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Text Messaging Do’s and Don’ts

Cross-channel communication doesn’t just provide a more seamless user experience — it also keeps customers coming back. Companies who offer a cross-channel user experience have seen over 90% higher year-over-year increases in customer retention, according to Aberdeen.

Cross-channel engagement has been a blessing as well as a burden for some companies. On the one hand, businesses have more ways to interact with prospects and customers. On the other, all of these channels, be it social media or text messaging, requires companies to actually monitor, respond, and engage consistently with customers over all of these channels.      

Cross-channel management doesn’t have to be a cumbersome exercise though. Today, it is imperative to business efficiency and effectiveness for all customer conversations to be in one holistic view.

The companies realizing the most success with cross-channel messaging are seeing a boost in customer satisfaction and revenue, with positive impacts on productivity.  Let’s dive into the ways that cross-channel messaging can be used to engage customers and drive more business.

Why Follow Proper Business Texting Etiquette

Following proper business texting etiquette[3]  is important for a very simple reason — your texts will be read. Unlike emails, which often pileup unread in a customer’s inbox, your text messages are rarely ignored. In fact, SMS open rates are as high as 98%, versus just 20% for email, according to Gartner. This makes the content and timing of your texts critically important in ensuring customer satisfaction. So what can your business do to ensure a positive SMS conversation experience?

The Do’s of Business Text Messaging

Do keep it to the point

SMS is appropriate for short and succinct messages. The length of a single standard text message is 160 characters, so that’s a good limit to shoot for. Of course, you can use rich messaging to send longer messages, but avoid sending walls of text via SMS.

Do ask permission first

Since text messages pop up front-and-center in a customer’s daily life, it’s important to make sure they give consent before getting the conversation started. Your first message can be a simple opt-in request, or your customers can subscribe to your texts via your website. If they send the first message, then their consent to receive a reply is implied but it’s still a good practice to ask permission before sending any unrelated messages, such as promotional texts.

Do stay positive

Keeping your text conversations polite and positive is essential, especially if you’re using the channel for customer support. Certain phrases may be misconstrued by the recipient, so make your dedication to customer satisfaction clear. While you do want to stick to the point, use complete sentences to avoid coming across as terse or impatient.

Do time your texts right

No one likes to be rustled awake by a midnight message, so make sure you send your business texts at an appropriate time. The best time to text your customers is soon after they text you. That way, you know that they are already engaged in the conversation. Similarly, you can reach out to them immediately after they opt-in to receiving your SMS, or right after they submit a support ticket. If you’re sending the first text, you’ll want to be mindful about the customer’s time zone and only message them during normal business hours.

Do get rich

Rich Communication Services (RCS) can transform your business texting into a full-on conversion platform. You can complete transactions, schedule appointments, and send videos to engage with customers in a more powerful way. Quiq’s cross-channel rich messaging automatically transforms your messages into the right format, so you can richly communicate over SMS, web chat, or Facebook Messenger — all from one centralized platform.

The Don’ts of Business Text Messaging

Don’t use unprofessional language

SMS is famous for acronyms but your business texts should avoid using them. Save your “LOLs” and “C U l8rs” for more casual conversations. That said, some emojis may be appropriate, depending on your audience — professional language can also have a bit of fun sprinkled in.

Don’t forget to double-check

For some customers, a misspelled word — or even an innocent typo — is unforgivable. Be sure to review your message drafts before hitting the send button. If your business uses message templates, revisit them periodically to make sure they are error-free and still in line with the tone of your brand.

Don’t wait too long to reply

Text messaging is all about rapid response. If customers don’t hear back from you quickly, they may move on to another service. Quiq’s Adaptive Response Timer prioritizes customer conversations for your agents based on how swiftly a customer stays engaged. If your agent cannot respond in time, the platform automatically hands the conversation off to the next available representative. With Quiq, there is no need to keep customers waiting.

Don’t rely solely on SMS

Text messaging is only one of the many conversation channels out there. Your business should use it as just one part of an overall customer messaging strategy. Understand the benefits of SMS alongside its limitations, and see where it fits in your conversation ecosystem.

By following these tenets of business texting etiquette, your brand can connect with customers in a more powerful way. Discover the true potential of business messaging and try a demo of Quiq today.

eBook: Business Messaging Best Practices

Business SMS/text messaging is the fast, convenient, and preferred way for customers to engage with you.  According to research, “mobile messaging the communications channel with the highest anticipated growth.”

Done correctly, messaging is a powerful tool to help consumers connect with businesses – especially when it comes to customer service.

Business Messaging Best Practices eBook

5 Ways To Build A Chatbot To Improve Customer Service

Chatbots, or bots, are at the top of countless Google search results these days. Why so much research and chatter about bots? Faster customer service and a better customer experience are just a couple of the ways companies believe bots can drive results throughout the organization and it’s making a stir.

A lot of people have gone past the point of wondering how to employ chatbots within their organization to actually building them. While there are plenty of tools out there to help you drag and drop your way to an AI-infused representative, you’d be ill-advised to jump right into it. Before you build a bot, there are some important things you need to consider.

In this article, we’ll explore 5 key considerations to get you started on a better chatbot path. Incorporating these concepts into your strategy will ensure you build a bot that improves your customer engagement and their experience.

When To Use A Bot

Sometimes having too many options can lead to confusion and indecisiveness. That’s not the case when it comes to bots. The meteoric rise of the digital channels used throughout companies to drive better customer experience has resulted in exponential demand for chatbots. Chatbots are being deployed from customer service to sales and marketing across channels such as web chat, SMS/text messaging, and social media.

The opportunity to use bots within single or multiple points in the customer’s journey seems crystal clear to many. The question isn’t whether you should use a bot within a conversation. The pressing question seems to be when is the appropriate time within a conversation for a bot to engage with a customer.

Before you answer that, consider these bot must-haves. In our experience, working with clients from a variety of industries, these 5 bot approaches ensure companies deliver better bot experiences.

1.Build A Bot To Offload Repetitive Or Mundane Tasks

What’s your order number? Can I verify your email? What model is it? Can you verify your address? How many times have your human agents had to ask these questions? Short answer, too many. With chatbots, the better question is how many times does a human agent have to ask these kinds of questions? Short answer, zero. Zilch.

These questions, and many more, are super simple and repetitive. The answers are fairly straightforward and necessary to help a customer and move them closer to resolution. One of the first things to do prior to building a bot is to define the parts of the typical customer interaction that could be handled by a bot, where that is prior to, during, or after an interaction with a human/agent.

Quiq clients have realized success by building bots to handle some of these simple questions, with the intent of providing human agents with more information faster to ensure they understand who the customer is and the issue at hand.

2. Build A Bot That Works With Your Current Processes

You shouldn’t have to revamp your entire workflow in order to implement a bot. Make sure your bot or bots work within your current process to improve it.

Consider using bots throughout the customer’s interaction to expedite established processes. For example:

      • Deploy bots at the beginning of customer conversations to collect information, gather relevant details about the nature of their inquiry, and to even route the customer to a specific person, department, or queue.
      • Allow your human agents to transfer to a bot during their conversation. Bots are able to collect information during a conversation to free up human agents for more complex tasks or to help other customers.
      • Let your chatbot close out the conversation with a simple thank you, or even better, a quick survey to gather feedback.

3. Build A Bot That Works Well With Humans

Our messaging clients frequently look to chatbots as a way to help the human interaction, not replace it entirely. Quiq clients have realized a lot of success from using bots to work in conjunction with humans.

As mentioned above, bots can be used in any one or multiple parts of customer interactions. Before you build your bot, make sure you’re creating a seamless experience for your customer as well as your agents.

Quiq’s messaging platform enables agents to transfer conversations to a bot, just like they would another human agent. Once the bot completes gathering whatever information they need, the conversation is transferred back to the human agent.

4. Build A Bot That Plays Well With Other Bots

Just as a conversation can be volleyed between human and chatbot, make sure that your conversations can be transferred to other bots.

Take, for example, a bot that greets your customer, asks how they can help, and presents suggested solutions. Your customer can choose the appropriate topic with a single tap. Based on their response, another bot can pick up the conversation and bring the customer through the selected process.

Quiq is unique in that you can deploy any combination of 3rd-party bots and/or Quiq bots in our system and they are treated the same. The focus is on helping the customer, not on technology.

5. Monitor Bot Performance

Improving customer engagement and experience doesn’t stop when a bot or multiple bots go live. Once you’ve implemented your bot(s), monitor performance the same way you’d monitor a human agent’s performance.

Quiq’s messaging platform reports on bots and human agents the same way. Our platform monitors the customer’s experience and provides actionable feedback, such as the customer’s sentiment during the conversation, regardless of who is helping them. Simple icons alert managers if a customer is using negative words or phrases that signals intervention is needed.

Receive the same types of stats for bots that you have come to expect and demand for agents.

Messaging Conversations Are Ripe For Bots

These critical must-haves for building a better bot should help you answer our question above: “When is the appropriate time within a digital conversation for a bot to engage with a customer?” The answer depends, of course, on the unique needs of your customers and the reasons they reach out to you.

Quiq can help you deploy bots throughout your organization that work seamlessly across chat and messaging channels. If you’re ready to take the next step to building a better bot experience, request a demo.