Connect, engage and develop relationships that will lead to improved customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Most Businesses or Organizations do not receive text messages. In fact, most are not aware they can receive text messaging or how they would use texts if they did. Texting has been around for over 20 years but it’s only now hitting its stride when it comes to business. Formerly it was just a way to send silly photos and emoticons (and to some extent, still is) however, text messaging in now being viewed as a powerful way for businesses and organizations to connect, engage and develop relationships and improve customer loyalty.
For example, it’s widespread, affordable, near real-time, visual and flexible. It’s also brief, preferred and can be used in any industry or organization to create better customer experiences.
However, text messaging has become the most popular way today to communicate. It far out numbers voice calls, email, chat and fax. In fact, 70% of all people surveyed prefer text messaging over any other method and are Five times more effective than email. (Portio Research).
Here are some general InfoStats that will surprise most businesses or organizations:
Texting is the most widely-used and frequently used app on a smartphone, with 97% of Americans using it at least once a day (Pew Internet)
People worldwide will send 8.3 trillion text messages in 2016 alone. That’s almost 23 billion messages a day or almost 16 million in one minute (Portio Research)
Over 6 billion text messages are sent in the US each day (Forrester)
Text messages have an 98% open rate, while email has only a 20% open rate (Mobile Marketing Watch)
Text messaging has a 45% response rate, while email only has a 6% response rate (Velocity)
Texting takes up 14.1% of cell phone user’s time (Nielsen)
90% of all test messages are read in under 3 minutes (Connect Mogul)
Mark Zukerberg stated in a presentation of his in 2016:
“I don’t know anyone who likes calling a business. He goes on to say, “We should message a business just the way you would message a friend.” Most all of us have had poor experiences with calling a business. Rarely do you talk the right person on the first call. Only about 15% of the time does that occur. More often you are on-hold forever and get transferred to a someone who can’t resolve your problem. Business messaging solves this problem. It’s fast, efficient and more productive.”
Mobile users prefer texting but businesses have been largely left out of the conversation. With Business Messaging, there are no menus, no hold time and no voicemail.
What are the biggest advantages of Business Messaging?
One of the biggest advantages to text messaging is how it engages the prospect or customer into a conversation. It’s much faster, easier & shorter than email, that it actually feels like a phone conversation. However, because it isn’t real time, that conversation can be continued later if you needed to find or look up information to respond. Also, because text messages are opened more often and faster than email, they get answers to questions quicker. That can mean more business and happy customers.
Texting is far more efficient that most Chat sessions because of the long holding times and most Chat agents have multiple active chat sessions going at the same time so it may cause delays in the chat session and longer wait times.
Text messages can be sent to all employees, just like a Contact Center for voice calls, and whoever answers that text is visually shown to all the other employees so that text gets faster attention and anyone who is available can jump in if no one has responded yet. That’s a different advantage that a true voice only Contact Center can't offer.
The biggest advantage of Business text messaging is, texting is the most preferred method of how prospects and customers want to engage with organizations today. Why not offer them that preference and you can measure the results in your monthly reports to prove it.
Business Messaging is included in our Suite of Cloud Telephone System Software. It’s easy to use and similar to the way you text on your mobile devices.
It’s Simple, Reliable and Saves Time and Money. Try it, we think you’ll become more productive and make your customers happier because of it. Request a quote or give us call at 713.910.1401 to find out more.