversation between brands and their customers.
Both channels allow for a quick and efficient interaction:
Think about it — both chat and texting offer customers a way to ask a brief question or get a quick update on an order status. No need to wait on the phone holding line or wait for a solid 24 hours while their email sits unread in someone’s inbox.
Both channels create a clear written record of the customer interaction for internal use:
Even more organized than an email thread, both chat and text provide your team with a clear record of how the customer interacted with your agents, what questions they asked, where communication struggled. All in text form!
Chat vs Text: how are chat and text distinctly different:
Chat and text aren’t really both asynchronous:
This one falls into both camps. Live chat and text both offer asynchronous communication when compared to a phone call… until the chat session times out. Chat, more so than texting, requires much more real-time participation.
Both the agent and the customer have to maintain the conversation in a given window of time and then the timer starts counting down. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve started a chat conversation and as I’m waiting for the agent to answer my question, the chat ends.
Text, on the other hand, is truly asynchronous. It lets the customer flexibly participate — initiating and re-initiating a conversation without losing their place. Sessions live indefinitely, always able to restart.
Chat is bound to a place, texting is much more mobile:
With texting, customers aren’t tied to a computer screen the way they are with chat. Instead, customers can respond straight from their mobile device wherever they are. Whether out grabbing groceries, hitting the gym, or sitting in the school pick up line, customers can send a question at any point, anywhere.
Chat is more formal, texting is much more personal:
I’m not sure about you, but I don’t text many (if any) people I haven’t met personally. Texting is a much more personal form of communication than live chat. Partially, this is because chat is typically done through a company’s website. With chat, there’s always this question in the back of my mind — am I talking to a real person or just a robot? But, when you text a brand directly, agents can add personal flavor to a conversation.
Chat requires customers to repeat themselves more, texting provides a clearer communication trail:
It happens — sometimes you think you’ve asked your last question to the customer service team…but then, oops, another one comes up. When a few hours go by and the conversation between agent and customer has dwindled, your customer may have another question for you.
With chat, the customer would have to re-open a chat, restate their information, repeat the same context as before and then get to ask their question. How annoying! With texting, your customers and the agents can easily stay in the same thread, letting customers and agents alike to see past conversation, gather context, and move onto the new problem with ease.
With all of these similarities and differences, how can you know when chat vs text fits your customer’s preferences?
This or That: How to Know if Chat vs Text Fits Your Needs
So, chat and text have some similarities and differences — so what? Which channel do your customers prefer?
Both channels benefit your contact center. Chat provides your customers a way to immediately reach you through your website. When they seek support, a chat box is ready and waiting for quick help. Because it’s embedded into your website, this lets agents direct customers to pages, help articles, and other resources directly on your site. Chat gives your team a manageable way to juggle multiple customer interactions simultaneously and keep good records about those customers.
Although text messaging isn’t embedded into your company website, texting lets your team easily send media — like images, links, how-to videos, pdfs — to customers. Customers can also easily snap a photo or take a screenshot of a product issue and send that over text. Agents can even add emojis to messages to boost engagement. The experience overall is comfortable and personalized.
When it comes to chat vs text — I think we know which one is more preferable. Allowing customers to carry their customer service help in their back pocket with them wherever they go ultimately offers customers a better customer experience.
Textel will amaze you on how texting can change the way contact centers reach customers. In this quick guide, we’ll break down six ways Textel does this and how Five9 users can take full advantage of their platform with Textel implementation.
Integrated User Interface with Five9
Providing extended functionality to a contact center platform can be helpful. However, it can also have drawbacks. Some solutions require a new interface, require training, and change how an agent does their job. Textel made sure that this would not be the case. The Textel texting solution integrates within the native Five9 contact center interface. Users access all Textel functionality within the Five9 framework. This integration ensures there are no new screens to manage, no training required, and all functionality looks and feels like all the Five9 solutions.
MMS
The days of using interactive voice response (a.k.a. IVR) are long over. Now, consumers prefer a friendlier and more straightforward way to connect with their customers. Five9 offers a feature-rich communications platform, but Textel gives Five9 customers an edge by providing a more extensive customer experience. By making it possible to send multimedia such as documents, photos, screenshots, GIFs, and videos via MMS to and from your contact centers, customers can get the most out of their support. Just as well, it becomes much easier for your agents to diagnose problems with tangible evidence and clarity.
Today, the native Five9 solution is limited to supporting SMS only, neglecting the advantages of MMS technology. By utilizing MMS, Five9 customers get more from their platform without confusion when implementing another solution.
A Mass Texting Solution
Textel adds the capability for customers to text blast your entire customer base through Five9. Suppose you need to send out branded messaging and automate the opt-out options available to your customers and employees or other groups of people. In that case, Textel Blast can make the process of doing so much more intuitive and straightforward. Textel Blast allows you to schedule your blasts, change messages for different groups, and personalize the messages to individuals.
Showcasing the Names of Agents Involved
Your agents are the most crucial part of your customer support. However, in the current Five9 texting solution, companies are limited in how they address their customers. When you upgrade to Textel, your customers will know when a new agent joins the conversation. Transparency and clarity give your agents an advantage in working with their customers. Showcasing the agent’s name also creates a more personal and natural environment for conversation to take place.
Short Code Support
Textel provides multiple options for you to operate your texting needs. With support for shortcodes, long codes, and toll-free numbers, Textel provides flexibility in your marketing to make it fast and easy to reach your customers in the simplest of ways. You can even keep the phone numbers you currently have or start fresh. Textel offers the most flexibility for what you need to best market your business and communicate.
Call and Text From the Same Number
With Textel, you can offer your customers the convenient option of calling and texting from the same number. Separate numbers for phone and text make it more difficult for the end customers to locate the correct number when reaching out. With a single number for both channels, Textel simplifies the texting experience for all Five9 customers.
Worldwide Reach
Textel is adding texting access across the globe to sixty different countries by the end of the year. This international support is a big deal for businesses that operate online or on a global level. The world is smaller today than ever before, and your phone number doesn’t necessarily match your location. Textel gives you the freedom to reach whoever and whenever without barriers.
