Sending a quick text is a normal part of most people’s daily life. That’s what makes it such an effective tool for businesses! We are already used to sending and receiving texts throughout the day, and it’s easy for most people to read and respond to messages. For businesses in just about every industry, adding texting to their communication, customer service and employee engagement strategy makes sense.
What is Business Texting?
Business texting uses short messaging service (or SMS as it’s commonly known) to allow for two way conversation between your business and your customers or employees. It is a great way for businesses to improve engagement and provide a higher level of support for people. Texting is something that nearly everyone knows how to do, so it’s an easy way for your business to connect with employees and customers where they are and in a way they are likely to engage with.
Benefits of Business Texting
Texting gets your message in front of people quickly. Think about how often your phone is in your hand or within reach. The same goes for most people. That’s one of the biggest, most immediate benefits that an SMS service can provide. But beyond being fast, it is effective in improving customer service, increasing sales and saving time.
Improve Customer Service
Provide a higher level of customer service, improving the support your customers receive and the relationship you have with that customer. Customers can ask questions, get status updates on orders or get help with an issue via text, and your staff can respond quickly. While there are many channels to provide this type of customer service, texting makes it easy for both the customer and your staff. Texts are usually short and to the point, and are often preferred by customers for this type of information when compared to email.
Increase Sales and ROI
Texting can serve a sales purpose, in addition to customer service and support. You can re-engage customers who may have abandoned their cart or those who have not purchased from you in a while with a coupon code for their next purchase sent straight to their phone. This will get the information to your customers and allow them to look at it or shop when they have time. In fact, more than half of smartphone owners have purchased on their mobile devices, with a third of e-commerce sales coming from phones. With texting, you’ll get the information to them in a place where they are likely to be anyway, making it easy for them to purchase from you.
Save Time
Not having enough time is one of the biggest challenges we face. With so many different priorities vying for our attention at any given moment, finding ways to save time on certain tasks will help your business run more effectively. Whether you are texting employees or customers, you can get your message in front of a lot of eyes at one time. With most business texting platforms like TxtSquad, the features are set up in a way that you can quickly and effectively get your message out. Automate drip texts, send mass messages and automatically send reminder emails. This means that you won’t have to send out an individual message to make an impact.
Business Texting Best Practices
In order to reap these benefits of texting your customers or employees, there are a few best practices you should follow.
Schedule for appropriate hours: While many people enable do not disturb mode, sleep mode or silence during overnight hours, on the off chance that someone hasn’t done this, you should schedule messages to send at appropriate hours as often as possible. By scheduling for the right time, you are also increasing the likelihood that your message will be read and responded to or acted upon.
Set up automation: Use the automation tools available to you with your SMS service. Set up drip campaigns, automated replies and auto reminders or updates for appointments or shipments. This will take some time up front to get everything ready, but in the long run having automation will make SMS less time consuming for your business.
Create a library of scripts: With two way conversations for questions and concerns, you may see the same questions come up over and over again. If you have a library of scripted responses, your teams will be able to grab the message that fits and send it off quickly. You can also create a library of messages that have performed well in the past so your teams have good content to use when they are creating a new campaign.
Use campaign analytics: This feature will give you insight into how your campaigns are working, which messages performed best and what time or day might be best for future texts to be scheduled. You can use analytics to help you create new content or repurpose high performing content, even adding it to your script library.
Personalize messages: One of the great things about texting is that it gets the message in front of an actual person who is in the habit of opening and reading texts. If you personalize your message with their name or relevant content, you increase the chances they will respond in a positive manner (donating, purchasing, signing up for an event or whatever you are asking them to do).
Get the Benefits of Business Texting Today
If you want to save your team's time while improving customer service and increasing sales, SMS might be the way to go for your company. While there are a range of tools available for SMS today, the right tool brings together all of the features that will make your life easier, like contact management, auto responses, tracking, analytics and drip campaigns. TxtSquad offers all of these tools and more so that you truly get the most out of business texting. Book a demo or start a free trial today to see how texting your employees or customers can make an impact!