With the amount of technology at our fingertips today, it’s never been easier to directly communicate with your customers. But how do you know if your customers are even taking note of your company communications? Is it possible to stand out from the noise in an era of information overload?
The truth is, only 20% of emails sent get opened. The number of spam and robocalls has risen over the past two years, making customers less likely to answer a call from an unknown number. With email inboxes often automatically filtering messages from businesses into promotion folders, it has become even harder to command the attention of your customer.
Hold on though. While email and phone calls are less reliable, as many as 95% of text messages are read and answered within three minutes of receiving them. That means that if you’re not using business texting, you’re missing a huge opportunity to reach your customer base. Let me convince you further.
Why use business texting?
Let’s start by exploring some reasons SMS marketing and business texting are so popular. Why should organizations use text messages to communicate with their audience?
1. Emails can be stressful
Email is popular. (I know because I’m kind of addicted to my Gmail app). But in reality, people only open one-third of the emails they receive. Keeping a clean and organized inbox is time-consuming and stressful. I can’t tell you how rarely I look through my 5000+ promotional emails that are just sitting in my inbox. I am quick to archive or trash any incoming marketing email without even looking at it just to keep my inbox cleared.
Really, the average person receives too many emails— as many as 121 — every… day… ugh.
How on earth can you send a customer an important message by email and expect them to see it? But with business texting, send your customers a text directly to their phone to send out critical information or a call to action. Then, you can follow up with an email to keep record of the message in a formal setting.
2. Texting is more personal and direct
Texting gives the user a more personal experience since it reaches them directly on their phone. I mean, who do you text regularly? My pinned message threads are with my husband, my Mom, and best girlfriends from college. Texting is an intimate thing. And for that reason, it’s a much more personal method of communication. And customers are far more likely to check and open a text sent to them than an email. Getting a text reminder for an appointment or an abandoned cart can have more impact than an email.
3. People are already on their phones most of the time
People spend more time now on their phones than watching TV. Or maybe you’re like me and you actually stream Netflix on your phone…oops. The average person checks their phone as much as 344 times a day. Maybe it’s kind of a depressing reality. But considering people are relying more on their phones to connect with businesses, shop, and engage in everyday activities, we can expect texting to become even more popular. I think it’s time to invest in business texting.
Hopefully you’re starting to see why business texting is so popular. It not only appeals to your customers, though. It’s also an incredibly useful investment for your company. Here’s how:
1. Business texting helps with digital transformation
If you’re looking for ways to boost your digital transformation, add business texting. SMS messages and notifications are entirely automated, letting your marketing, sales, and customer service teams send mass texts while at the same time personalizing the message.
This level of automation prevents human error and saves time and costs. The investment in automation, in turn, allows you to invest in your employees’ professional development and well-being by eradicating some of the more menial daily tasks.
2. It’s more convenient for the business and the customer
Sometimes getting on the phone and talking it out with a customer service agent is necessary. But for the less complex issues and questions, phone calls are a pain. They require customers to cut out a chunk of time to possibly sit on hold. And, over time, they’re overwhelming to your agents. With business texting, though, you’re offering a much more convenient means of communication.
Contact your customers directly without leaving a voice message, and your message always reaches the customer. And your customer can then respond to your business text on their own time, without interrupting their day.
10 Simple Business Texting Features You Can’t Miss
Now with you hopefully more convinced, let’s walk through some of the must have business texting features that you need for a robust use of the technology.
1. Keywords
Keywords give your customers an easy way to take action in a text message. For example, keywords are when you invite customers to text a specific word to trigger an automated response or to hear from one of your reps. One might be: “Text OFFER to [your business number].” These kinds of calls to action help customers opt-in or opt-out of business texting from you, respond to sales and promos, or tell you they need your help.
One significant advantage is that it makes it easier for you to track how people discovered your company. Keywords allow customers to respond to your ads and help you manage your opt-in list so you have a set subscriber list.
2. Drip Campaigns
A text drip is an automated message set to deliver after specific triggers or intervals (e.g., after a subscription or a few days after a purchase was not completed). Drip campaigns are perfect for welcoming new subscribers, educating customers, or nurturing sales leads.
And once you set up a drip campaign, it can run in the background, working behind the scenes even when you’re not. This way, you can keep customers engaged in your service that saves your team lots of time and effort. With business texting drip campaigns, create anticipation for upcoming sales and promos, assist customers while on their purchase journey, and increase sales conversions.
3. Recurring Texts
Recurring texts make it possible for you to create a text and set it to send to your customer on a recurring schedule. Let’s say you want to remind your customer to schedule their next hair appointment every two months. Set up a recurring text with the reminder to send on the same day on a bi-monthly schedule.
Or maybe you want to send your customers a birthday text with a gift. You can schedule an annual recurring text on their birth date. You’ll stay on your customers’ radar without placing extra demands on your contact center agents’ time.
4. Mass Texting
Mass texts are arguably the best feature of business texting. Need to tell all of your sales prospects about an upcoming sale? Send a mass text. Need to let your entire customer base know that your website will be down for maintenance next week? Send out a mass text. Segment off different groups of customers to send mass texts out to different customer demographics. This allows you to deliver a more personalized customer experience.
As we noted earlier, texting has a much more reliable open rate than email. So with a mass business text, you’re much more likely to reach your customers with important info.
5. Appointment Reminders
From health services to vet clinics and spas, business texting can be super useful to remind customers of appointments. Less worrying about no-shows. No more incessant phone calls to customers to remind them of an upcoming appointment.
Set up a scheduled text to remind customers of their appointments. Then, business texting can also help customers book, reschedule, or cancel upcoming appointments so they don’t have to worry about calling you to do so.
6. Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS)
Multimedia messages let your customer service team and your customers send images, videos, or audio files. When you incorporate different forms of media, your team can deliver a much more robust customer experience. MMS expands the kind of service you can deliver. Let me give you an example.
Imagine this: a customer, let’s call her Mary, is trying to assemble a newly purchased piece of furniture. Confused by the instructions and frustrated during the process, she texts into the customer service team. A rep texts back, asking for an image of her progress and the remaining tools. Then, the rep sends a video back, with a step by step guide to help Mary fix her issue. This is just one example of how multimedia messaging can be used to make your service more effective.
7. Text to a Landline
Adding business texting isn’t super effective if your customers have to search for a separate phone number just to reach you. But, with text to landline, your customers can reach you anywhere, using the same number they use to call you. Text-enable your business phone number so your customers have a convenient chat option using the same, memorable phone number they used to call you yesterday.
8. Tracking and Reporting
As with any other communication channel, it’s still really important that your texting platform provides tracking and reporting. This type of business intelligence is invaluable when it comes to adjusting and refining your business strategy. Keep track of first response rates, the number of messages received, frequent queries, and so on within your business texting platform to improve your customer satisfaction rates.
9. Link Shorteners
Long texts are a turn off. Your customers don’t want to be bogged down with a high character count. One way to make your texts much more effective is to use link shorteners. It can become cumbersome and a waste of space to paste an entire URL into a text message about a promotion or service. Look for a texting platform that provides link shorteners, so it is easier for your customers and leaves space for your message to be more direct and clear.
10 Integration with Other Software
What’s the point in adding new tech if it doesn’t integrate well with your other technology? Your business texting platform needs to integrate with your CSM software to be most effective. Find a service that integrates with other contact center solutions (CCaaS) like NICE CXone, Genesys, RingCentral, and others. Integrated systems will make your business operations run smoother and your staff’s work easier.
The average customer is glued to their phone. In fact, on average, Americans check their phones 344 times a day — that’s once every 4 minutes! While we all need to maybe reevaluate our screen time, it’s evident that phone use is only becoming more pervasive. And with that, SMS marketing and customer service will only become more useful to businesses.
Today, customers are looking for fast and flexible service. They want to send a message and get an immediate answer to their questions. SMS messaging is one of the quickest ways to reach customers by pinging directly in their back pockets. SMS contributes to your marketing strategy as well. With SMS marketing, you can access customers and spread the word about new initiatives, product updates, and promos with a greater guarantee that your message will actually be seen.
To help you out along the way, we’ve pulled together a playbook for you with strategies for how SMS marketing and customer service can be used to support your customer experience.
SMS Customer Service Strategy
Good customer service is really the backbone of every brand. When your customer service is strong, your brand can build trust as you understand more and more what pain points and problems your customers face. Plus, when customers are happy, they keep coming back.
Great customer service increases retention rates, and a simple increase of just 5% in retention rates can lead to a 25% increase in profits. In our increasingly remote and flexible way of life, customers have grown accustomed to omnichannel service that meets them where they are. SMS offers just this.
Here are 3 SMS strategies you can use to support your customers:
1. Conversational customer support
One of the greatest advantages of SMS for customer service is that it allows for personal and casual conversations with your customers. Everyone who has a phone is used to texting. It’s an accessible way to reach anyone in your customer base who owns a phone — which is now 97% of the U.S. population.
Send customers messages to help them in real time through an issue. Add in media, like photos and videos, to guide customers step by step without the formality and the lapses in time experienced in email.
2. Scheduling, canceling, and altering appointments
This is a bit embarrassing, but I’ve got about 3 reminders on my phone at the moment to schedule or adjust upcoming doctors’ appointments. Every couple days, they pop up to remind me (yet again) that I need to call in to my doctor to make that appointment. And every couple days, I hit “Remind me tomorrow.” Why? Because I hate making phone calls. I would much rather send out a text to my dentist’s office to request an appointment, just like I do with my hair salon, than to actually get on the phone and fumble through my words.
Appointment and scheduling management is one of the primary ways SMS support can be useful. As seen in the above screenshot, you can use SMS to send out reminders for appointments to your customers or allow them to cancel and alter appointments via text.
3. Gathering post-purchase feedback
Customer feedback is an essential piece in both customer service and marketing. How do you know what customers love in your product and service without asking them? And how else do you find out what’s driving your customers crazy?
SMS marketing and customer service lets you chat with customers and gather feedback in a more direct, personal, and flexible way than any other channel allows. Send out surveys or follow up customer service conversations with a feedback request. Automate post-purchase messages to have customers rate their experience.
SMS Marketing Strategy
The biggest incentive to SMS marketing is that it is so much more reliable than any other communication channel for getting customers to open, read, and respond to your messaging. SMS has a 98% open rate compared to email’s ~20%. If you’re hoping to send out marketing messages that actually get seen, add SMS marketing.
SMS marketing messages are ideal for time-sensitive offers and updates for mobile users, as well as for communicating with busy individuals on the go.
Here are 3 strategies for using SMS Marketing to reach your customers:
1. Text Customers about Discounts and Sales
One of the biggest bummers is finding out about a sale when it’s too late. I mean, who doesn’t love a deal? Customers want to know about when you have sales, but oftentimes those marketing emails get lost in the backlog of promotional emails. Instead, use SMS to tell customers about sales and discounts.
2. Tell your Customers about Product Releases and Updates
Use SMS marketing to update customers on new products and product updates. Let your customers know what’s coming soon via text. Then, send them an alert when the new arrivals drop. Give customers an easy way to go straight to your site and start shopping.
3. Engage Customers with Special Promos and Exclusive Content
SMS marketing gives you a unique way to keep customers engaged in your brand. Use creative methods to engage your subscriber list. Send your subscribers special promos, like discounts or BOGO codes, to gift them for their loyalty. Promote exclusive content — videos, podcasts, newsletters — that gives helpful guidance and advice about your product or service.
Best Practices with SMS Marketing and Customer Service
SMS marketing and service can be a super useful tool for your team, but when done poorly, you can strain customer relationships. Follow these best practices that apply to both SMS marketing and customer service to keep customers happy.
1. Clarify your goals with the technology
Make sure you know how the tech is going to be used in your team. Don’t just add SMS without a plan. What needs is it meeting for your customer base? How does it fit alongside the other channels you support?
2. Be mindful of timing
No one really wants to be woken up at 3 a.m. by an automated text from their hair salon. Text customers during business hours only. And keep track of how often each customer has received a text from you. Make sure your support team and your marketing team aren’t collectively overloading one customer with messages too frequently.
3. Offer value in every text
Don’t just send out a text just to send a text. Every text should add value to your customer. Don’t just respond to their questions, but show customers the way forward in your texts. Only send a marketing message if it offers something for your customer — like a promo or a chance to send feedback.
4. Consider where you can use automation to help
SMS can be incredibly useful when you pair it with automation. Automation can cut down on call volumes into your call center. With automation, proactively answer customer questions and alleviate the workload for your call center agents.
5. Always get a clear opt-in
Permission is an essential part of texting compliance. You cannot text any customers without getting opt-in from them. Find ways to get customer opt-in, whether it be through your IVR system, during online checkout, or through a web form. That way your team has a set list of subscribers they can reach out to for feedback and exclusive information.
6. Send short and simple messages
Don’t bog your customers down with a three-paragraph text. Texts are supposed to be a quick form of communication for those on the go. Customers won’t take the time to read a long message. In fact, they’ll more than likely be annoyed by one. Send a message that’s only a couple of sentences for the most effective form of communication.
7. Invest in good tech
SMS is a lot to manage. Invest in good tech that can support both your marketing and customer service teams. Find technology that allows for blast texts. Use a platform that can manage your opt-ins and opt-outs so you have up to date contact lists at all times. Make sure your platform offers conversational texting and supporting automations and bots to make your agents’ lives easier.
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.
It’s undeniable: online texting from your business has benefits. Business texting, when a company sends SMS text messages to its customers from a business phone number, adds a channel of communication that actually resonates – and gets responses.
Online texting is more personal than email. It’s faster than a phone call. And it’s more flexible than live chat. It lets your customer service team be both reactive and proactive, empowering agents to build a long lasting relationship with your customers.
Why are businesses moving to online texting with their customers?
Online texting is a reliable way to reach customers. The open rate of a text sent to a customer is 98% versus only 20% with email.
Online texting is personal. Most people receive texts only from friends and family. When you text them from your business, you’re building a much more personal relationship with them than you can through email.
Online texting is flexible. Online texting lets your agents and customers have two-way conversations wherever they are using the phone in their back pocket. They don’t need to wait on hold. No more getting timed out on a live chat.
Now, you can’t just add online texting without understanding how it differs from the other communication methods in etiquette, style, and standards. With a good sense of the benefits of online texting under your belt, let’s consider the best practices of business SMS.
We’ve compiled our 10 do’s and don’ts of effective online business texting below:
1. Do send online texts within business hours.
Your online texting needs to be seen as a professional mode of communication — just like phone, email, or live chat. But let me tell ya. You’ll very quickly annoy customers and appear unprofessional if you send texts outside of the texting window — between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. But honestly, customers don’t really want to hear from you after 5 p.m. or over the weekend, unless they reach out to you first. They don’t want to receive a text from you as they’re sitting down to dinner or winding down for bed.
Plus, sending texts to your customers outside of the typical 9 to 5 working hours can be seen as unprofessional and even rude. Don’t damage your credibility or your customer satisfaction by texting during weird hours. Stick to the online texting window when texting your customer base.
Ever get a long text message from a friend and feel a bit overwhelmed? Long texts are a bit of a turnoff, especially when they’re coming from a company. If the conversation starts to get too complicated to handle in short texts, it’s time to move to a different communication channel, like email or phone.
With a standard business text topping out around 160 characters, it’s important that you make good use of the space you have allotted. Don’t fill texts to customers with lengthy links or vague messaging. Instead, keep outbound messages short and to the point. Keep your purpose and motive clear.
You might think — “I’ll just limit my character count with some abbreviations and text lingo!” Resist the urge. Using abbreviations like “Jsyk,” “Lol,” or “Nbd” can confuse customers and are seen as a bit too casual to be professional. Use shorthand texting lingo very sparingly and only when it fits within your brand.
3. Do only send texts to those customers who have opted in.
Always always get permission from customers before sending them a text. Getting opt-in from your customers is one of the most important best practices of online texting. Not only is it good etiquette to get consent before sending a text to your customers, it’s also necessary to stay compliant. According to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), businesses are required to get consent from anyone they text.
Get opt-in from customers through a web form or by email before sending any outbound texts. And, when a customer reaches out to you, get a double opt-in in your initial text to guarantee that they want to hear from you.
4. Don’t overdo it by spamming your customers.
This week, I got the same scam call on my cell phone nine times. Nine! It was incredibly annoying. We all associate that level of contact to be spammy. And, even if the caller was from a legitimate number, I would be real quick to block the number. You do not want to drive your customers away by making them sick of hearing from you. Avoid sending too many texts too often. When you’re sending online business texts, less is more.
Choose the texts you want to send to your customers wisely. Unless you’re providing live updates or carrying on a two-way conversation, keep outbound texts to a minimum to keep customers engaged.
5. Do give customers the opportunity to opt out.
As much as it’s important to give customers the opportunity to opt-in to hearing from you, it’s important to give them a clear exit. I myself go through seasons of needing to hear from certain brands via email and text. But when it’s time to cut the cord, I want to know how to stop the messages. Your customers will appreciate the chance to opt out of texts when they want. So, make it obvious that they have the option to opt out of your online texting campaign at any time.
With each new texting interaction, give customers the chance to opt out by sending a short code — like STOP or END. Or, provide clear instructions for opt-out on your website and in any text blasts you send.
6. Don’t send a text without an introduction.
What do you have your call center agents do as soon as they pick up the phone with a customer? Introduce themselves — of course! It is common etiquette to open a conversation with a stranger by sharing your name. We don’t ignore these manners just because we’re texting instead of picking up a phone. Plus, an outgoing online text is going to be pretty pointless if your customer doesn’t know who it’s coming from.
Whether you’re sending a text about a promotional, a schedule reminder, or a sales campaign, always be sure you’re introducing your brand in initial texts sent to a customer.
7. Do deflect calls using online texting in your IVR.
Why do customers choose online texting instead of making a phone call? Oftentimes it’s to avoid those additional 45 minutes of waiting on hold with customer service. Who has time for that?
Give your customers the opportunity to jump out of line and get direct help by deflecting calls stuck in your IVR system to a text thread. Just think of what this does for your call volume, making room for customers with more complex issues to get help over the phone. You’re lowering wait times for everyone. Internally, your agents have more time to handle those complicated phone calls. And, your customers with simpler issues or questions have direct access to an agent or self-service tool through online texting.
Customers choose online business texting because it’s supposed to be fast. You want to send a message and get a reply within minutes. Yes, it’s more flexible than phone or live chat, but customers expect a quick response. Some research shows that even waiting 20 minutes to text someone back can make you seem unprofessional.
As a business, it’s important to keep your customers’ expectations top of mind. And if they’re expecting a response to come within 15-20 minutes, it’s vital that your team is ready to meet that. What may start out as a minor inconvenience can turn into a major annoyance if the customer doesn’t get a prompt response. Don’t leave customers hanging. Keep response times as quick as possible to maintain a strong customer experience.
9. Do have a dedicated online text team (and train and coach them frequently).
How do you keep response times fast? How can you make sure that customers that move from the call queue to text will be cared for? You have to have employees ready and able to help customers through online texting at all times. The best way to make that happen is to have a dedicated online texting team on each shift.
Online texting is just not the same style of communication as a phone call or even an email. It takes separate training and a separate set of standards to effectively communicate with customers by text. For instance, agents have to be able to capture a friendly personalized tone while also keeping messaging brief and easy to follow. Plus, when online texting with customers, agents can start and maintain multiple conversations at once. They have to be able to juggle different kinds of interactions simultaneously and fast.
Your call center will benefit from having a separate team devoted to texting customers. And, train and coach them independently to keep the same high level of service for the customers you’re texting with as you would for those who phone in.
10. Don’t offer only one-way communication.
Online texting is incredibly valuable for your marketing and sales team, giving you many unique opportunities to engage customers through outgoing texts. But part of what makes online texting special is the ability for customers to interact with your business on a personal level. These days, a personal connection to a brand goes a long way with customers.
McKinsey & Co. argues that consumers today don’t just want personalization, they demand it. In addition to this finding, their recent research found that companies that excel at personalization generate 40% more revenue than the average brand. How can you know what your customers like about your service and product without establishing a relationship with them?
If you leave your online texting as only one-way communication, you’re missing out on chances to offer quality service and to gather useful feedback from your customer base. If your internal operations can effectively support customers via text, enable two-way communication to boost personalization and build a loyal customer following.
