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Texting for Business: Your Customers are Already Texting You

Texting for Business: Your Customers are Already Texting You

Are people texting your business line?

How do you know?

You could be ghosting your customers without even realizing it.

One firm recently set up a capture server to study whether or not a business landline was receiving text messages from customers. At the end of 30 days, they had received thousands of texts from their customers and were unable to receive them, let alone reply to them. They were effectively ignoring thousands of potential customers.

If you’re not receiving texts on your business line in 2020, the question should be, "what are you doing?"

Texting for Business: It's Now!

The reality is, a huge percentage of your customer base doesn’t call you. They don’t call anyone else, either. Not if they can avoid it.

83% of millennials text way more often than they make phone calls.

Prompt customer service is prompt customer service, regardless of how a customer reaches out.

People are texting your number right now, and most likely, you don’t even know about it. You can’t afford to ignore your customers on the phone or email, so you probably can’t afford to ignore texts. 10 questions to ask before you buy UCaaS

Texting is the New Talking

77% of customers between ages 18-34 have a more positive perception of companies who offer texting.

Consumers of all ages prefer texting to email or phone, especially when they’re looking for a quick answer. Texting is an easy way to win your customer’s hearts, and it offers other business benefits, like easy tracking and auto-responder bots.

Almost 70% of consumers of all ages text more often than calling, and 30% would be willing to completely give up phone calls if they could live in a text-only world.

For people under 50, texting is the number one form of communication. It’s real-time, and it’s convenient for most people since the majority of the US keeps a smartphone within reach 24/7.

Texts are Trackable

You’ve got a customer on the line, and they’re asking about a special promotion. They spoke with someone in sales, but unfortunately, that someone left the company last week. If you’re lucky, you’re recording phone calls, and you can try to track down the conversation. If not, well, you’re scrambling to salvage the customer relationship.

Cloud messaging is trackable with a connection to your customer relationship management software. A customer profile can easily become an archive of text message communications. When a customer calls in or texts, customer service and sales reps can automatically access their text and call history. This creates a smoother, more seamless customer experience.

Texting Can Be Automated

Texting can be automated with bots. If a customer calls your line and you’re on the phone, a Unified Cloud Communications system can send a text that says, “I’m on the phone, I’ll call you right back.”

It’s a nice touch, and it’s an easy way to manage customer expectations.

You can also automate answers to customer FAQs. When a customer texts “what’s my tracking number,” you could send an automated response. You can easily automate auto-responder for scheduling questions, account inquiries, and countless other scenarios.

Texting Can Be Profitable

Texting can be a powerful promotional tool. You can communicate directly with customers, segments, or individuals via text message. Text promotions can start a conversation with leads and clients. Texting for business is way more personal than other forms of smartphone marketing, like mobile app push notifications.

Texting also moves really quickly, which means you can send promotions to your customers in real-time based on their behavior and need. 83% of millennials open SMS messages within 90 seconds or less. Three-quarters of customers under 35 say text is their preferred way to learn about promotions. Studies show texting has a better dollar-for-dollar return than email marketing, and a higher response rate.

Texting isn’t Going Anywhere

5 billion people worldwide have the ability to send and receive texts. 97% of Americans text at least once per day. Texting has become a way of life, and it’s the most common way that many people choose to communicate.

Business texting is no flash-in-the-pan, and it’s not a trend. SMS messaging, in its current form, was born in 1995. It hit the mainstream around 2006. In the past decade alone, texting volume has increased by nearly 8,000% percent.

Business texting is a future-proof investment because texting isn’t going anywhere. It’s something businesses need to do for their customers, ideally soon. 18-24 months from now, almost every business will offer text capabilities to customers.

How Do We Get Business Texting?

Texting isn’t necessarily a costly or difficult investment. It's a cloud communication add-on service. If you have Unified Communications, you have the capacity to flip a switch in your software to text. No additional software or hardware investments are necessary.

Atlantech has the capacity to switch-on text messaging for our hosted cloud communications (UCaaS) customers. We can offer cloud-based SMS or texting service, which means you can receive and respond to text messages sent to your main business phone number. Give it a try... text me at my work DID phone number... 301-755-2232.

To learn more about business texting and other Unified-Communications-as-a-Service capabilities, start a conversation with Atlantech Online.

10 questions to ask before you buy UCaaS

Tom Collins
Post by Tom Collins
March 12, 2020
Tom is the Director of Enterprise Sales & Marketing for Atlantech Online. He has over 20 years of professional experience in the Internet Service Provider industry and is known for translating technology into positive results for business. A native of Washington, DC, a graduate from University of Maryland (degrees in Government & Politics and Secondary Education), Tom is also a five-time Ironman finisher.