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Texting is a quick, efficient and effective way to support and communicate with customers.
Most people are comfortable with communicating with friends and family through text messaging, and conversational SMS messages have also become a regular part of the business messaging environment. As a result, businesses are increasing their use of text messaging to communicate with customers and support their customer service strategies. We’ll explore seven ways to use text messaging for customer service and how those strategies can improve your customer satisfaction rating.
Business texting is commonly used for text message marketing, internal messaging, and vendor and customer communications. However, more businesses are using text messaging for customer service because it saves time and provides efficient communication that can boost customer satisfaction.
Businesses can use the best text messaging services for customer service to do the following:
Treating customers like individuals and sending timely messages will help you build strong customer relationships and boost customer loyalty. Personalized texts help you connect more strongly with customers.
Emails are more effective than text messages when you must provide more detailed information to customers or tell your brand’s story (as in marketing and case studies). However, text messaging is more personal; you can speak directly to customers on a first-name basis and answer questions immediately.
Phone calls and text messages are both effective for one-to-one communication. Text messaging can be just as personal and deliberate as talking to a customer on the phone. However, text messages are easier to scale than phone calls. You can respond immediately to customer questions by text message, which helps customers feel heard and understood, builds rapport and improves customer retention.
Here’s how you can personalize text messages in customer service interactions:
Email can be a relatively slow form of communication. There are often extended periods between responses, which can reduce the effectiveness. Phone calls also take time and can cause frustration when customers are left on hold or the phone call isn’t handled appropriately, which are common customer service failures. Slow responses can cause customers to go elsewhere and fuel bad reviews.
Text messages are faster than email and phone calls because people can respond to texts amid other tasks. Text messages also facilitate quick exchanges, resulting in more immediate responses.
Text messaging is convenient for customers, who can respond or reach out on their own time. Customers often prefer conversing via text because they don’t have to deal with automated phone menus or wait for email replies. This puts the customer in control of the buying journey and communication speed.
The time you save with automation can accumulate significantly during a business day. You can automate many elements of the customer service process, particularly if you have an online store. Automated text messages can include the following:
You can also use automated texts for marketing campaigns. In this case, you might send messages to everyone on your contact list. Text message marketing examples include the following:
Your business can use an automated texting application, one of the best customer relationship management (CRM) solutions, and other applications to schedule and send text messages. Automated texting can make your customer service and marketing teams more efficient and proactive in their communications. Automated messages also create greater business transparency and help you answer questions immediately.
Customers often contact the customer service department or visit a business’s website to find answers to questions about orders, service requests, delivery issues and other topics. But when they can ask questions via text, they can get answers more quickly, reducing the time spent trying to resolve a problem.
Setting up autoresponders is a great way to reduce your customer service response time, improve brand perception, increase the likelihood of repeat business and encourage good reviews of your business. Autoresponders allow you to provide immediate answers to common questions, such as your hours of operation, location and current availability.
Consider the following tips for effective autoresponders:
It makes good business sense to proactively remind customers about appointments. Reminders reduce the number of canceled or missed appointments, thus keeping customers satisfied, employees busy and your calendar full.
Set up your text messaging or calendar app to send appointment reminders when the customer makes the appointment, several days before and on the appointment date. Include a call to action that compels the customer to confirm the appointment and a way for the customer to reschedule or cancel the appointment.
You can also use text messaging to send alerts about limited-time offers, changes to seasonal inventory, updates on new arrivals, links to special events and more. This form of proactive text messaging can boost sales, increase your business and website traffic, and spur customer interest.
Collecting customer feedback is a great way to determine what customers like and don’t like about your business. However, the traditional ways of conducting polls and gathering survey data are time-consuming and require investments in software and other resources.
Text-based surveys are an efficient way to collect customer feedback. Include a link to a Google Form with a poll or survey in the message body to facilitate quick responses and customer interactions.
Polls and surveys are designed to collect customer feedback in slightly different ways:
Polls and surveys can be sent by text message in the following ways:
Many customers check Google reviews before visiting or buying from a business, and they typically read the newest reviews first. Google reviews are essential to your SEO strategy because they boost your search engine rankings; the more reviews you receive, the better your business’s credibility will be. Positive reviews also provide social proof that a business treats its customers well. Checking your business’s Google reviews is crucial to learning what customers say about you.
Consider sending customers a timely message (i.e., soon after a sale or customer visit) requesting a review, with a link to your Google Reviews page in the text. A message to the customer soon after a positive interaction is more likely to result in a positive review.
Follow these steps to increase your number of positive Google reviews: