Chances are you’ve been hearing a lot about business texting these last few years. And why wouldn’t you? Over 97% of Americans own a cellphone of some kind! With this astounding saturation of mobile devices, customers are naturally asking businesses to go mobile with them.
While you may be tempted to put off text-enabling your business, we’ve got 5 key reasons you should make business texting a communications priority this year!
1) Business Texting Improves the Quality and Speed of Customer Service
Speed
One thing we all know for sure is that customers want to communicate quickly and easily with a business whenever they have issues. And most don’t want to wait in long hold lines or deal with impersonal chatbots – they want to talk to a real person in a reasonable amount of time.
The solution? Business texting! It gives customers the immediacy they need with the personalization they crave. One way to do this is through many-to-one number assignments. This feature is crucial because it allows you to assign multiple representatives to one service number, increasing the likelihood of an immediate response to customer questions.
Personalization
But now that you’ve answered their message, there’s another aspect business texting can help with – personalization. According to a recent study, 63% of consumers expect businesses to know their unique needs and expectations prior to answering their text messages. With that in mind, another feature you should prioritize is secure texting logs.
Previous conversations with customers are automatically saved within the software, allowing representatives to personalize the interaction by building off previous inquiries, referring to past solutions, and so on.
2) Business Texting Saves Your Business Both Time and Money
As any business knows, customer care can be costly from an operational standpoint. Customer care represents a huge part of an operator’s budget. In fact, studies show that live customer service calls cost operators in the United States an average cost of $4.48 per call. However, when utilizing messaging the cost of customer interactions can drop to about $1 per chat – a 78% reduction in operational costs. This reduction in expenses is mirrored by reducing the amount of time your representatives spend with each customer.
Having access to previous chats, and the means to answer questions immediately empowers representatives to solve issues at a more efficient rate. This ensures more customers are cared for per day than if you only utilized traditional phones.
3) It Keeps Current Customers “In the Know”
Business texting is a fantastic way to keep customers informed about service updates, upcoming events or appointments, and more without taking too much time out of their day. An automated message can be sent to hundreds of customers without creating a group message, keeping them updated without giving away their private information. Not only that, but you won’t have to outsource your outreach to another company to update customers individually, saving yourself some money as well as time.
In more specific situations, like one-on-one appointments, business texting is also more helpful. Rather than playing phone or email tag, customers can simply respond to the initial text with whether they can fulfill the appointment or not. If they end up canceling, you’ll be able to plan accordingly ahead of time!
4) Business Texting Provides Better Engagement with Prospects
Did you know that approximately 98% of all text messages get opened by customers? That’s a staggering number considering the declining rates of email opens. Don’t let your marketing team miss this incredible opportunity to engage prospective customers.
Use business texting to send updates about new products that are launching, create a text-based rewards program, or follow up on important emails when necessary. Just be sure you don’t text them too much and risk becoming a SPAM number in their contacts list.
5) It Boosts Your Brand in the Marketplace
Not only is business texting helpful for your employees and customers, but it’s also helpful for your brand. In this mobile-centric world, businesses that are text-enabled are more likely to have positive customer reviews than those that don’t. After all, over 64% of consumers already think businesses that text value their time. All you have to do is prove them right.
Start Business Texting Today with Pathwayz
If you’re ready to start reaching customers and prospects the way they want to be reached, Pathwayz can help! Our platform is simple to set up and to use, jam-packed with all the features you need to do texting right. We even allow you to keep (and text-enable) your current business numbers so customers can still reach you on the numbers they’re familiar with.
Reach out today to schedule a free demonstration and see the benefits of the platform yourself. You can even pair our SMS messaging with our Pathwayz CloudPBX for a more unified communications stack! We look forward to helping your business get text messaging ready!