Reduce Collection Time With Messaging

Posted on April 30, 2018April 1, 2024 The Quiq Team

The Accounts Receivables Department is all about action. Staying on top of accounts and getting customers to pay you on time takes consistent outreach and persistence. Credit Unions are looking towards technology to make collections more effective.

A mobile device is always within reach and consumers are increasingly more comfortable with online banking, so it’s no surprise that credit unions are seeking ways to tap into mobile technology, namely, text messaging, as a way to engage with members. In this article, we explore how text messaging has helped credit unions reduce collection time.

Richer Experiences Everywhere

Consumers, trained by the rich mobile experiences they have outside of banking, have come to expect more from their credit union. You don’t have to look far to find the data that supports why this channel has come to the forefront:

Text messages have a 98% open rate
Text messaging has a 45% response rate (MarTech)
Texts are typically read within 3 minutes of being received
Over 6 billion text messages are sent in the U.S. each day. (Forrester)

This, coupled with generations of consumers, namely Millennials and Gen Z, who have not only accepted messaging as a primary communication channel, but have come to expect it, has driven more industries to add messaging into their customer engagement strategy. In fact, credit unions have identified messaging as one of the leading ways to attract and retain younger members.

Reduce Collection Time with Messaging

A recent article from The Credit Union Journal entitled, “Credit Unions’ call center chatter turns to texting,” highlights the incredible results realized from adopting messaging. The article states the many advantages messaging affords credit unions, all of which stem from this channel’s ability to cut through the noise and inconvenience of other channels and engage members where they spend the most time.

One of the most surprising efficiencies has been the reduction of collection time. Before messaging, a significant amount of staff resources were dedicated to contacting members about past due payments. Calling and leaving unanswered messages or sending unopened emails had become the norm. With messaging, credit unions like Southern Chautauqua Federal Credit Union, have seen collection response rates increase from 5% when calling members, to 75% through texting.

Collection calls are placed during credit union business hours when members are usually working as well. Unlike phone calls, messaging allows members to respond to collection notifications more discreetly and when they are available. Members find it difficult to impossible to answer the phone to talk to a credit union staff member, but glancing at a text notification and responding when that member has a few seconds is entirely doable.

Credit Unions Trust Quiq

The ease and convenience of text messaging have touched everything from informing members of branch hours to notifying members of promotional rates or offers. It only makes sense that members positively respond to the ability to engage in a quick two-way conversation about their payment status.

Quiq has been fortunate to partner with innovative Credit Unions and other lending institutions to help them effectively reach their members and customers. There is a growing number of credit unions adopting messaging for a variety of reasons. We invite you to be next.

Quiq makes it easy for customers to contact a business via Messaging, the preferred channel already in use with friends and family. With Quiq, customers can engage with companies via SMS/text messaging, Facebook Messenger, Web Chat, In-App, and Kik for help with their pre-sales and post-sales questions. In return, companies get a digital engagement platform to communicate with customers. Learn more about Quiq today at quiq.com.

There’s More to Messaging

Posted on April 30, 2018April 1, 2024 The Quiq Team

There’s more to messaging than just sending characters, images, and emojis back and forth, at least when it comes to business messaging. Text messaging between companies and consumers has certain inherent expectations. Understanding, meeting, and managing these expectations are the key to successful customer interactions.

Here are 5 key capabilities required to ensure you manage the messaging channel to deliver a world-class customer experience:

1. Engage at the customer’s pace

Messaging conversations are asynchronous, meaning the agent and customer can communicate without being “on” at the same time. While customers may expect a certain level of immediacy from your company, you can’t always expect customer responses to be as snappy.

Make sure you to engage at the customer’s pace by selecting a vendor that proactively prioritizes multiple incoming conversations for each agent. For example, Quiq Messaging automatically prioritizes conversations based on the customers level of engagement. When customers are responding quickly, that’s a signal that they want more immediate attention. Quiq automatically moves those conversations to the top of the agent’s dashboard and provides color-coded cues to ensure they handle the most time-sensitive conversations first.

2. Pick up where you left off

Messaging allows customers to take a break from the conversation and continue when it’s more convenient for them – just like two old friends. If customers have to take a break from the conversation, they can come back and pick up with the agent wherever they left off.

Unlike other channels and almost every chat solution, Quiq makes sure conversations never get disconnected. Instead of repeating information over and explaining their situation to a new agent, the customer continues the existing conversation. All the content and context is still there. You’re welcome.

3. Ask for help when you need it

We all need a little help sometimes. We’ve made it simple for agents to raise a virtual hand when then need a little extra help from their peer or manager with the ability to collaborate and transfer. Initiating any of this functionality is simple and intuitive. There is the option to tell a customer you’re transferring a message or bringing someone into the conversation, but it can also happen seamlessly and “behind the curtain.”

Customers don’t even have to know if their question is answered by a different agent or someone just collaborating on the conversation. There’s no more “can you hold while I get my manager” involved here, just fast, convenient service for the customer.

4. Set expectations and response goals for agents

While it’s probably pretty obvious, you want to make sure that you’re meeting the customer’s expectations of response time. We’ve made meeting those expectations a priority that can be set on a corporate level through Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

When an agent is in an active conversation with a customer, and a customer sends a message, the agent must respond within the timeframe agreed upon in the SLA. If the agent does not respond before this timer expires, the conversation is re-queued, and the agent won’t be allowed to accept any new messages until their current queue is reduced. SLA’s ensures your agents can handle the current conversations with a timely response or gracefully hand them off to another agent.

5. Monitor performance in real-time

What gets measured gets done. Measure how your team is performing on the messaging channel with real-time stats and critical performance metrics to make sure you’re consistently delivering a top customer experience on the messaging channel. Quiq provides valuable reports and easy to understand dashboards out-of-the-box.

In fact, managers can click right into an active conversation from those dashboards if they would like to observe how agents are doing. Use this feature to facilitate better coaching and onboarding, and help your agents become more effective faster.

Getting Messaging Right With Quiq

Messaging can be a powerful tool to strengthen relationships with customers, but don’t approach it with a laissez-faire attitude. All good relationships are built on the foundation of communication and trust. So don’t leave a well-managed conversation that creates trust up to chance. Go with the experts.

Quiq was purpose-built to handle the messaging channels. Our messaging solution helps companies connect, engage, and improve relationships with customers on their preferred channel. Our team built the Quiq platform to make implementation a snap and managing messaging at the forefront.

2018 is The Year of Text

Posted on April 23, 2018April 1, 2024 The Quiq Team

This year is pivotal for companies to define themselves by, and for, the customer. The race is on to adopt technology that will enable companies to connect and engage with customers with the kind of convenience and ease they expect in all aspects of their lives.

While emerging technology like AI and bots compete for attention, customer service leaders shouldn’t take their eyes off the one thing the majority of smartphone-carrying people most commonly use their device for – text messaging. SMS/text messaging is the most preferred communication channel for the majority of consumers.

Adapting to the Customer

In a recent article, Shep Hyken, customer service and experience expert, speaker, and bestselling author, digs deeper with his recent Forbes article, “Getting Customer Support From Companies Will Be Easier In 2018”. The article states, 94 percent of Americans own a mobile phone, and 86 percent of them send 23 billion messages daily.

As the article suggests, companies have already started to adopt text messaging, making it easier for customers to avoid the usual roadblocks to finding and receiving support in a way that is convenient for them. While these companies are outpacing the competition by readily adopting this channel, many other organizations aren’t keeping pace.

Win-Win

Messaging allows customers to effortlessly connect with companies at any point in their journey via their preferred channel. That’s a huge win for consumers and leaps and bounds away from yesterday’s customer service experience when customers would have to interrupt their day to make a call, only to be placed on hold. Or worse, email and wait for hours or days to hopefully receive a response. While messaging is a major move to customer-centricity and more effortless engagement for the consumer, companies also realize big wins. Quiq clients who have adopted messaging for example have been able to reduce agent work time by 25% – 40% and have increased customer satisfaction scores by an average of 8 percentage points.

Messaging allows agents to handle multiple requests at a time. With Quiq Messaging, agents can handle service requests via mobile, chat, and social all within one intuitive interface. The asynchronous nature of messaging allows agents to manage multiple, simultaneous text messaging conversations at once, unlike emails and phone calls. In fact, Quiq’s messaging clients are handling an average of 7 conversations at a time

What’s Ahead

Business messaging provides customers with a natural way to connect. Technology, such as WhatsApp and Apple Business Chat, will prove to be driving forces behind many companies meeting customers where they already are – on their mobile phones. The emergence of these platforms is one of the reasons Mike Myer, Quiq CEO believes “messaging will become an imperative for companies to adopt messaging in 2018.”

Read the full Forbes article to learn more about how messaging will make customer service easier this year as well as Shep’s advice on using bots. If you’re ready to make customer service easier in your organization we’d love to show you a demo. Fill out this short form to get started.

Quiq makes it easy for customers to contact a business via Messaging, the preferred channel already in use with our friends and family. With Quiq, customers can now engage with companies via SMS/text messaging, Facebook Messenger, Web Chat, In-App,and Kik for help with their pre-sales and post-sales questions. Learn more about Quiq today at quiq.com.

Consumer Packaged Goods Face New Dawn of Retail

Posted on April 20, 2018April 1, 2024 The Quiq Team

In the constantly evolving, sometimes frantic, world of Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), there’s always constant pressure on product development to deliver innovation and products that create differentiation in the marketplace. In the past, winning shelf space, well merchandised end caps, and timely promotions were all it took to get in front of consumers.

Rapidly changing customer expectations, an ever-widening competitive landscape, and technology have changed that. There is a retail renaissance underway where consumers are using their mobile devices to explore a vast landscape of choices and expect 24/7 support. In this article, we’ll discuss how consumer brands can meet the expectations of the modern consumer with messaging.

Purchasing Power to the People

Consumer brands have long been in the driver’s seat, picking the location, times, and variety of products available to consumers, but there has been a shift in power from brands to consumers. Parking, long lines, and lack of variety have driven consumers to explore ways to weed out the disjointed, bulky, and disappointing aspects of shopping.

Consumers are buying more than ever. However, the way that they are buying has changed drastically over the last few years, and their mobile phones are at the center of their experience. Mobile stats show steady growth in the number of smartphone users who make purchases from their device or use their mobile phone while shopping at brick and mortar locations to look up a product review or compare prices.

A growing digital fluency has led to a higher expectation of immediacy and personalization in all aspects of shopping online and off. The product is still the bedrock of the CPG/customer relationship, but the foundation must also rest on the speed and convenience of information and engagement consumers have come to expect from every brand and every interaction in their lives.

Consumer Brands: Overly Focused on Product?

Recent Deloitte research revealed that the majority of brand leaders (60%) believe product quality or product uniqueness (15%) are the company’s unique value proposition. These numbers tell a story of brands that are stuck on product differentiation as the thing that will set them apart from their competitors and drive customer engagement and loyalty.

This belief is why you’ll likely see significant investments in R&D and marketing. Meanwhile, the customer experience is suffering. Research shows that most consumers aren’t struggling with shopping or paying for products. Consumers can quickly find a variety of choices at the scroll, tap, and swipe of their finger.

The most significant opportunity for customer experience improvement is at the top of the funnel with engagement and discovery (32%) and awareness and acquisition (24%). These are the areas that Quiq clients are aligning technology in creative and efficient ways to optimize customer engagement and influence the consumers’ path to purchase through messaging.

Increase Share of Cart

Losing customers at the top of the funnel can be a really difficult to address. Consumers have more choices than ever before and if they have pre-sale questions about the product or your brand, you want to be able to address those questions in a fast and convenient way. Now, customers can text your existing landlines like they text their friends and family to get the answers that help brands increase conversion and share of cart.

Consumers are already shopping with their mobile phones in hand – comparing prices and looking at alternative products. Adding “Text Us” to your packaging can help those consumers who may need extra guidance on a purchase engage with your brand in an easy, convenient way when they need help the most. Messaging enables brands to have personal conversations with consumers and address their specific questions.

Maybe you don’t test on animals or use vegetable based inks and recycled paper on your blister cards. Perhaps you give a percentage of profits to a charity that connects with your audience. Packaging and in-store signage can only go so far to educate the consumer. Text messaging allows your brand to further tell your story, product benefits, and community involvement.

Quiq clients, like Direct Digital, decided to offer consumers the opportunity to reach them using messaging – text/SMS, Facebook Messenger, web chat, and IVR to text. This nutritional supplement brand found that when customers have questions about a product purchase, they can choose how they want to engage – at the moment of need – making it super easy to get answers quickly, thus converting them to purchase.

The Cure for Engagement Ails

Messaging is everywhere, instant, interactive, viral, and informative. What started off as a way to connect with family and friends has now crept its way into every aspect of our lives. People all over the world use messaging every day in their personal lives, and now, consumers are looking for the brands they trust to send and receive the messages that matter to them.

Messaging has helped clients like Direct Digital readily engage with consumers on the go, using the one thing they can’t seem to be without – their mobile device. Innovative brands like Direct Digital are using their accessibility at the top of the funnel as a competitive advantage to increase sales, engagement and brand loyalty.

From new product introductions to product recalls, consumer brands have good reason to want to use messaging as a way to quickly and conveniently engage with consumers. With a 98% open rate and a 30% response rate, messaging is more effective than email or phone calls.

Quiq Messaging enables two-way communications with customers via text messaging and can be used to promote new products and build brand awareness so brands can continue to strengthen the relationship as the consumer moves down through the purchase funnel. If your brand is ready to lead the new dawn of retail, contact us for a short demo.

Getting Customer Support From Companies Will Be Easier In 2018

Posted on April 19, 2018January 13, 2023 Lauren Winder

Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, keynote speaker and New York Times and Wall Street Journal, bestselling author. Recently, Shep shared why he thinks some brands have decoded how to connect with their customers. Read the Forbes article to hear Shep Hyken’s recommendation on using messaging to increase customer satisfaction.

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Williams Plumbing: Reaching Customers in New Ways

Posted on April 11, 2018April 1, 2024 The Quiq Team

Peak times, like severe winter weather and high volumes of emergency calls, had Williams looking for a way to better manage customer needs. They also wanted to allow dispatchers to handle more customer inquiries while maintaining their level of service.

Quiq Messaging has been the answer. Now customers can contact Williams via text, web chat, and Facebook Messenger—and they are happy about it. When a customer calls Williams, they are presented with the option to text instead. Mobile website visitors can simply press the “Text Us” button to start a conversation with Williams’ Service Team. And a website visitor can choose to simply start a chat conversation. Whichever messaging route a customer chooses, they can receive free service advice to try to resolve their problem. If the problem cannot be solved, they can simply schedule a technician – all via messaging.

“Allowing our customers to reach Williams via messaging has already proven to be successful and we are just starting. We are hitting our key call abandonment goals of 5-8%, which aligns directly to our ability to deliver a superior customer service experience.”

Quin Williams, CEO, Williams Plumbing & Heating Inc.

With a ‘text us’ button on the mobile website, chat on the desktop site, and Facebook Messenger also routed into Quiq Messaging, it’s easy for customers to reach Williams. It has even launched a TV commercial promoting this new communication channel for its customers. Customers must be catching on—the number of messaging conversations has increased 5X since launching Quiq. And even more, telling is the call abandonment rate has dropped from 12.92% down to 5-8% on any given day because customers are choosing to transfer to text messaging rather than waiting on hold.

. .

Easy for Their Employees

With Quiq’s simple user interface, dispatchers can manage text, web chat, and Facebook Messenger in one easy-to-use tool. All conversations are easily captured in the dispatching software, including any photos, maintaining a complete customer interaction history regardless of the channel. Dispatchers can manage multiple customers simultaneously and can get all of the answers before replying, providing a seamless customer experience. There are fewer voicemails to respond to each morning because customers are choosing to send a message, allowing dispatchers to quickly reply when arriving in the office.

Employees are also taking advantage of Quiq internally to message Human Resources with insurance and payroll questions for a quick response. And just because a technician may be on light duty due to medical issues, they will still be able to work by responding to customers’ questions via messaging.

About Quiq

Williams is changing the way construction projects are delivered. With offices across Montana, Wyoming, and North Dakota, it specializes in providing quality plumbing, civil construction, HVAC, green energy, and consulting services for any size project. Superior service and collaboration have been a long-time staple for its business, setting it apart from its competition.

Quiq makes it easy for customers to contact a business via Messaging, the preferred channel already in use with our friends and family. With Quiq, customers can now engage with companies via SMS/text messaging, Facebook Messenger, Web Chat, In-App, and Kik for help with their pre-sales and post-sales questions. Learn more about Quiq today at quiq.com.

Credit Union Journal: Credit unions’ call center chatter turns to texting

Posted on April 9, 2018April 1, 2024 The Quiq Team

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Call Center Chatter Turns to Texting

Across all demographics, consumers are adopting text messaging as the preferred way to communicate with businesses. Recently, the Credit Union Journal published “Credit Unions’ call center chatter turns to texting”, highlighting the surprising results that credit unions are realizing through messaging.

Credit Unions are engaging members on everything from branch hours to collection reminders. Read more to see why so many CU members are rapidly adopting messaging.

Quiq Customer Messaging Platform Video

Posted on April 5, 2018January 13, 2023 Lauren Winder

Quiq is a leading-edge customer messaging platform that makes it easy for customers to engage with brands on SMS/text, web chat, social, and more. But it’s not just about having more conversations. It’s about more engagement, that’s more efficient than an email, faster than a phone call, and accessible across mobile devices.

We help you do more with the resources you already have through asynchronous conversations. You can reduce customer service costs by enabling your agents to handle multiple, simultaneous conversations, and power your sales team to address customer questions with lightning speed to expedite purchases.

Customer Messaging Across Multiple Digital Channels

Wherever your customers prefer to engage with you, every message is managed in a simple, robust workspace. Help your employees be more productive with intelligent features like conversation rules, routing, and smart replies that move conversations toward a faster resolution.

Quiq’s customer messaging platform video gives you a closer look at the solution that companies like Overstock, Brinks Home Security, and Cyprus Credit Union trust to expand their digital customer service. These clients and many others have used Quiq’s easy integrations with Salesforce, Zendesk, Oracle Service Cloud, and others to upgrade their CRM.

Quiq’s Customer Messaging Platform and Chatbots

View the video to learn how chatbots are easily integrated into your customer messaging conversations. Quiq compliments your human agents, allowing them to focus on high-value interactions. Quiq is super flexible and works with native, custom, and third-party bots across all of your digital channels, collecting customer data, answering customer questions, and acting as an “always-on” agent.

Ready to see more? Request a short demo to see how to put messaging to work for you.

How Messaging Impacts Workforce Management

Posted on April 2, 2018April 1, 2024 The Quiq Team

So you’ve opened messaging as a customer service channel. Great! Still a little concerned about the impact messaging will have on your workforce management? Well, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty of answering those workforce management questions like:

How many inbound messages should I expect to get?
How many agents will I need to manage the messaging channel?
When will I need to schedule agents for the messaging channel?

When you have messaging as a customer service channel, staffing your contact center shouldn’t feel like you’re riding a pendulum and swinging between service levels and agent occupancy. With messaging, you won’t be sacrificing the consistent delivery of excellent customer service because you have to keep your staffing costs in check.

As we discussed in an earlier post, you’ll be able to do a lot more with your existing staff through messaging. That includes decreasing workload while increasing customers satisfaction scores. In this post, we’ll explore what you can expect when staffing for the messaging channel.

The Workforce Management Challenge

Contact center leaders are always looking for ways to do more with what they have. Workforce Managers have to ensure the right number of resources are available for incoming customer inquiries – forecasting and scheduling just enough staff to cover expected volume, but not more than necessary to keep costs in check. This careful balance remains a constant challenge.

In addition to fluctuations in call load, back-office processes must be considered, not to mention employee training, vacation time, sick days, employee turnover, and changes in employee skills that come into play. Phew!

All of this, while ensuring that you provide a consistent customer experience: optimizing staff utilization, reducing wait times and trying to surprise and delight the customer while you’re at it. Forecasting and modeling help to rein in some of these variables. The key word here is “variables”, which is what makes staffing so hard.

Let’s take a look at how Quiq Messaging has helped clients meet the workforce management challenge head-on.

The Numbers Game

While estimates of incoming customer inquiries will never be 100% accurate and you can’t control when customers call, you can have a substantial impact on average handle time (AHT) with Messaging. Traditionally, call centers have staffed based on the estimated call load, or the amount of agent time required to service the calls received.

Call Load = (Calls Offered x AHT) / Occupancy / 3600

Calls Load = The amount of agent time required to service the requests received
Calls Offered = The number of calls you expect to receive in a period (hour, day, week, or month)
AHT (in seconds) = Average handle time includes talk time, hold time, call prep, and call wrap
Occupancy = How busy an agent will be in a given period
3600 = Number of seconds in an hour. It converts all of the seconds into hours

This equation will result in a pretty good indication of the number of staff hours needed. The wrong estimate to any of the variables in this equation can leave contact centers understaffed and customers frustrated at the level of service they’re receiving.

Typical Challenges with the Phone Channel for Customer Service include:

Call volumes can experience big swings during busy seasons
Events, such as new product releases or unforecasted events, can leave AHT all over the map
The ebbs and flows of calls can be so random that it’s often necessary to schedule more resources than necessary to ensure handling incoming calls correctly
With phone conversations, agents can only handle one phone call with one customer at a time, adding additional constraints to AHT and occupancy

How Messaging Improves Productivity for Customer Service:

Messaging can help smooth out some of the peaks and valleys of calls by deflecting as much as 15% – 20% of current inbound calls to messaging, which has proven to be far more efficient and cost-effective. Quiq clients realize as much as a 25%-40% reduction in work time because agents are able to quickly address those frequently asked questions that don’t necessarily require a phone call (think password reset process and hours of operations). Additional productivity is found in the higher concurrency of messaging. Unlike phone calls, messaging agents can address more than one message at a time.

This higher concurrency meant that clients had to rethink the call load metric. Since agents may engage with customers over an extended period with messaging, AHT can’t be measured as a linear event.

How Messaging Impacts Workforce Management

At Quiq we’ve developed a new metric to calculate Work Time for this new asynchronous channel that captures the intent of traditional handle time metrics while accounting for the nuances of the messaging channel. Keep in mind, messaging puts the customer in control of the conversation and allows them to engage with agents at their pace. Conversations can be two minutes, two hours, or span 2 days.

When an agent is engaged in a messaging support conversation, he or she might look up an order or do an inventory check. In either case, the work is ultimately represented by a message sent back to the customer.

Quiq Messaging’s analytics can show you how much actual work time conversations on the messaging channel take, as well as any peak times to be mindful of. The work time metric, data on agent performance, activity levels, and active conversations are the tools you’ll use to determine when and how to staff the messaging channel.

Here’s where you’ll see the biggest benefits:

Staffing Forecasts

Understanding the average work time requirement for customer interactions will allow you to staff appropriately as you direct more interactions to the messaging channel and as you anticipate busy periods.

Workforce Assessment

Work time can be used to evaluate individual agents or entire teams. Agents with the same responsibilities but disparate average work time metrics are indicative of under or over performing agents.

Agent Workload Tuning

Quiq allows you to configure the number of simultaneous conversations an agent may be assigned through a configuration known as the agent ‘soft limit’. The ideal number of simultaneous conversations varies by use case. Watching the average work time of your interactions, while adjusting the soft limit will allow you to identify the optimal configuration. If the work time increases significantly after an increase to the soft limit, you know that agent context switching is taking a toll on your customer interactions

The Best Defense

A great start to prep your workforce management process to account for the messaging channel is to gauge your current call volume. You can expect 15%-20% of customers will select messaging over making a phone call. Staffing and training can be accomplished with relatively little disruption to current workflows. Messaging is already a natural activity for everyone, so the training is minimal, but if you are using phone agents as messaging agents, be sure to test their writing skills.

Adding SMS/text messaging to your contact center does not have to add complexity to managing staff. In many ways, messaging will actually add efficiencies to make staffing easier. Quiq Messaging can help you reduce some of the uncertainty of workforce management through this asynchronous channel.

Quiq makes it easy for customers to contact a business via Messaging, the preferred channel already in use with our friends and family. With Quiq, customers can now engage with companies via SMS/text messaging, Facebook Messenger, Web Chat, In-App, and Kik for help with their pre-sales and post-sales questions. Learn more about Quiq today at quiq.com.