November 2020 - Quiq

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Pella Resolves Pane Points with Messaging

Posted on November 29, 2020April 1, 2024 The Quiq Team

Pella Corporation is a leading designer and manufacturer of window and doors. Pella has over 7,000 team members, 17 manufacturing locations, and more than 200 showrooms across the country. Pella supports every step of the customer’s journey, from design to installation, and support after the sale. Pella’s unique advantage is that they distribute where their customers want to buy, through exclusive Pella distributors and custom builders, to big box retailers like Lowe’s.

Pella is committed to exceeding customer expectations, and that includes customer support. Pella recognized that strong sales growth directly impacted the need to scale their contact center. The company turned to Quiq’s Messaging platform to achieve efficiencies such as a 98% faster resolution time with messaging vs. email.

Pella Rolls Out Customer Support Messaging

Pella partnered with Quiq to implement messaging and went live with the platform in January of 2020 within the corporate contact center. The plan was to start with a subset of their customers and agents, build something and then learn from it.

The first Rollouts included:

Messaging support for Pella’s National Account Sales Reps, who service some of Pella’s largest B2B customers like Lowe’s.
The company chose four phone agents to go live with the messaging channel.
The agents were provided with 2 hours of hands-on training and then allowed to spend time practicing with the system.
Pella sent out a communication to their sales reps to promote the channel explaining how the new messaging channel worked and when it would be available.
Regional Managers were invited to a virtual meeting to unveil the new channel and were excited about this new support channel.

The Pella team was impressed with how smoothly the launch was executed and chose to expand the launch to include an Order Status chat bot that would handle any requests for Order status. This bot supports the sales reps and B2B customers as well.

Pella designed the order status bot, which includes an integration with Pella’s order system
The bot is also able to seamlessly hand off any conversation that goes beyond order status or requires further research to a group of contact center agents.
With the help of the Quiq team, Pella was able to deploy the new bot quickly and effectively.

Flattening the Contact Center Growth Curve

Adoption began almost immediately. Volume quickly ramped up as many of the sales reps became early and eager advocates for messaging, sharing their experience with colleagues. Both agents and reps love the ability to share screen shots, gifs, and links within their conversations to quickly exchange information. Today, the entire National Account Support team takes conversations from sales reps. Agents typically handle up to 3 simultaneous messages at a time with the average conversation lasting 5 minutes.

Prior to the implementation of messaging, the contact center received thousands of phone calls and emails from sales reps. Since implementing SMS, at least 15% of phone calls have been deflected to the messaging channel.

Messaging helps sales reps get the information they need faster, making in-home meetings with customers more efficient. Now resolving something over text takes an average time of 8 mins on SMS vs. emails that could sit in a reps inbox, and were averaging over 7hrs, for resolution. The 98% faster response time is paying off.

In one example, a customer wanted to know if they could have windows that matched their existing trim while meeting with a Pella sales rep in their home. The rep was able to snap a picture of the trim and text the question and photo to an agent. Within 20 seconds the agent sent a picture of three trim options that would work. Because the customer immediately received the information they needed, the sales rep was able to close the sale that day.

“Agents prefer messaging over talking on the phone. Over the phone, if there are 10 seconds of silence while you’re looking up something in the system, it feels like an eternity. When you’re texting, the communication is asynchronous, so the messaging agents feel less stressed and hurried, yet they’re faster than the phone agents.”

~ Traci Scott, Pella

Pella’s Order Status Bot

With a successful implementation of SMS under their belt, the Pella team decided to automate some of their conversations with the help of a Quiq bot. The company rolled out an order status bot in May of 2019, integrating it with their order system.

The integration of Pella’s messaging bot with the company’s order system enables B2B customers and sales reps to simply type in the order number to receive an instant, real-time status of the order. Since launching the bot in May, customers have been able to quickly receive status updates without the need to speak to an agent. When a human agent needs to intervene, it is easy for the conversation to get transferred to one of the two agents who support order status inquiries.

What’s Next at Pella For Customer Messaging

Although COVID-19 changed the order of Pella’s project roadmap and drastically shortened the implementation time, messaging remains a priority for several use cases throughout the customer’s experience. The results achieved from messaging and chatbots for the National Account Sales Reps has Pella anxious to get started on the next project.

Pella sees no shortage of opportunities to help their B2B and B2C customers with messaging. Pella also sees the potential for a bot to do outbound appointment reminders.

Messaging has helped the company craft a digital customer experience that is faster and more convenient for customers and more efficient for the company. A clear win for everyone.

About Quiq

Quiq is ready to help your company gain efficiencies within your contact center. Schedule a call or contact us to discuss how Quiq’s messaging platform and bots can work throughout your organization to streamline workflows, reduce costs, and increase customer satisfaction.

The Nature of Business Messaging

Posted on November 28, 2020August 16, 2022 Lauren Winder

What makes messaging a unique channel and how should we optimize for it?

Messaging. It’s not chat. It’s not email. And it’s certainly not voice. Messaging is often dubbed an “asynchronous” channel, meaning that the two parties – in this case a customer and a business representative – don’t need to be simultaneously dedicated to their ongoing discourse.

In this post, we’ll dive into the messaging channel and how to use this popular channel to boost productivity and customer satisfaction. But first, let’s set the foundation and revisit the difference between asynchronous and synchronous communication.

The Difference Between Asynchronous And Synchronous Channels

Email is an asynchronous channel. It’s not necessary for the two parties to simultaneously read one anothers’ messages and craft responses – in fact that would be bad. When an email arrives at your business, it’s fine if it goes into a pile and doesn’t require real-time routing.

Voice is the ultimate synchronous channel. The conversation must be routed directly to a live agent in real-time. The two parties are then wholly engrossed in the dialogue or tasks related to it. Web chat is mostly a synchronous channel, but it’s possible for agents to handle more than one conversation at a time. Here’s a diagram that shows how the traditional customer service channels fall on a spectrum of synchronicity:

Where should messaging fall on this diagram? Somewhere in the middle? Somewhere a bit to the left of email? Those are reasonable answers. However, the best answer is that each individual conversation can appear at different places on the spectrum.

Even a single conversation will exhibit periods of increased synchronicity and increased asynchronicity. Sometimes it will behave more like web chat and sometimes it will behave more like email, based on the customer’s responsiveness.

Don’t panic! This is a good thing. This is the convenience your customers crave and leads to higher customer satisfaction scores (CSAT). This is what allows your agents to support multiple customers concurrently. This is the magic of messaging. You just need to ensure you have the right solutions in place.

In the end, calling messaging “asynchronous” doesn’t seem to tell the whole story. Perhaps it should be called an adaptive channel. Other descriptors might include natural, organic, persistent, and self-paced.

So what does it look like to properly handle this unique channel where customer interactions should sometimes consume a synchronous “session” with a business representative, but sometimes not, based on how synchronous the conversation is itself?

Embrace Concurrency

The ability for agents to serve multiple customers at once is a big selling point for messaging. But it’s also a basic requirement of managing the channel. Imagine a system wherein agents receive one conversation at a time, similar to some web chat systems.

If the customer texts in “Hi” and the agent responds with “Hi, how may I help you?,” but the customer does not immediately respond, the agent is now in a dilemma where she/he must decide how long is too long to wait for the customer’s response. It could be that the customer was interrupted and had to walk away for a bit, so they didn’t get a chance to respond. Or perhaps they’ll respond immediately. The longer the agent waits for an unresponsive customer, the longer other customers have to wait and the agent is not fully utilized.

The way to address this problem is to first allow agents to have a configurable number of concurrent sessions, such that the law of averages keeps conversations moving. The system should endeavor to route as many conversations as it can, spreading them across the available workforce. In this way, agents can help other customers while awaiting responses.

All of this requires a real-time UI that automatically reacts to updates on any and all of the conversations assigned to an agent and it also necessitates some additional tools to enable the agent to manage their workload.

Monitor Customer Responsiveness

The next step is to use the customer’s responsiveness to determine if a conversation should be actively assigned to an agent and if so, how it should be prioritized amongst its peers.

Let’s consider priority first. Obviously, any conversation awaiting a response from the agent should be prioritized above conversations that are awaiting a response from the customer. But among all of the conversations awaiting a response from the agent, how should we sort? Prioritizing the conversation that’s been waiting the longest is an obvious solution, but can we do better? Imagine two customers interacting with your business:

Marcus – Sitting alone at a coffee shop checking with his bank on new car loans and fully engrossed on his mobile device
Sophie – Texting during breaks in her workday about new car loans

It doesn’t make sense to prioritize Sophie ahead of Marcus, even if she’s been waiting longer. Each customer has a different expectation of responsiveness from your business, based on their own urgency and needs. So conversations should be sorted with the customer’s recent responsiveness in mind. This is the thinking behind Quiq’s Adaptive Response Timer feature which automatically prioritizes highly engaged customers higher than customers who aren’t as responsive.

In addition to prioritizing an agent’s active workload, a customer’s lack of responsiveness should result in their session being forfeited, temporarily, for the benefit of other customers who are more active.

Suppose a conversation was progressing rapidly and is clearly not concluded. The customer has gone dark for the last 30 minutes, perhaps because they stepped into a meeting. What should we do with this conversation? We can’t throw it away because we know it’s not done yet, but it’s wasteful if it continues to occupy an agent session and keep the agent from helping others.

A messaging system needs to be able to pause such conversations, making room for other customers, while being ready to handle it immediately when the conversation comes back alive. Quiq’s product calls these “inactive” conversations.

When an inactive conversation is reactivated by the customer, it should be routed to the same agent if possible. The possibility for inactive conversations to come back alive requires the system’s routing capabilities to understand the difference between an agent’s preferred degree of concurrency and their maximum load.

Mind the Messages

Embracing concurrency and monitoring customer responsiveness sets you up for success when tackling the fluctuating synchronicity of messaging. Further improvements come from the messages themselves. Messages, whether inbound from the customer or outbound from an agent, should be able to inform workflow. A simple example is automatically closing a conversation when a customer responds “No” when asked if they need further assistance. Another example is not making a conversation active when a customer responds with an ineffectual message such as “thanks”. Leveraging rich messaging and NLP to automate workflow are deep topics that merit their own articles—check out one I wrote here.

Mastering The Messaging Channel

At Quiq, we’ve been focused on mastering the messaging channel since 2015. Our system was purpose-built for the next generation of async customer communications. We believe that by using Quiq, messaging won’t be just another channel. It will be the channel preferred by both you and your customers. The nature of asynchronous messaging also allows you to serve more customers with the same number of agents, meeting the customer in the channel of their choosing and being respectful of their time and priorities.

Quiq makes it easy for your customers to contact your business via the messaging channel. Ready to put messaging to work for your contact center? Schedule some time to speak with one of our conversation experts today.

Author, Kyle McIntyre

Tips For Building Your Company’s Brand With Outbound Messaging

Posted on November 27, 2020October 31, 2023 Lauren Winder

Today’s smartphones offer a simple, convenient source of both work and entertainment, and businesses are using this to their advantage. Outbound messaging can promote special offers, discounts, and other benefits with repeat customers. The challenge is that an outbound text messaging campaign can hit or miss depending on the language and the timing. With a little knowledge of outbound SMS best practices, you can build a messaging campaign that increases brand awareness.

Tips to Use Outbound Messaging to Build Your Brand

Outbound messaging allows for a more personal, customized form of communication between the business and customer. With an open rate of 98%, text messages are more effective and are capable of reaching a wider audience than email or other communication channels. While outbound SMS brand building takes time and effort, it’s a rewarding branding strategy in the long run.

Personalize Messages

Good sales representatives know how to personalize messages so their consumers feel appreciated. In turn, customers like when businesses show they care and are willing to tailor solutions that fit their needs. Using information such as names, birthdays, and even personal interests is a simple yet effective way to engage customers and send them relevant information.

Establish Value of Message

Developing an effective outbound messaging campaign is about more than sending out texts to get attention. It’s about sending messages that have meaning and value. The best way to create valuable messages is to develop a schedule and map out what each text has to offer. Does it serve a purpose? Does it contain relevant information and encourage customers to take action?

Keep Messages Consistent

Consistency is a key component in successful messaging strategies. Inconsistencies often confuse consumers, which leads them to unsubscribe from notifications and abandon the brand. During the planning process, it’s important to make sure all product and service information is consistent across every message. Clear and easy-to-read messages are more likely to keep people coming back.

Optimize Frequency

Message frequency often varies depending on the business. On one hand, sending SMS messages at normal intervals can keep customers interested and engaged in the brand. Sending them too frequently or during odd hours can turn customers off immediately. It’s important to find a balance and make sure every customer knows how often to expect messages.

Analyze Results

Business leaders across a variety of industries are constantly striving to improve their strategies and draw in more customers. That’s why gathering data and analyzing results is essential to building a brand with outbound messaging. Through the careful analysis of feedback and success rates, it’s easier to determine which elements of the plan work and which ones have room for improvement.

Update Contact Info Regularly

One of the best ways to inspire confidence and trust in consumers is to make them feel in control. By maintaining up-to-date contact information, businesses give their customers more control over what they see. Asking for permission and giving consumers an easy unsubscribe option lets customers know they can start and stop messages whenever they want to.

Learn More About Writing Outbound Messages

Delivering a consistent, personalized customer experience is easier than ever with outbound SMS messaging. Respect customers and strive to improve every day, and you could build a successful brand-enhancing campaign. For more outbound messaging brand building tips, contact Quiq online.

4 Tips for Communicating Effectively With Customers Over Live Chat

Posted on November 20, 2020August 16, 2022 luisa@webfx.com

Consumers want answers, and they want them right away. Slow customer service can result in lost opportunities for businesses across all industries. That’s why live chat is more popular among businesses and corporations than ever before. This fast, efficient communication method is a great way to address the questions and concerns of both new and long-standing customers. With the help of a few customer service live chat tips, it’s easy to improve consumer relationships and stay competitive in the industry.

Tips for Effective Live Chat Customer Service Messages

For consumers who have questions while deciding whether to buy a product or service, live chat is a quick and simple solution. With live chat customer service messages, consumers have their questions answered and decide on a course of action within minutes. Like any other part of a customer support strategy, it takes planning and precision to develop a successful live chat program. Here are a few live chat customer service tips that can help you communicate more quickly and effectively.

1. Keep a Conversational Tone

While the tone of a conversation may vary depending on the situation or customer, it’s important to be friendly and conversational. Excessive formal language can translate as boring, while a message filled with errors and too much slang may read as unprofessional. Although the occasional slang or emoji is acceptable in the right context, it’s best to communicate professionally during live messaging.

2. Write Short Messages

Consumers like quick, easy answers. They prefer replies that are short, sweet, and to the point. It’s easy to lose potential leads by offering answers that are too long and complex. Short messages are more digestible and easier to read, which makes them ideal for consumers who are in a hurry to find solutions.

3. Point to Relevant Materials

Additional resources and materials play an important role in allowing businesses to communicate with new customers. These materials can help answer questions, point consumers to other offerings, and even encourage them to buy more products. During live chat, it’s important to find ways to keep the conversation going so the consumer receives the support they need and walks away satisfied with their service. Pointing to relevant materials is a smart way to keep people engaged and asking questions.

4. Focus on Speed

Live chat is different from other types of messaging and communication because it all happens in one sitting. If a representative is too slow to respond, they could lose a lead within minutes. That’s why focusing on speed without sacrificing accuracy and quality is so important. Live chat features such as Quiq Replies offer standardized messages the agent can use with a simple keystroke to respond both quickly and consistently.

Greater speed during live chat can result in more leads, happier customers, and better profits. In some cases, chat bots also keep the conversation going by helping potential leads while representatives are unavailable.

Contact Quiq for More Live Chat Customer Service Tips

Live chat is a powerful strategy that can help any business attract more customers and build better customer loyalty. The key is to keep replies quick, short, and to the point while maintaining a positive tone. For more information about customer service live chat, contact us online today.

How Retailers Can Effectively Use Outbound Messaging This Holiday Season

Posted on November 4, 2020October 31, 2023 Lauren Winder

Retailers are facing heavy demands this season as they prepare for the holidays. The customer experience is more critical than ever before, and engaging with consumers during this busy time of year is the key to making more sales and increasing branding interest. Holiday season outbound messaging is the ideal way to reach potential shoppers in this digital world.

Retailer outbound messaging is a mobile-friendly option that can help keep buyers up to date and increase consumer loyalty. The use of a Quiq outbound messaging platform will give you access to the latest technology, which is essential for success in competitive markets.

Tips to Effectively Use Outbound Messaging This Holiday Season

Well-timed outbound messages can encourage purchases and improve relationships with buyers. In most cases, the best practice is to give consumers full control over which messages they receive and ensure that each one has value to them. This practice helps retailers and shoppers stay in touch, especially during the holiday season when people are on the lookout for great deals. Stores can use holiday season retail outbound messaging to:

Promote holiday sales: The possibilities are nearly endless for retailers looking to promote holiday sales. Outbound messaging offers a creative way to incorporate branding and media into concise, digestible information. The right message at the right time could be the key to encouraging a new customer to buy a competitively priced product.
Encourage return customers: While outbound messaging is an excellent method of drawing in new consumers, it can also help maintain the interest of returning shoppers. For example, retailers can use messaging to encourage returning consumers to make more purchases or learn about different offerings. It’s also a wonderful opportunity to use information about past purchases to suggest other relevant products.
Keep them up to date on purchases: If a shopper places an order online, SMS updates can help them stay up to date on order information, shipping details, and delivery alerts. Most buyers like having the freedom to check the status of their purchase or delivery, so this helps foster open communication and build trust.
Facilitate returns: Product returns are common during and after the holiday season. SMS messaging helps retailers communicate important return information with buyers so they can get their money back as quickly as possible. Efficiency and simplicity are essential when it comes to facilitating returns, especially during the busiest times of the year. Messaging helps streamline the process so each shopper has access to the service they need.

Learn About Holiday Season Outbound Messaging From Quiq

Retailers can promote sales and keep consumers informed this year with holiday season outbound messaging. Engaging with shoppers and increasing loyalty is a great way to foster growth over time. In addition, using outbound messages helps those in retail and entertainment widen their reach to a brand-new audience.

From multichannel integration to chatbot automation, Quiq offers a variety of benefits within a highly advanced platform. Learn more today by requesting a demo online.

How This Holiday Season Will Be Different for Retailers

Posted on November 2, 2020August 16, 2022 luisa@webfx.com

This holiday season, retailers are interacting with consumers a little bit differently. The COVID-19 crisis has had a huge impact on industries in 2020, forcing retail business leaders to rethink their marketing and sales strategies.

Consumers are spreading out their holiday shopping and doing their business online. Stores are limiting their customer capacity, which means it’s shaping up to be a nontraditional holiday season for both the retailer and the consumer.

Understand How Consumer Behavior Has Changed

As the holidays draw closer, holiday season retailers are finding ways to adapt to changes in consumer behavior. It’s crucial to understand how these behaviors have changed the industry so you can develop a plan of action. Some of the ways shoppers are responding to social distancing measures include:

Buying online: eCommerce is growing rapidly thanks to COVID-19, and more consumers are turning to online shopping than ever before. Quiq messaging software makes it easier for shoppers to get the remote support they need.
Using contactless ways to purchase and return: The current situation has prompted consumers to look for safer methods of purchase and return, such as curbside pickup and delivery.
Increased value-driven buying: Thanks to the uncertainty of consumer finances, many shoppers feel more value-driven this holiday season. They want to make sure they receive the best value for their dollar.

How This Holiday Season Will Be Different

Retailers and consumers are finding ways to adapt as social distancing becomes the new norm. This holiday season will be different from what we’ve seen in the past due to the number of people buying online and managing reduced income. Some of the points to keep in mind include:

Less consumer spending: This year’s consumers are looking for the exact product they need at the right price, and it’s the retailer’s job to provide that value. Quiq’s software helps retailers enhance customer service with live chat, instant messaging, and chatbots. Better communication technology allows agents to serve buyers more efficiently.

Less in-store traffic: Many buyers are now choosing delivery, mailing, and curbside pickup, which serve as convenient and contactless options. Retailers are using Quiq solutions to optimize the online shopping experience so more people can enjoy the benefits of low-risk buying. If a shopper has a question, text and chat can take the place of phone calls and emails. Messaging is a convenient and cost-effective substitute for both retailers and consumers in an era where more people carry around mobile phones than ever before.
Less impulse buying: Because fewer people are buying in stores, they’re unable to see products in person before they make a purchase. Quiq offers Rich Messaging, which allows consumers to make purchases easily over the phone and engage with representatives as needed. Augmented reality also allows shoppers to see products in great detail before they make a purchase. This capability offers a fluid and exciting way to engage with potential buyers on a platform they can feel comfortable with.

Adapt to This Year’s Challenges With Quiq Software

Holiday season retailers can use Quiq software solutions to accommodate value-driven online buyers this year. While these may be atypical times, you can navigate the current situation by taking advantage of the latest website and messaging technology. Contact us today for a demo to learn more about Quiq options.

How Messaging Creates Seamless Credit Union Member Engagement

Posted on November 2, 2020April 1, 2024 The Quiq Team

Prior to the pandemic, online and mobile banking already represented the primary banking channels for two third of Americans. As the pandemic forced branches to close, credit unions and consumers readily embraced more online banking options including chatbots to provide members with 24/7 automated service.

Whether it is to help manage account transactions or process loan applications, everything has had to move online. In this post, we’ll show you how credit unions have quickly deployed technology to manage unexpected changes and better connect with members.

Follow The Technology Your Members Are Using

Every company out there has had to take a closer look at how they connect with their customers. Credit Unions have not been an exception.

Buddy Bennett, COO at Cyprus Credit Union spoke about it during Quiq’s webinar entitled, “Digital Member Connections That Are Seamless and Compliant”. Buddy recalls how his organization, which manages 1.3 billion in assets, examined how to better connect with their members as part of their strategic planning sessions for a number of years.

The 30 person contact center at Cyprus used to service its 119,000 members primarily through emails and phone calls. The organization wanted to make it easier for members to connect and get the help they need.

The vision motivated Cyprus to look at text messaging and chat so they can meet members in the channels of communication in which they live. Consumer’s growing reliance on their cell phones and texting made messaging the more appealing option. As Buddy puts it “Really, we felt like to get to members and to be able to communicate with them, text was going to be the way to go.”

“Really, we felt like to get to members and to be able to communicate with them, text was going to be the way to go.”

The accounting group at Cyprus was one of the first groups to use messaging within the credit union. The department uses messaging to notify business members when checks over a certain amount have cleared. From there, the lending department started successfully using Quiq to reach out to members to follow up on loan applications and soon the collections department will use Quiq to notify members when payments are past due.

The credit union has since rolled out messaging to their contact center to manage inbound inquiries from members. Members and employees have welcomed the new channel with enthusiasm and Buddy says they’ve been surprised at the volume they’re seeing in the messaging channels.

Delivering a seamless and convenient customer experience was vital to the future success of credit unions before the onset of the pandemic. Now, there’s more of a spotlight on the vital importance of enabling members to conduct business at a time and place that is most convenient to the member. Messaging is the channel your members prefer that allows self-service to happen on their terms.

Seamless Member Engagements Starts with Simplifying The Experience For Agents

Black Hills Federal Credit Union manages 15 locations throughout South Dakota along with 1.5 billion in assets and 70,000 members. Even before the pandemic, the organization started to see challenges in their contact center which motivated the team to look at messaging.

John Buxton, SVP and CIO at Black Hills recalls how his organization started to see high abandonment rates and long wait times. As he recalls, “it just didn’t feel like we were maybe providing the service that we wanted to.”

Black Hills also wanted something that simplified the messaging channels for agents instead of a bunch of different systems that agents would have to navigate. When Black Hills went live with Quiq, agents were up and running after only 1 hour of training.

As far as agent adoption, John says, “It was very easy to get them involved because they have requests all the time from members – that’s how members want to communicate. And so they were excited to be able to use something that members want. It was literally just go through a power training and then start doing some testing between each other, texting back and forth….it was very quick for our agents to become familiar with it.”

It didn’t take long for members to notice the change either. John recalls how surprised the team was when the credit union went live with messaging in their mortgage department. “As soon as we text enabled those phone numbers, and we hadn’t even trained our staff internally or announced it, we were receiving messages. Members were just instinctively thinking that they can text the credit union. They were texting the mortgage phone numbers that were on the website before we even trained our staff internally.”

Black Hills started with messaging in the contact center, mortgage department, card services and are now moving it into their branches. The credit union has also integrated messaging into their IVR. If a member has been on hold for a certain amount of time, they are presented the option to have the conversation via text.

The conversation is handed off to the messaging channel where it’s easy for the agent to respond. All conversations are handled in one intuitive workspace where agents can use features such as canned responses (also known as snippets), routing, transferring, and response timers to manage conversations.

Gain Operational Efficiency Throughout Your Credit Union

If making it easier for your customers to do business with you and simplifying workflows so agents can deliver better members experiences isn’t enough, consider this. Messaging enables your credit union to gain operational efficiency and boost productivity, which is a win for everyone.

For example, IH Mississippi Credit Union uses text messaging in multiple departments including the financial solutions department, the contact center, and within their retail team. The organization rolled out messaging in the financial solutions department first, using Quiq to send out messages to members who were delinquent or on the path to payment delinquency.

Normally, IH Mississippi would use email and phone calls to contact these members. This process was time-consuming and usually didn’t yield a high response rate. The team now uses messaging which has reduced processing time and boosted response rates.

The financial solution team pulls a report of members who are delinquent on payments or nearing delinquency. A CSV file is uploaded and text messages are sent to those members automatically. What used to be a time-consuming process now takes 5 minutes to execute.

The credit union has realized a higher response rate to these messages compared to those delivered through email or phone. Now, members can discreetly respond and let the credit union know when they will make their payment or simply say “Hey, I forgot, can you transfer the funds now?”

Messaging Will Continue To Be Your Members Preferred Channel

Prior to the pandemic, there was already a high adoption rate of messaging among credit union members. Covid-19 pushed branches and members to adopt digital technology overnight. Your members will continue to seek safe, secure, and convenient ways to bank with you and messaging will continue to be a channel they expect to be available to them.

Quiq’s digital engagement platform is used by top brands and a list of credit unions that grows by the day. Our business messaging, web chat and bot technology helps credit unions deliver an amazing member experience. Before you develop the next phase of your self service strategy, schedule some time to meet with one of our conversation experts to discuss how messaging can go to work for your organization.