CSAT scores are great measures of how delighted a customer is after a single experience with your company. Measuring customer satisfaction is a must for most industries.

The first place our customers use text messaging is in sending satisfaction surveys. When they’re measuring customer-service interactions or conversations, our customers tend to send out surveys by text immediately after the interaction. With products like furniture, they may wait several weeks to give the customer time to enjoy the new additions before sending a satisfaction survey.

The surveys often consist of only one question or just a few carefully chosen questions. If our customer needs responses to a longer survey, they can link the text message to an online survey form. And with text, the response rate goes up almost immediately.

The greatest benefit to sending any survey by text is that your customers will read it and respond. We know that globally we send 5 billion texts a day, and we open 98 percent of them. Conversely, we only open emails 22 percent of the time, according to Gigaom. Research from Asurion shows that we look at our phones 96 times a day or once every 10 minutes.

If you want to know what your customers are thinking, ask them via texts. You can use text-only SMS messages or multi-media MMS messages. Visit our recent blog to determine which is best for your use.

In addition to sending surveys via text messaging, you can improve your customer experience with text messaging. Here’s an insider secret from one of our customers – consider using the SMS-Magic Mobile App.

One of our customers is a property management company, and needed a way for tenants to reach property managers during an emergency. The PMs weren’t always at their desks waiting for the calls to come in, and tenants were frustrated by what they perceived was a lack of concern.

Nothing could have been farther from the truth. Often during working hours, the property managers were out visiting properties. After hours, they weren’t in the office, but relied on a dedicated phone line to handle emergencies. The only problem was that tenants texted the company instead of calling, and no one responded to them. The system wasn’t set up to respond to texts.

So, the company deployed the SMS-Magic Mobile App. A tenant could text the company about emergencies, and the PM on call could field the text on a personal mobile phone. The text would even be recorded in the company’s CRM as if it had come through the desktop computer in the office. You can imagine how much happier the tenants are – their emergencies are getting prompt attention. And how much happier staff members are because they can handle emergencies away from their desks.

Another of our customers is a disrupter in the world of travel accommodations. The company works with condominium and apartment developers to identify properties that are empty during the construction phase in major U.S. cities. They design high-end interiors, stage the empty condos and apartments with furniture and accessories, and rent them to travelers looking for luxury accommodations in highly desirable neighborhoods, mostly in downtown areas.

SMS-Magic helps the company’s customer service reps easily reach out to the right people to resolve issues. For example, if a guest is arriving late and has a question about checking in — they can call, email, or text customer support. The inquiry is logged in the support center and any customer service rep who checks that guest record later can see the complete interaction. It makes solving guest issues easier, especially when handing off open cases during shift changes.

Connecting a guest and a customer service rep via text is an important functionality needed to resolve issues. Text is also likely to be a guest’s preferred method of interaction since messaging is the fastest growing conversational medium on the planet.

We can help you set up automated responses to incoming texts. With an automated system in place, your customers will have an immediate response that often can provide the information they need. You have the option to switch to live responses when you need to.

We’ve also thought about the customers who use more than the native SMS capability in their phones. You can receive, track and respond to multichannel queries such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, text and MMS.

Security is always top of mind for us. With all our products, we ensure data privacy and regulatory compliance while you’re using text messaging to manage your customers’ issues.

It’s a competitive world and if you’re able to respond to your customers faster than your competition, you have earned an amazing competitive advantage. Your customers may not expect much from customer service, but you can earn new customers, while keeping your existing customers, by delighting them every time they contact you. Quick responses to their emergencies or inquiries can help you develop the positive customer relationships that drive your business.

We’d like to help you wow your customers with outstanding customer service. Contact us for more information about the SMS-Magic family of products. We have a solution that’s right for you!

She immediately contacted the manufacturer. Here’s what happened:

1. The company asked for proof of purchase.
2. She found her Amazon receipt and sent it.
3. They asked what was wrong with the machine.
4. She explained the display was flashing.
5. They agreed the machine was dead and sent her instructions for submitting a claim.
6. She cut the cord on the machine, took a picture of the machine sans cord, and sent it in.
7. The company replied that her replacement machine would be shipped that day, and she could expect it to arrive in two or three days.
8. Her new machine arrived, and her caffeine addiction was saved

Our colleague was amazed. She expected the interaction to be time consuming and unpleasant. Instead, it took only minutes to report a warranty issue and have a new machine on its way to her. She didn’t have to argue or justify or complain or talk to multiple customer service reps.

For all she knew, she was dealing with a chat bot and that was fine. She didn’t necessarily need human interaction to solve the problem. All she needed was instructions for getting a new coffee maker ASAP.

Kudos to the manufacturer for making their warranty service process so customer friendly. They couldn’t have done it without a technology commitment.

Bring Quick, Easy Problem Resolution to Your Customer Service Team

You, too, can bring results like this to your customer service department by using automated text messaging. It’s a win-win for you and your customers.

Customers say they’d like to communicate with customer service using text and prefer texting to other methods of contact. Using text messaging, your customer service team can automate routine interactions, saving human interactions for more complicated issues. Your team won’t have to send repetitive responses to your customers, both saving time and making their jobs more interesting.

It will take some thought to set up your automated text sequences, but once it’s designed and tested, you’ll save your team hours on the phone or email.

Let SMS-Magic Help You

We think SMS-Magic can help you reach your customers with less time and effort than you’re spending on emails and phone calls. We offer automated text messaging, so your customers get the attention they need, but not at the expense of your customer service team.

Our system, working with your CRM, can keep track of all your customer interactions in one place. It can also keep track of messages sent from a variety of platforms like Messenger, WhatsApp, SnapChat and native phone texts, so you don’t sacrifice anything to help your best customers when they have problems.

We’d love to help you handle repetitive customer service requests, just contact us to set up a demo or to start your free trial. Let us show you how SMS-Magic can help you easily respond to routine requests while freeing up your reps to handle more complicated issues.

As we listened to her story, we thought she had done everything right because she worked with a reputable company. We thought they really did want to provide great service, but the sales staff left out a critical part of the installation process – the installer wouldn’t haul away stained carpet. The customer service staff wanted to help, but our colleague couldn’t reach them on installation day because she got caught in endless voicemail loops. When she finally reached them, customer service couldn’t get in touch with the installer quickly enough to resolve the issue. Our colleague faced a huge expense to find and hire someone else to dispose of the old carpet.

The End of the Story & Critical Solutions

The installers eventually gave in and finished the job, but they trashed the old carpet in a dumpster the homeowners’ association had supplied for a different project. Our colleague faced fines from the HOA for improper use of the dumpster. It’s easy to see why she won’t use this supplier again. But it all could have been avoided.

How? By using text messaging to standardize scheduling, deliver consistent installation tips, and connect customers with customer service and installers quickly. We think text messaging can help you turn a disgruntled customer into a delighted customer. Remember: you can’t help a customer that you can’t reach.

How Can Text Messaging Help You Schedule Installation?

If you sell products or services that need installation, text messages can help you reach your customer wherever they are. Your customers actually prefer texts to emails or phone calls. Consider this:

• Nathan Eddy writes in eWeek, “Over half of [survey] respondents (52 percent) said they would be likely to text with a customer support agent. Similarly, 52 percent would prefer texting customer support more than their current preferred method of communication.”
• Globally, we send more than five billion texts a day – not counting other types of messages – and we open 98 percent of them. Conversely, we only open emails 22 percent of the time, according to Gigaom. Research from Asurion shows that we look at our phones 96 times a day or once every 10 minutes.

Clearly, we like to text and find it helpful in personal interactions. We think the next big business opportunity is to make messaging a regular part of customer support.

Text messages, either SMS or MMS, are versatile. They are immediate because your message goes directly to your customer’s phone. Text messages are brief but they can link to much more information like calendars, web pages, PDFs, videos or podcasts. You can deliver the same critical information about the installation to every customer, every time.

And during the sale, your customer can opt into receiving text messages. You can include it as part of the sales process.

When you set up a new messaging campaign, we recommend that you plan the flow of text messages using both templates and automated delivery. You decide what information your customer needs and in what order – the next text message in the sequence is triggered by the customer’s response to the last text. If you don’t receive a response within a certain time, your system sends a reminder text. If you don’t receive a response or your customer indicates a problem, the issue can be referred to a live customer service rep automatically.

If our colleague’s carpet company had used this type of system, they could have given her options for carpet removal and disposal long before the day of installation. They might have been able to keep a customer.

Let SMS-Magic Help You

We think SMS-Magic can help you eliminate nightmares when you’re scheduling installation for your products. SMS-Magic can help provide a great experience for your customers, too. We offer conversational messaging so that your customers can respond to your texts. If you want to tie into your CRM, we work particularly well with Salesforce and Zoho, but we can help you with many others, and we work with all the messaging apps like Messenger and WhatsApp, so you don’t sacrifice anything to reach your best customers wherever they are!

Contact us to set up a demo or to start your free trial. Let us show you how SMS-Magic can help you end the nightmare of scheduling installations!

According to a recent study, 81% of consumers get frustrated being tied to a phone call or desktop chat to wait for customer service help. With text messaging you’re able to help them no matter where they are. The convenience and speed of messaging creates a positive and memorable support experience.  

If you’re not already using text messaging, now is the time to get started. Research shows U.S. consumers prefer companies that offer messaging as a communication channel. Almost two-thirds (63 percent) of respondents would switch to a company that offered text messaging as a communication channel. Besides being the preferred method of communication, there are several other benefits of using text messaging for your contact center. 

Benefits of Using Text Messaging for Contact Centers

1. Immediately start a relevant conversation.

With text messaging you can immediately assure customers you have received their request and are working to help them. You can set up automatic case creation and response messages so that you never miss a message. This way your customers are never wondering what the status of their claim is and will be happy to know you’re working on it right away. You can then pivot to 1:1 conversations with agents. Agents are able to enter any automated message thread to immediately answer questions with interactive conversational messaging. 

2. Reduce average handle time.

Over 75% of customers expect customer service to be faster. People are tired of sitting on long hold times and expect quick responses to their questions. Text messaging allows you to have those fast responses, ensuring a positive conversation and quick resolution. 

3. Increase volume of cases handled by 10:1.

Messaging enables your agents to handle multiple customer requests simultaneously. Today, your contact center might be having to work with less resources, so the ability to still handle a high volume of cases is important. You don’t want to lose business because customers are upset that they are unable to get help. Serving multiple customers concurrently increases efficiency and responsiveness to customer issues. And with the ability to see the entire messaging history with a customer, your agents will always have the necessary context. 

4. Ensure customers never have to repeat themselves.

One sure way to lose a customer is to repeatedly ask them redundant questions where they have to ask the same question over and over. It’s a waste of their time and they’ll be sure to take their business elsewhere. With text messaging you can save the entire conversation history so agents can quickly know exactly what the problem is and jump right into solving the problem without asking the customer the same questions that have already been asked. Customers will appreciate the personal conversation and timely resolution. 

5. Manage messages from multiple channels.

Omnichannel messaging capabilities allow agents to receive messages from all channels, such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and SMS, all in one inbox. Conversations never get lost and you meet the customer on the platform that they prefer, ultimately increasing satisfaction and gaining loyal customers. 

The Bottom Line

Customers prefer short, interactive, and mobile-friendly communications. Text messaging does just that. It’s quick, intuitive, and is their preferred channel for customer-to-business communication. Messaging also makes sense for your business, as it boosts your agents’ productivity and reduces their workload through self-service and lower call volumes.
If you haven’t yet adopted business text messaging for your team and want to learn more, schedule a demo and we’d be happy to share our expertise with you, answer questions and show you what text messaging can do for your contact center.