The days of traditional communication and being chained to a desk phone are long gone. No one has time for leaving 10+ voicemails a day. Is your team tired of playing phone tag with clients? Wish there was a better way to stay in contact with colleagues throughout the day? UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) was once labeled as “the future of communication” but the future is here and the need is now!
Wouldn’t your SMB love a quick, easy way to stay in touch with customers and conveniently collaborate as a team within seconds? That’s where the benefits of business texting come in!
“Whether you’re responsible for an enterprise company, a budding startup, or something in the middle, unified communications is quickly becoming a must-have for any business owner. Although the business case for the UCaaS landscape isn’t exactly new, more companies have begun to embrace the idea lately, following the pandemic.
If you’ve heard of Unified Communications as a Service before, you’ll know how advantageous it can be. UCaaS reduces IT spend, improves productivity, lowers employee commute costs, and more. However, as we discovered in 2020, UCaaS can also be critical for business continuity. By giving your team members access to crucial tools on the cloud, you ensure productivity doesn’t falter when the office shuts down.
With UCaaS technology, today’s businesses can bridge the gap between their remote and in-office employees, ensuring better company culture, boosted engagement, and enhanced productivity. When staff members have an effective and aligned experience, the results come through in your customer satisfaction levels too.” UC Today
Learn everything you need to know about the benefits of texting with UCaaS from our partners at Broadvoice…
Introducing Bubble
Your Customers Are Busy. Reach Them with Text. Bubble by Broadvoice is more than just a text messaging platform. It’s a powerful tool that allows you to connect with your customers where they live — on their phones. With Broadvoice, you can use b-hive, our cloud communication platform for voice, video, and collaboration, and leverage your b-hive phone number with Bubble. Get all of your business communication needs under one roof.
A few key of Bubble features include:
- Textcast: Reach more people easily by sending bulk text to targeted contact lists.
- Timetext: Schedule texts at specific times or use drip campaigns to trigger action based texts.
- Inbound Text Routing: Route text to the right contact person to engage in two-way conversations.
- Keywords: Use keywords for promotions, surveys and to route texts to the right departments.
- Live Agent Interaction: Agents can respond to customer in real-time via text to help with sales and support.
- Open API: Leverage the Open API to integrate Bubble with your CRM and create smart workflows.
6 Benefits of Using Text Messaging for Customer Service and Support
“The numbers are really staggering — there are over 3 billion smartphone users in the world, with Americans spending an average of 5.4 hours a day on their phones. And people check their phones an average of 58 times per day, which makes it safe to assume that at least some of those checks include text messages — and messages from a company they’ve done business with or will in the future.
Today’s businesses use a variety of methods to reach customers. Text messaging is a popular way for customer service teams to best serve consumers. And a national survey of more than 1,000 U.S. adults with smartphones found that almost two-thirds (63%) of respondents would switch to a company that offered text messaging as a communication channel. And that’s great news for you.
People’s phones are very personal to them, and marketing to them through their phones is becoming increasingly impactful. It’s time to realize the many potential benefits of text messaging for customer service and support. Here are six of the best benefits.
Consumer Demand: In the past, phone calls were how customer service issues were handled, but today’s consumers are demanding a fast response, and nothing is faster than text messaging. There’s no waiting on hold or getting transferred around, and they can often get an immediate reply. It’s fast becoming the expectation, with 76% of consumers reporting they don’t like talking to businesses on the phone.
Automation: When it comes to text message marketing, automation can be used for your welcome texts, appointment reminders, shipping and delivery notifications, and other messages that would be time consuming if done manually. This can be a game-changer when it comes to customer service. Adding a series of automated text message questions for the customer to answer before they’re transferred to a live agent helps to move the interaction along by facilitating a better understanding of the customer’s problem. This saves time on both ends because customers don’t have to repeat the same questions over and over, and agents already know what they’re dealing with.
It’s Asynchronous: Simply put, customers are busy and might not be able to stick around for a full customer service conversation on their computer or on the phone. With text messages, customers can continue the conversation while on the go from whatever channels makes the most sense – without losing any context or having to repeat their issue. This gives your customers the ability to connect 24/7 on their own time and it shows how your company values their time and respects their communication preferences.
It’s Convenient and Saves Time: Speaking of time, nobody likes to wait on hold for customer service. Texting doesn’t require a huge time investment and allows the customer to send a text message with their support question while they go about their day. It also saves company time — issues are resolved more quickly, freeing up customer service agents from dozens of time-consuming phone calls. And as an added bonus, with text message support, agents can handle multiple conversations at once.
It’s Cost Efficient: Your business is always looking for ways to save money, and turning to text messaging for customer support is a step in the right direction. It’s less expensive to handle customer inquiries by text than over the phone. According to a Forrester study, the average customer service phone call costs about $16, but the average text thread costs between $1 to $5 per interaction.
Collect Customer Feedback: Customers are also more likely to read texts and respond in comparison to email. Text message open rates are as high as 98%, compared to just 20% of all emails. And, on average, it takes 90 seconds for someone to respond to a text, as opposed to 90 minutes to respond to an email. So if you want honest — and fast — feedback, texting is the way to go.”
Once your SMB is on board with business texting, then comes the lesson on etiquette! Here are some pointers from Broadvoice to keep in mind before you begin…
The Golden Rules of Using Business Text Messaging for Customer Engagement
“Given the fact that 96% of Americans own some kind of cellphone, it makes sense that businesses are realizing that text messaging is a great way to engage with their customers. Text messages are opened on average 98% of the time, while emails have an open rate of only 22%. This means text marketing is the way to go, but it must be done properly.
Your customers opted in to receive your messages and they expect you to deliver some value, which gives them a reason for them to engage with you. You don’t just want your text to show up in their notifications and be dismissed.
To effectively market by text, follow these “Golden Rules” of text message marketing.
Get Permission: The most important thing to remember is that you can only send text messages to those who have given consent. In this context, consent is defined as someone knowingly agreeing to receive promotional texts from your company. One straightforward way of obtaining consent is with an SMS keyword — a word or phrase that customers can text to your number to subscribe to future messages.
Parse the Pool: Sending out the same message to your entire text list is ineffectively bland at best, annoying at worse. To get actual value out of your text, you’ll want to segment your audience so you can send them targeted messages. These texts are more likely to transform recipients into warm leads that try your brand.
Personalize Your Messages: Consumers are exposed to around 10,000 brand messages a day! One way to stand out from the noise is something as simple as addressing the text with a name. In fact, 75% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company that recognizes them by name, and 49% of consumers have purchased something they didn’t intend to after receiving a personal marketing message about it. Not only that, but 44% of customers are likely to become repeat buyers of a brand that effectively personalizes messages and 39% are likely to tell friends and family. An automated platform can make what would be a manual nightmare nearly effortless.
Time Texts Right: Timing truly is everything, and a well-timed text can make every message feel meaningful — and actionable. Keep texts to within reasonable business hours when possible. Not only will you not be annoying, but recipients are more likely to take action. And how many should you send? The answer is that “it depends”. The key is consistency. While you don’t want to appear spammy, you also don’t want to text so infrequently that they forget they signed up in the first place.
Make It a Two-Way Conversation: There’s something about messages only flowing in one direction — from brand to customer — that feels like just a flat ad. By giving customers the ability to text back, you’re encouraging a conversation — and making a connection. The average response rate for SMS is 45%, and 90% of text marketing messages are read in three minutes, which means you have the perfect opportunity to create conversations that lead to conversions. And people expect to get quick responses via text, and their inquiries might come at any time of day or night. While it’s not always possible to immediately reply, try it out by setting availability for a select number of hours a week. To keep them engaged, you’ll want to use an auto-responder to instantly and automatically send personalized, follow-up text messages that are received out of office hours.
Be Relevant, Not Redundant: Text message marketing should never be used just to say you used it. How are you adding value to the customers’ lives? If you don’t know the answer, you shouldn’t send the texts. It’s a good idea to also focus on “SMART” marketing (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, and Timely). Focus on useful information, exclusive savings, important announcements, promotions, and event alerts, and try layering in infographics, gifs or attachments to make the experience engaging. Keep it short, sweet, and to the point.
Make the Opt-Out Obvious: Last but certainly not least, you must include a way for customers to opt out with every message. Whether it’s an unsubscribe link or a number where they can text “STOP” to, that’s one thing you can’t neglect. By making your opt-out steps easily scannable, you send a loud and clear signal to customers that you’re not trying to spam them or lure them into a marketing scheme. It helps you establish trust and credibility, and a platform with built in text consent and opt-out options makes that easy.”
