This post first appeared on the Sonar blog.
Recent text messaging statistics show people (including your customers) are texting for business purposes more than ever. Texting is a great channel for a business to inform its audience, offer promotions, answer questions, send reminders, and much more. More importantly, text is a medium with an incredibly high read and response rate, compared to email and phone calls.
Compared to 2016, 23% more people will opt-in to receive SMS messages from companies in 2020. In other words, you’re missing out on a great opportunity to connect with consumers if you aren’t investing in texting software for your business.
Here are some examples of how you can use business texting in these challenging times:
Sales & Marketing
Companies are all facing the same dilemma: “How can we engage with customers during times of social distancing and physical isolation?” For starters, mobile device usage has surged recently, as expected. Mobile phones have become the main lifeline of consumers. Companies should take advantage of their mobile strategies, implement texting into business processes, and create a framework for prioritizing texting. Layering in a solution that utilizes artificial intelligence can help with lead qualification, lead nurture, appointment scheduling, field operations, and prospect engagement/re-engagement. You can also leverage texting to send out important mass messaging campaigns, automated follow-ups, attachments/files, payment information, and much more.
Field Operations
Being able to reach all your employees is critical right now. We’ve seen stories about how many companies are utilizing texting to help educate and train employees on proper cleaning and sanitizing methods. Texting is great because almost everyone has a phone, with the SMS app pre-installed. With so much uncertainty, businesses need a line of communication for emergencies and to facilitate business planning in real-time. Keeping teams informed during the ever-changing COVID-19 landscape is critical and texting is a logical way to help you do that.
Customer Service & Outreach
Texting is one of the easiest ways for customers to communicate with companies. If a consumer has a frequently asked question, needs help with a problem, or wants to see if a business is open, texting will provide a quick and seamless interaction. Texting helps expand the bandwidth of your team by allowing you to focus on meaningful conversions, while artificial intelligence can handle inbound requests quickly and efficiently. Two-way messaging is great for customer service because it can automatically route inbound inquiries based on priority, artificial intelligence can interact and respond to customers without human intervention, and role-based permissions are perfect for team management.
If you’d like to learn more about using text in your organization, check out this article with everything you need to know about business texting.
