Customer service is at the heart of any business’s long-term success. Without providing quality service to the customer, you'll find it hard to retain them over time. This is why businesses usually try to provide the very best customer service experience to their clients.
There are multiple channels available to you when it comes to customer service. You can do it by phone, email, chatting, and social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc... All of these channels are very viable and have their merits and faults. The viability of any channel depends on the nature of your business and the profile of your clients.
Today, there is one customer service channel that is a must for every business. The best communication channel for providing customer service is texting and you should look to use it for your business. You must be interested in knowing why if you want to grow your business! Continue reading to find out...
Benefits of Texting for Businesses
Texting offers a variety of benefits to businesses over other communication channels used for offering customer service. Let’s take a look at some of them in more detail.
Versatility
E-mail, calling, and social media platforms have their particular strengths and can be used for customer service. However, texting excels greatly amongst these channels as it is a versatile communication channel. This is because it not only allows businesses to communicate with the customers but because it can also be used for marketing and sales purposes as well.
There is also the added benefit of using it for internal cooperation. You can solve multiple problems by using a texting service for your business than by using any of the other communication channels. Moreover, texts have a higher opening rate as well when compared to emails. Customers are more inclined to see an SMS from a business rather than attend their call or even see their email. In short, you can increase your reach as well as improve your retention rate with a good quality texting service.
Offline Availability
It is a well-known fact that most people nowadays do most of their stuff on their phones. This is why social media platforms are considered great communication channels for customer service. You can message the clients using WhatsApp, Messenger, Twitter, or Instagram quite easily and hear back from them right away. However, what if a customer doesn’t have a Smartphone or if the customer isn’t well-versed or inactive on the most popular social media avenues?
They won’t be able to see WhatsApp messages or won’t even get your emails. This is where texting trumps the social media platforms. Texting doesn’t need internet or any kind of app that can run only on a Smartphone. You can reach both your online and offline customers via texting without encountering any issues. This is particularly great if you have a profile of customers who are older and are more inclined to either not have a Smartphone or not have a real interest in using social media.
Less Intrusive
Customers want to have a sense of freedom when communicating with their service providers. This is why they prefer texting and chatting than calls. Most of the clients these days don’t even attend calls made by the businesses because they consider them to be intrusive. Calls can disrupt their daily routine and disturb them during work or sleep. This is not the case with a text. You can check the text whenever you want. It won’t bother the customer like a call does because they don’t have to respond immediately. They have the freedom to read the message when they want.
Similarly, when it comes to contacting businesses as well, customers prefer texting. Some customers just don’t want to talk to strangers in real time and therefore, it is a great relief for them if they can contact the business via text. Texting wins because it provides customers the freedom to send texts whenever they want and not just during specific business hours.
Cost-effectiveness
Small businesses look to save money wherever they can without impacting their services. They need to be really smart about using their resources. By using texting, you can do exactly that and still not compromise on customer service at all. This is because texting services are much cheaper than other communication services. Although you will be sending bulk messages, the overall cost for texting would still be very low when compared with phone lines or chatting services.
This is true for both the initial investment cost as well as the running service cost so you will be saving on both. However, this benefit of texting only becomes evident if you manage to find the best texting service for your business. This is why, it is a good idea to start any texting service on a free trial and seeing if they can provide the kind of service you are looking for.
Ease of Use
A great advantage of texting is that it is very easy to figure out. Everyone uses text messages for communication and knows how they work. You will have to invest nothing on staff training when using a texting service for your business. Texts are also very easy to customize and personalize as per your requirement. You can create personalized texts for your customers and have them sent at specific times throughout the day.
Also, you can set up text message campaigns to reach your audience without requiring much effort. It would also help with gathering data, tracking performance and analyzing the results of your campaign too as you will be using a single local number for all the texts of the campaign.
Avenues in Which Businesses Can Use Texting
Now that we know what kind of benefits texting has to offer to a business, let us discuss the avenues in which a business can use texting.
Customer Service
The best use of texting for a business can be for providing customer service. It makes conversations prompt and quick between you and the customer and ensures that the customers get answers to their queries immediately. Your staff can respond to the customer’s complaints at any hour.
Also, you can relay information to the clients about their orders via texting too. Since texts are small and have limited characters, you just have to give the information the customer wants instead of going into too much useless detail. This is why text conversations are preferred by clients over emails. You can build a stronger relationship with your customers by offering customer services via texting.
Sales
Texting can be used for sales purposes as well. There is a lot of information that you need to share with the customer during the sale process. Traditionally, emails or calls were considered the best means for conveying this information. However, at present, texting has overtaken them both.
The reason again is the simplicity that texting offers. Customers are more likely to see and acknowledge texts send by businesses rather than opening their emails or attending calls. You can be rest assured that the text you sent to the customer regarding the sale of a product or service will be read by the customer if it is sent via a text.
Marketing
Business can leverage the power of texting for marketing purposes too. Emails are generally regarded as the best means of online marketing but they are slowly becoming obsolete. The reason for this is that most of the times the promotional emails get sent to the promotions category in the inbox and never get opened by the customer.
If not the promotions category, the marketing emails are classified as spam by the email service. Thus, the customer never reads them. Texts, on the other hand, have a high opening rate. Any promotions sent via a text are sure to be seen by a customer 98% of the time. So, it makes sense to use texting for marketing your products and services.
Internal Cooperation
Customer service teams need to communicate with each other when helping clients. Sometimes one representative needs to hand off the client to another member so that they can get the information they are looking for. When using emails, calls, or a chat services this hand off can lead to time stoppages. The internal communication between the customer service representatives will take time during which they will have to put the client on hold. In today’s world, no one likes waiting. Customers also don’t like being put on hold for long durations. Texting provides a solution for this issue. Texting services offer features that allow the customer service representative to communicate with each other while attending to the clients. This ensures that there is no stoppage in customer service during hand off and the client doesn’t have to wait even for a second.
So, there can be no qualms that texting is the superior method of communication for customer service as well as other aspects of business like sales, marketing, and internal cooperation. You can benefit a lot by using texting for your business.