Category: News

Quiq Is Honored To Be A 2023 Bronze Stevie® Winner

Posted on The Quiq Team

Quiq is proud to announce that it has been honored as a 2023 Bronze Stevie® winner in the Best Technical Support Solution – Computer Services category!

The Stevie Awards for Technical Innovation and Technology Industry recognizes organizations that demonstrate excellence in technology innovation, product development, and technical support services.

At Quiq, our team is committed to bringing solutions to market that empower our clients to improve their customer care, service, and experience operations. As a team, we pride ourselves on rapid innovation that delivers business-changing results for the world’s best brands.

Winning the 2023 Bronze Stevie is a humbling recognition of the work our team loves doing every day. Thank you to the American Business Awards® for the honor!

About the Stevies

The American Business Awards stand out as the most prestigious business awards program in the United States.

Known as the Stevies, a nod to the Greek term “crowned,” these awards acknowledge outstanding achievement in business for organizations and individuals across over 60 countries.

If you’re interested in learning more about The American Business Awards or all the 2023 Stevie winners, check out their website.

Essential 24/7: Reflecting on National Customer Service Week 2022

Posted on Lauren Winder

This week (October 3-7, 2022), and every first full week of October, is National Customer Service Week (NCSW) in the U.S.

First proclaimed a national event by the U.S. Congress in 1992, NCSW is meant to recognize and give appreciation to customer service professionals.

I first developed a deep appreciation for customer service professionals when I graduated from college. My first project as a management consultant was to assist with process documentation at the then newly established NYC 311 contact center. For the next 4 years, I spent countless hours in contact centers across the world, y-jacking with agents and documenting ways that they could be more efficient with their time while also providing world-class service.

Customer service workers keep businesses running.

It’s fitting that this year’s NCSW theme is “BEE-cause You’re Essential”. The concept of an “essential worker” became common language during COVID lockdowns. These were the professionals who often risked their health to keep our society and systems working while many of us stayed home to stop the spread of the deadly virus. They were critical to making sure lives were saved and sustained.

Customer service workers are also essential because they provide support and service to keep industries going. During COVID, many customer service pros were able to work remotely and answer our calls, and respond to emails and other messages. Back during the lockdown and stay-at-home orders, they were often the only face and voice of the brands we all love to do business with. Since we couldn’t go to stores in person, we were bound to shop online—and shop online we did. Overall, e-commerce sales grew over 50% during 2020, with many categories like home furnishings and goods leading the surge.

Customer service teams were slammed, having to handle an unprecedented amount of contacts across existing and new channels. And now as we’re nearing talks of a national or even global recession, these teams are still tasked with doing more with fewer people and resources.

This National Customer Service Week, we should all refocus on the employee experience.

Cost savings has always been a primary focus area for these teams but I’m excited to see a new theme emerge from the customer service leaders I follow and admire; a focus on the employee experience.

The employee experience is crucial to driving great Customer Experience. Being a customer service professional is a tough job. They sometimes don’t get the resources they need to answer tough questions from customers while also having to spend most of their days dealing with customers who are upset.

For leaders, let’s focus more on how these professionals are experiencing work and help them get the training, support, and resources they need to be successful in their challenging roles.

Also, showing recognition and appreciation of their work is important in keeping morale and retention high.

For the rest of us, here are two things that we can all do to thank Customer Service pros:

Show appreciation to a customer service professional this week.
Show some empathy and compassion in your interactions with them, every day.

Let’s all remember that there are real people on the other side of the phone, email,or messaging thread. Each day we engage with them, let’s remember to treat them with the respect they deserve. Happy National Customer Service Week!

Press Release: Quiq Launches Conversational Commerce Payments and Surveys

Posted on The Quiq Team

Quiq Launches Conversational Commerce Payments and Conversational Surveys 

Secure, in-conversation payments allow brands to complete transactions seamlessly while chatting with customers on SMS, web chat, and other channels; Surveys inform retailers with a multi-channel, real-time customer feedback loop

BOZEMAN, MT and NEW YORK CITY — SEPTEMBER 29, 2021 — Quiq, the AI-powered conversational platform that enables businesses to engage with customers across the most popular digital messaging channels, today announced the addition of two new product features to its cross-channel Conversational AI platform: payments and surveys. Built to deliver superior customer experience by enhancing the quality of every customer interaction, Quiq’s new payments and customer survey features help brands enhance the quality of every customer interaction, drive higher sales within every conversation, and reap the benefits of real-time customer feedback.

“The ability for retailers to quickly and securely accept payments in Conversational Commerce is a game changer. Customers no longer need to share their sensitive credit card details with an agent on the phone and consumers can interact with their favorite brands at the exact time and place of their choosing, which is increasingly on the go via SMS, text, or other messaging platforms,” said Quiq CEO and Co-Founder, Mike Myer. “In addition, Quiq’s in-conversation surveys give retailers the core functionality of a traditional survey tool with the flexibility to design, distribute, and analyze customer survey responses across multiple text channels. Both new product features deliver a superior customer experience that drives higher customer satisfaction and retention through timely feedback, makes payments easy, and ultimately generates significantly more revenue for brands.”

Conversational Commerce Payments

Quiq’s Conversational Commerce Payments enables brands to safely and securely accept payment across all Quiq supported channels including SMS/text messaging, Apple Business Chat, Google Business Messages, webchat, Instagram, Facebook Messenger and more — in 170+ languages. Conversational Commerce Payments enables seamless, secure payment from multiple communication channels, including SMS and text messaging. Quiq has standard support for Stripe and Braintree payments platforms and integrates with any brand’s payment processing platform, through the Quiq Payments API.

In-Conversation Surveys

Quiq’s In-Conversation Surveys enable a short survey to be sent immediately following the end of a customer interaction regardless of the channel (e.g.  SMS/text messaging, Apple Business Chat, Google Business Messages, webchat, Instagram and Facebook Messenger and more), empowering retailers with a multi-channel, customer feedback loop that delivers real-time insights. Easy to design and simple to implement — with no coding skills required — the surveys are event-based and triggered at specific customer interaction points, such as the end of a conversation. The ability to converse with clients immediately following a conversation about their customer experience allows brands to quickly and effectively remedy dissatisfaction. For example, if a customer responds that their issue was not resolved or provides a low rating, Quiq automatically re-engages the customer in the same channel and escalates the customer’s feedback directly to a customer service manager for white-glove handling. A reporting dashboard allows customer service agents and their managers to see a survey report card that scores each agent on multiple metrics, such as the number of surveys received, average survey score and average sentiment score.

According to a recent report from Gartner, “Customer Experience (CX) is critical to maintain loyalty and 87% of companies expect to compete on CX in 2021, yet 57% of customer-facing employees say they aren’t ‘set up to succeed’ in interactions.” Trusted by globally recognized brands like Overstock, Blue Nile, Lane Bryant and Nespresso, Quiq is every brand’s wingman and ally, empowering customer service agents to become so effective at client communications that they become key drivers and components of a brand’s sales strategy.

Contact info@quiq.com to schedule a product demo of Quiq’s payments and/or survey features or learn more at https://www.quiq.com.

About Quiq

Quiq is the AI-powered Conversational Platform enabling businesses to engage with customers across the most popular digital messaging channels. Trusted by leading brands and boasting a 56 NPS score, Quiq’s enterprise-grade Conversational Platform supports SMS/text, Apple Business Chat, Google’s Business Messages, webchat, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, call-to-text, and more. Quiq provides the leading solutions for business communications for the world’s best commerce and care teams. Quiq for Commerce and Quiq for Customer Care combine Conversational AI and a digital contact center to help commerce and service teams increase efficiency, drive revenue, and improve customer satisfaction.

Headquartered in Bozeman, Montana, with an office in New York City, Quiq is a privately held company backed by Foundry Group, Venrock, and Next Frontier Capital. Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, or learn more at https://www.quiq.com.

All trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

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Quiq Has Acquired Snaps, A Leader In Conversational AI

Posted on Lauren Winder

Quiq Has Acquired Snaps, A Leader In Conversational AI

I couldn’t be more thrilled to announce that Quiq has acquired Snaps! Together, the Quiq and Snaps teams have unsurpassed experience in asynchronous messaging and deep expertise in Conversational AI. We will be an unstoppable force in the digital transformation of customer communications!

Often the word “synergy” is used to describe acquisitions. In this case, it’s more than that. I think “perfect fit” sums it up more succinctly. Like two pieces from different puzzles that miraculously fit together like they were cut from the same sheet of cardboard, Quiq and Snaps are a perfect fit.

From my initial meeting with Christian Brucculeri, Snaps CEO, I was impressed with the business he and the Snaps team had built helping automate customer interactions using Conversational AI (think chatbots, but smarter!). When deployed in an ecommerce use case a Snaps bot had helped a brand increase their purchase conversion by more than 300%. When used to help customers answer questions, the bot resolved 85% of inquiries. Clearly these results weren’t any ordinary chatbot! We have architected Quiq so that bots and agents are both first class citizens, each capable of handling any part of a conversation and seamlessly passing the conversation between them. Quiq also has a super powerful graphical tool that allows our clients to design their own bots, but Quiq’s bots today don’t match the level of Natural Language Understanding that Snaps provides. By adding Snaps Conversational AI to our bot framework, Quiq will now offer our clients AI Automation that delivers unmatched outcomes and is consumable by a business user. This is the first way we fit together perfectly.

AI isn’t any good without humans. The amazing results of Snaps AI Automation isn’t due only to great technology, but much of the credit lies with the conversational design savvy that the Snaps team injects into their bots and the on-going tuning that they deliver. This is the second way that Quiq and Snaps are a perfect complement to each other. While we have been working on growing Quiq’s services capacity, conversational design is a special skill and we haven’t been able to develop it as one of our core competencies. By joining forces with Snaps we now have a team of experts ready to assist our clients when they need help designing and building impactful Conversational AI.

Today the majority of Quiq’s clients use our messaging platform to interact with customers to solve issues in a customer service context. Conversely, Snaps has been very successful helping marketing organizations attract new customers and convert shoppers to buyers. From a customer’s perspective the internal organizational division shouldn’t matter. They want one seamless, long running conversational interaction with their favorite brand. Enterprises need a solution for digital engagement across the complete customer lifecycle, from marketing to conversational commerce to customer service. The union of the Quiq and Snaps teams combines the knowledge and the technology to power digital conversations throughout the customer journey.

The final area of perfect fit that I will call out is Quiq’s and Snaps’ unwavering commitment to client’s success. From that first meeting with Christian and in every interaction since, Christian and the Snap’s teams passion for their customers has been apparent. At Quiq, we share that same passion. The people that buy our solution are practitioners of great customer experiences. It’s their job to deliver great experiences to their own customers, so their standards for the experience that they get from their vendors is high. I’m confident that our combined team will exceed those expectations.

The world has changed as a result of COVID. We’re not going back. The momentum behind consumer’s preference for digital interactions is only going to accelerate. The new Quiq, formed by the combination of those two perfectly fitting puzzle pieces, is uniquely positioned to help businesses transform and meet their customers demands for the next generation of digital conversations!

Quiq CEO & Founder

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Press Release: Quiq Announces New Multilingual Support Feature

Posted on Lauren Winder

Quiq’s New Multilingual Support Feature

Quiq: “Ahora hablamos español”

Quiq debuts multilingual support; organizations can expand support in the U.S. and globally

With up to 350 languages spoken in the U.S., it’s a big challenge for organizations to be able to offer great service to everyone who contacts them in need of assistance. And with over 40 million native Spanish speakers here in the U.S., Spanish must be an option for customer service phone calls, chat or text. That’s why we’re excited to announce the launch of Quiq Translate, a new feature that translates multi-language exchanges between customers and agents.

Quiq’s digital conversation platform drives operational excellence in digital customer support and service with features that teams can use to manage and measure cross-channel messaging in a single intuitive workspace. With Quiq Translate, companies can translate over 100 languages making messaging even more accessible and convenient.

Agents specify which languages they can handle. The language of the conversation is detected based on the customer’s message. If the agent doesn’t speak the customer’s language, incoming messages are automatically translated. The agent can still see the translated message and the original untranslated message.

Outgoing messages from the agent are automatically translated, so customers receive responses in their preferred language. Both the original and translated messages are stored as part of the saved message transcript.

The City of Knoxville’s 311 Center for Service Innovation, which houses Eastern Tennessee’s 2-1-1- and has been piloting the technology, said that Spanish speakers are one of the City’s fastest-growing groups. The City is eager that its services to reach this population, many of whom prefer mobile devices and text and messaging as their preferred method of communication.

“Working with Quiq, we’re making sure that those that need services can access them, regardless of the language they speak,” said Russ Jensen, director, the City of Knoxville’s 3-1-1 & 2-1-1. They have been working closely with Quiq for nearly a year. In April 2020, Knoxville launched a Covid-19 chatbot to help residents get important information related to Covid-19, such as a symptom checker, or to access services such as food banks.

Quiq Translate also provides retailers and credit unions a way to cost-effectively provide multilingual customer service to a broad base of consumers using the messaging channel: whether those customers are in the U.S., South America or Europe. Research has found that multilingual support can increase how likely a customer is to repurchase.

The world is getting smaller and more connected, and businesses are growing on a global scale. Language can no longer be a barrier to this.

Quiq is the Digital Conversation Company, enabling businesses to engage with customers across the most popular digital messaging channels, exceeding the expectations of digital engagement for support and service teams. Quiq is enterprise-grade SaaS software that supports SMS/text, Apple Messages for Business, Google’s Business Messages, webchat, Facebook, Twitter, call-to-text, Chatbots, and more.

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Quiq Earns 3 Capterra “Best” Badges

Posted on Lauren Winder

Provider of digital engagement solutions, Quiq is excited to announce we have earned three new badges from Capterra, one of the top software review sites in the world. Quiq was recognized within the Cloud Communication Platform category with “Best Ease of Use” and “Best Value” badges. The company was also recognized in the Conversational AI Platform category with the “Best Ease of Use” badge.

The Best badges aid in software research to help buyers make more informed decisions. Best badges are based on reviews spanning the Gartner Digital Markets network. The badges synthesize reviews to recognize the most highly-rated products in a given software category.

Why Quiq Has Been Recognized As The Best

Quiq’s recognition by Capterra in these categories originate from the company’s mission to help brands present their customers with consistently jaw-dropping customer experiences across business messaging, web chat, and with bots, the most popular channels that consumers care about. In order to help our clients deliver a great customer experience and realize significant productivity improvements, we focus on implementation and proven best practices.

Here’s what you can expect from working with Quiq:

  • A focus on your objectives to ensure success right from the start
  • A smooth implementation of Quiq as either a stand-alone product or as an integration into your existing systems.
  • An intuitive design that’s requires almost no training
  • Unlimited users so that everyone in your organization can use messaging
  • A seamless integration of automation such as routing rules and chatbots across all of Quiq’s digital channels
  • Robust reporting so that you can measure and manage the things that matter most
  • A responsive team that is eager to help you over hurdles and guide you with best practices

How To Use Reviews In Your Software Purchase

Finding the right software can be tough. With so many choices and differences in features, it helps to get recommendations from other buyers. Reviews help throughout the purchase process. Read our customer reviews on Capterra to understand why top brands chose to work with Quiq and why they continue to be delighted with their decision.

Quiq’s team of conversation experts are ready to help you make an informed decision and choose the best software for your contact center. Schedule some time to discuss your current and future business needs today.

About Capterra’s Best Badges

The Best badge recipients are determined by the subjective opinions of individual end-user customers based on their own experiences, the number and timing of published reviews on Gartner’s digital sites (Capterra.com, SoftwareAdvice.com, and GetApp.com) and review ratings for a given product in the category, and are not intended in any way to represent the views of Gartner or its affiliates.

Apple Messages for Business Feature: What is Apple Message Suggest?

Posted on Lauren Winder

Back in early 2018, Apple introduced Apple Messages for Business. Business Messages is a powerful new way for organizations to connect with customers directly from within the Messages app. In iOS 13, Apple has added Message Suggest, which makes Apple Messages for Business easier for customers to discover.

Previously, Apple Messages for Business was offered from Apple Spotlight Search, Apple Maps, and on a company’s Contact Us page. But many customers find companies in Google search results. Apple Message Suggest makes Apple Messages for Business available in search results and anywhere else in which a customer might call from their iPhone.

Apple Message Suggest is a prompt for iPhone users that helps them initiate a text conversation with a business through Apple Messages for Business. It provides an alternative to calling during business hours and waiting on hold to talk directly to a contact center agent.

Message Suggest appears as a pop-up message when an Apple iPhone user taps on a business phone number. iPhone users will see two tappable buttons, one of which is to confirm they want to initiate a call with the Phone app. Above the call prompt is a messaging icon with a customizable call-to-action that takes customers to their native Messages app when tapped. Message Suggest also displays a company icon and verified badge to confirm the registered business’s identity.

Companies already using Apple Messages for Business can take advantage of this feature for their high call volume phone numbers by contacting their Quiq representative. Apple does the rest, triggering the Message Suggest interface for users with iOS 13 and above.

Apple Message Suggest features

Message Suggest offers convenience for customers and a way for companies to capture actionable engagement data for their customer relationship management software. It allows you to:

  • Trigger the Message Suggest UI on your brand’s website with a tappable telephone link. As long as you use the proper phone URL scheme, you can also offer app users the option to chat with text messaging.
  • Collect and measure Message Suggest volume. By capturing how many users tap the Business Chat option on Message Suggest, Apple helps calculate your conversion rate and your call to messaging ratio.
  • Share rich messaging exchanges with customers. Message Suggest shifts inbound inquiries to Messages for Business, a familiar text channel that offers more control over when and how customers respond. Rich media messaging also opens more direct lines of service between customers and employee representatives.

Do your customers call you? If you are one of the handful of companies where you don’t engage with consumers over the phone, skip ahead. For the rest of the world, let’s get real. Wouldn’t it be great to reduce the number of inbound phone calls and to shift consumers to messaging? Yes. Yes, it would.

According to Statista, there are currently more than 100 million iPhone users in the United States, accounting for about 45% of all smartphone users in the United States. It’s a safe bet to assume that at least half of your customers have iPhones and they all want to use the convenience of messaging to contact you. Apple Messages for Business is built into iMessage and included with every iOS-enabled device there’s a huge market to address.

Message Suggest for iPhone became available when Apple iOS 13 was introduced, ushering in a new way for your customers to engage with your brand. When customers tap on any of your registered business phone numbers, a small window called a phone sheet appears allowing your customers to choose between voice and messaging.

By tapping on the “messaging” icon customers can contact you through Messages for Business in the Messages app. Your customers have immediate access to messaging with your company which reduces phone call volume to your contact center.

The benefit of Message Suggest to businesses

Messaging offers a better agent to customer concurrency ratio compared with either voice or live chat. Brands reduce their contact center operational costs by launching Message Suggest.

By enabling Message Suggest, you can:

  • Deflect calls before they reach your IVR queue
  • Reduce voice support costs by shifting call volume to messaging
  • Improve agent concurrency with messaging, enabling agents to manage 6 or more conversations at a time
  • Increase customer satisfaction by reducing wait times and getting cut-off in mid-conversation on phone lines
  • Better customer experience with built-in features, such as Apple Pay, list pickers, time pickers, and Augmented Reality

Do more than a phone call ever could with Apple Messages for Business. Have you ever tried sending an image over the phone? Not possible. Have you ever tried to schedule an appointment over the phone? Painful. Have you ever tried to take payment over the phone? Not the most secure. With Apple Messages for Business, everything is possible, private, secure, and most importantly, easy.

Think about it from your customers’ perspective. If you were in their shoes, do you want a phone call to be the only option offered? What if you are going into a meeting, headed to pick up kids, hanging out with friends? Do you really want to call a business, navigate a phone tree, wait on hold, and then have to talk to at least one person to get a question answered? No. You don’t.

Stopping everything to make a phone call is quite possibly one of the least convenient things to do today. Our lives are too busy to sit down and focus on just one thing.

Before

After

As you can see from the screenshots, one of our clients, Brinks Home Security, has already taken advantage of Message Suggest. Now, when consumers tap on Brinks phone number from their Apple device, they are presented with the option to message or text in addition to call.

If you are interested in taking advantage of Apple Messages for Business and offering to message to your customers, there are 2 steps. The first is to identify what Apple calls a Customer Service Provider, or CSP, and the second is to create a Business Chat account.

  1. A Customer Service Platform (CSP) is required to connect your business to the Business Messages service. A CSP provides the software and services necessary to allow your agents to respond to customer messages sent from the Messages app on Apple devices. Fortunately for you, Quiq is already an approved CSP and has many clients live on Apple Messages for Business.
  2. Register with Apple and create a Business Chat account (BCA). Quiq will be your guide throughout this process.

A significant shift in the way consumers communicate with brands is happening, with Apple leading the charge. Message Suggest takes Apple Messages for Business to the next level by proactively offering consumers the option to chat/message with a company instead of calling. Your customers will be happier and your business will be more efficient!

As an authorized Apple Customer Service Provider, Quiq helps brands present their customers with consistently jaw-dropping customer experiences across SMS/text messaging, Apple Messages for Business, Google Rich Business Messaging, web chat, and social channels.

With Quiq’s Conversational Engagement Platform, companies can easily orchestrate commerce and service conversations involving both bots and humans. For more information about Quiq, contact us today.

Q: Which devices display the Message Suggest phone sheet?

Message Suggest appears on iPhones with iOS 13 or higher installed.

Q: What can be customized with Message Suggest?

Each registered phone number in Message Suggest can have its intent ID, group ID, and body parameter customized. You can also create custom call-to-action texts and display chat hours. Quiq can help you customize these configurations to fit your needs.

Q: On my website or app, can I have buttons or text-formatted phone numbers bring up the Message Suggest UI?

No. Apple requires you to use a certain telephone URL format for Safari mobile browsers and native apps. Talk to a Quiq representative for additional information.

Apple Messages for Business is a powerful way to deliver a positive, engaging experience for customers, and the right platform makes rich messaging management seamless. Quiq representatives will help you register with Apple Messages for Business and implement the service within your system. Request a demo of Quiq to get started today.

Gartner’s GetApp Names Quiq A Category Leader In Live Chat

Posted on Lauren Winder

2020 Category Leader for Live Chat

Quiq is pleased to announce that it was named a 2020 Category Leader for Live Chat by GetApp. Category Leaders are designed to help businesses evaluate which software products may be right for them.

Category Leaders are published on GetApp, a highly respected recommendation engine that companies rely on to make the right software choice. Category Leaders rank based on ratings submitted by verified users in five key areas:

  1. Ease of use
  2. Value for money
  3. Functionality
  4. Customer support and
  5. Likelihood to recommend

Quiq was named a category leader for Live Chat Software. Quiq scored an overall rating of 4.6 out of 5 based on 34 reviews.

“From the Admin side: excellent customer service, ease of implementation, and timeliness of requested actions. From the User side: extremely intuitive for agents, high customer satisfaction, and efficiency. Overall, Quiq is a forward-thinking platform that really understands customers’ needs both internally and externally.”
– Kim E. Apparel & Fashion 

GetApp is a software review site that enables businesses to discover, compare, and choose the right business applications, ranging from live chat software to cloud-based messaging software. Software buyers can access customer reviews and product features to find the right software for their business.

Quiq is proud to receive this recognition which was based, in part, on the positive customer reviews received. If you’re exploring live chat options for your business, schedule some time to speak with one of our conversation experts.

 

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Apple Business Chat MSP (Messaging Service Provider): How to Get Started

Posted on The Quiq Team

Today’s smartphones and tablets offer new opportunities for brands to connect with consumers traveling through the buying journey. Customers researching a business on their iPhones or iPads have the option of contacting a business through the messages icon that appears in map and search results. Apple Business Chat facilitates these messaging conversations.

Apple Business Chat software allows customers to use a familiar text messaging interface and receive richer responses compared to in-person interactions. For example, employee representatives can offer to schedule appointments, share product listings, and collect feedback. The ability to complete transactions securely through RCS messaging is another advantage of Apple Business Chat.

To start using Apple Business Chat, businesses must first register with Apple and partner with an approved Messaging Service Provider (MSP).

What is an Apple Business Chat Messaging Service Provider (MSP)?

A Messaging Service Provider (MSP) manages customer message routing between Apple Business Chat and the business. Think of a MSP as an intermediary that allows a customer service team to respond efficiently from their desktops to what customers send from their iOS Messaging apps.

Apple lays out several requirements for messaging platforms if they are to become approved MSP’s. A platform needs to demonstrate it can identify customer intent from messages and queue, prioritize, and route the customer to the right members of a customer support team. The platform must also support asynchronous messaging channels other than Business Chat, and its team must offer resources to help clients become launch-ready for Apple’s rich messaging service.

There are other Apple guidelines to qualify for MSP approval, but perhaps most important is a platform’s ability to manage and monitor multiple channels while collecting customer metrics. Quiq has holistic features that classify interactions and route messages to support agents, integrate with CRM solutions, and organize a complete customer history within the UI.

Why Deploy Apple Business Chat?

Apple Business Chat makes it easy for consumers to initiate a conversation with a company when searching for a business through Maps, Safari, Search or Siri or even in the businesses’ own app. Business Chat allows consumers to ask a question about a product or service, or complete a transaction using Apple Pay. With Apple Business Chat it’s easier to reach a live person and consumers are always in control of whether they share any contact information with a business.

“The things that make text messaging the most popular communication channel with family and friends also make it the preferred medium for customers to engage with companies,” said Mike Myer, CEO and Founder of Quiq. “Adding support for Apple Business Chat allows connected customers to engage with businesses in a way that is personal, frictionless, and easy, using the Messages app on iOS. Companies using Quiq will simply have access to a new messaging channel within the Quiq Messaging platform.”

Today, consumers prefer business messaging over any other form of communication to engage with businesses and a lot of companies have had to sit up and take notice. As mobile browsing and chat interactions continue to grow and overtake traditional channels business messaging, especially through rich communication services like Apple Business Chat has quickly become more than a nice-to-have for companies.

What you need to get started with Apple Business Chat

To get your company started with Apple Business Chat, Apple requires businesses to set up a Business Chat Account, but before they do so, they should follow these steps to ensure a smooth approval process with Apple.

First, your company should outline the business need to support starting a Business Chat Account. This should provide a very clear explanation for why you want to enable Business Chat for your customers as well as outlining a process for how to identify and authenticate customers within Business Chat. If this sounds a little technical, it’s because it is, which is why it is essential (and required) to have an Apple Business Chat Messaging Service Provider (MSP).

There are very specific requirements for the type of account your business will choose to enable with Apple and applications are reviewed carefully. To qualify for a Business Chat Account, you must have an asynchronous messaging platform staffed by live agents during business hours. An Apple Business Chat partner, like Quiq, can help navigate the process and requirements set by Apple to get started with setting up a Business Chat Account.

Quiq was one of the early Messaging Service Provider (MSP) to support Apple Business Chat, which is a new way for users to communicate directly with businesses using the native iOS Messages app on iPhone and iPad.

Once you have addressed the business need, outlined a plan to support inbound Apple Business Chat conversations, and selected an Apple Business Chat CSP, you’re ready to create a Business Chat Account.

As a part of getting your Business Chat Account submitted, your business will want to set up an internal testing account. This gives your business an opportunity to see and test Apple Business Chat internally prior to exposing it to your customers. At this point, you will need to have chosen an Apple Business Chat MSP, in order to proceed with testing. With your internal testing account, you’ll then be able to send and receive messages through your MSP. As an additional resource, Apple has provided a step-by-step guide to Getting Started with Business Chat.

Why Work With Quiq To Implement Apple Business Chat?

Apple recommends that businesses decide which approved MSP will connect their customers to their live agents while waiting for Business Chat Account approval. It’s a good time to get acquainted with Quiq’s capabilities with Apple Business Chat.

Quiq is built around asynchronous messaging, aligning with Apple’s platform requirements, and is an Apple-approved Customer Service Platform. With Quiq, you can seamlessly integrate with your internal system or choice of customer engagement software and offer rich media experiences through text messaging.

Quiq has helped many clients start utilizing the advantages that Apple Business Chat has to offer. Quiq representatives get to know each client’s goals, and a Quiq implementation specialist guides each client through the Business Chat registration process.

Quiq also provides the support clients need to branch out into other SMS, web, and social messaging channels. Our Conversational Customer Engagement Platform supports many customers’ preferred messaging channels. With Quiq, you can begin providing an enhanced customer experience with Apple Business Chat or another business messaging channel and manage cross-platform conversations easily.

Ready to get started?

Quiq makes it easy for customers to contact a business via Messaging, the preferred channel already in use with friends and family. In return, companies get a digital engagement platform to communicate with customers. Try it out yourself today with a free demo!

Gartner’s Software Advice Names Quiq A FrontRunner for Live Chat

Posted on The Quiq Team

Quiq is proud to announce that it has been named a FrontRunner for Live Chat by Software Advice. To earn an esteemed “FrontRunners” badge, a product must receive top user ratings and achieve high scores in functionality, ease of use, value for money, likelihood to recommend, and customer support.

The FrontRunners quadrant, powered by Gartner Methodology, provides a data-driven assessment of products in a particular software category. Published user reviews, public data sources, and data from technology vendors are used to determine which products offer the best in usability and customer satisfaction. Only products that earn top user ratings make the cut as FrontRunners.

Software Advice chart for FrontRunners of live chat

Why Quiq Ranks High For Usability

The usability score is evenly weighted on two fronts: functionality, and ease of use. Quiq strives to make customer engagement between consumers and businesses easy and convenient, so usability is always a top priority.

Here are a few ways for companies to realize immediate value with Quiq’s live chat:

  • Easy setup – We set our customers up for success right from the start by making implementation fast and friction-free.
  • Pre-built integrations – We built seamless Salesforce, Oracle Service Cloud, Zendesk, Kustomer integrations, as well as promote an “API First” strategy, allowing Quiq to work in harmony with your existing systems.
  • Intuitive design – The agent desktop is straightforward and easy to use, which makes training employees a “non-issue”.
  • Informative dashboard – Managers have full visibility to reports and dashboards to display important agent, queue, and performance metrics.

There are plenty more features that make Quiq’s live chat solution a highly functional, easy solution for live chat. Learn more by heading over to our Quiq web chat page.

“Easy install process, great customer service from the Quiq staff,”

– Rachell M. Higher Education

Why Quiq Ranks High For Customer Satisfaction

The Customer Satisfaction score uses ratings on value for money, likelihood to recommend, and customer support. As a customer-centric organization, our entire team is dedicated to providing value to our clients throughout our partnership..

Our commitment to customer service means that we’re monitoring and responding to customer needs 24/7. With Quiq, you have a team of Account Representatives, Customer Success Managers, and Developers committed to your success.

Quiq is dedicated to giving our clients the most effective, easy-to-use tools for delivering jaw-dropping customer experiences. The acknowledgment from Software Advice is proof that the entire Quiq team is passionate about helping the company achieve that goal.

“Quiq is very receptive to feature requests and they work with you to make sure that you and your team are satisfied!”

– Heather M. Consumer Goods

See a Demo Today

Rich Messaging: Make Online Shopping A Conversation

Posted on The Quiq Team

The term doesn’t refer to communication reserved solely for the elite, but rich messaging does rank highly among the most effective ways to engage customers today. Rich messaging (or Rich Communication Services or RCS) adds personalization, branding, and interactivity to 2-way messaging conversations , which even in its current SMS form, has very high open rates. Let’s cover the uses and benefits of rich messaging and how this service can enhance the customer experience as a whole.

What Is RCS Messaging?

Rich Communication Services messaging is a new way to exchange a text with added functionality. Consider RCS an upgrade to the simple plain-text format that SMS consisted of during the early years of mobile messaging when 160 characters was the limit.

With RCS, it’s possible to:

  • Attach large files and interactive media such as images, videos, digital promotions, and sign-ups
  • Shop and place orders
  • Schedule appointments
  • Complete secure transactions
  • Include option menus, response suggestions, or next steps
  • Leverage device components like a mobile camera to capture augmented reality, or GPS to display store location on a map

It’s expected that RCS will likely surpass SMS in time as the main protocol for messaging services. Right now, the use of rich messaging has risen dramatically in the digital marketplace, particularly in retail, consumer goods, and consumer services.

The two primary providers of these rich communication services are Apple and Google with Apple Business Chat and Google Messages. Businesses getting started will need to work with a Customer Service Platform like Quiq to enable using these communication services with their customers.

How Rich Messaging Drives Conversions

The biggest benefit of RCS for businesses is the ability to send more sophisticated texts for better branding and customer service. The numerous features of RCS give the digital customer experience a personal touch. The organization or the platform itself provides the methods to fine-tune the message for each recipient, and even account for customer data like the customers location or

Additional benefits of rich messaging services include:

  • Convenient product displays: Send carousel galleries or expandable pages for customers to scroll through
  • Direct assistance: Convert questions or complaints into actionable solutions in one conversation
  • Fast, personalized answers: Whether through a chatbot or live agent, customer requests are fulfilled without navigating out of the messaging window
  • Skip directly to the bottom of the buyer funnel: Provide sufficient information to make a sale without customers dialing a number or visiting a store

Improved Satisfaction With Faster Service and Richer Communication

Today, customer satisfaction hinges on timely, accurate, and useful information. RCS is beneficial for times when the full picture matters in the final purchasing decision — like the appearance of home decor — or when busy customer schedules make speedy applications or appointments a necessity.

Altogether, implementing rich messaging makes it more convenient for both businesses and consumers to exchange information. With the ability for businesses to respond in these more modern ways, they are then able to be faster and more tailored in their communications, and these richer experiences make it easy for customers to complete transactions and want to come back for more.

Deploy Rich Messaging in Your B2C Engagement With Quiq

Quiq makes enabling rich messaging as easy as sending a text message as it recognizes and sends the richest form of message possible, whether RCS or SMS, based upon device capabilities. To see the potential for yourself, schedule a live demo today.

See a Demo Today

Destination CRM: Quiq Launches Quiq IQ for Designing and Deploying Bots

Posted on The Quiq Team

Quiq is on a mission to transform customer conversations. First, we made it easier for companies to engage with customers over the digital channels they prefer, like SMS/text, web chat, and social. Now, we’re making it possible to automate those conversations and streamline your workflow with the help of bots and conversation rules.

We’re excited to announce a new product to our lineup called Quiq IQ, a complete solution to build, manage and optimize chatbots for your business. In short, Quiq IQ is the no-code, intuitive answer to building and deploy bots in your business. Whether you build a Quiq bot or use a third-party bot, Quiq IQ supports humans, Quiq bots, and third-party bots working seamlessly together.

Easily orchestrate automated conversations involving both bots and humans across every digital channel. Let’s take a closer look at Quiq IQ and how easily you can deploy bots into your business.

Quiqsilver bot

Building Bots

Building a chatbot has never been easier with our intuitive bot designer. Our point-and-click interface helps you visualize and build your ideal conversation flow.

Your customers can engage with a bot to efficiently place an order, quickly get a order status update, or even gather more information on a product. There are plenty of options. With Quiq IQ, you can effortlessly map out intent, using a few keywords to determine the customer’s motive and make it easy to get to a human agent whenever the customer wants.

Made some changes and want to undo those changes? Hey, we’ve all been there. That’s why we made a bot designer with versioning, so you can revert to whatever saved version of your bot you want to work with. You can work fearlessly within our bot designer to create a basic workflow and build on it as necessary. Read more about versioning in our the Quiq Knowledge Center.

Every bot you create works across all of Quiq’s supported platforms. Build your bot once and run it on SMS/text messaging, rich messaging channels like Apple Business Chat and Google RBM, web chat, and social media channels like Facebook and Twitter. Get the full Bot Designer Guide in our Knowledge Center.

Integrating Bots

The Quiq Bot API is a simple way to make conversations flow seamlessly between humans, Quiq bots, and third-party bots. Quiq’s bot framework facilitates syncing and relaying data between bots and applications.

Quiq IQ enables you to use the right tools at the right time. Quiq’s bot framework allows for integration to third-party systems. Use webhooks to communicate with external systems, trigger other messages, or other bot behaviors.

call webhook

Conversation Rules

With Quiq IQ, you can build rule sets that can be fired on any conversation event (e.g. start or end a conversation, assign the conversation to another agent or bot, or start a new message). Conversation rules make it possible to orchestrate a seamless experience for your customer throughout the conversation.

Without using code, you can build rules that control when a conversation gets escalated to a human agent or higher tier of support. For example, if the last customer message in a conversation contains the keywords “angry” or “frustrated”, you could create a conversation rule around that condition and add an action to send an auto-response such as “We’re sorry that we’re not meeting your expectations. Let me get you to a human”, and then send the conversation to a human agent for more assistance by routing the conversation to an escalation queue.

how may we help you message from chat bot

Deploy Chatbots today

Clients like Stio and Brinks Home Security have realized major gains in productivity across their digital customer service channels. With the help of Quiq IQ, these clients and many others have quickly deployed bots within their companies to deflect calls, assist human agents, and expedite conversations to resolution.

Quiq IQ is a bot builder unlike any other on the market today:

  • The Quiq bot designer helps anyone create a bot. An intuitive, graphical designer makes creating a bot workflow a breeze.
  • Messages are automatically transformed to the richest form possible for every channel, so bot developers don’t need to worry about channel capabilities
  • Quiq Bots and third-party bots work seamlessly with agents, participating before, during, or after any conversation.
  • Agents can invite a bot to join a conversation to capture information at any time during the conversation and the bot will pass it back when done.

We’re ready to help you deploy your ideal bot strategy. Schedule some time so we can help you most effectively deploy bots across your organization.

See a Demo Today

National Association of Convenience Stores: Retailers Tackle Mobile Shopping

Posted on The Quiq Team

Quiq is on a mission to transform customer conversations. First we made it easier for companies to engage with customers over the digital channels they prefer, like SMS/text, web chat, and social. Now, we’re making it possible to automate those conversations and streamline your workflow with the help of bots and conversation rules.

We’re excited to announce a new product to our lineup called Quiq IQ, a complete solution to build, manage and optimize chatbots for your business. In short, Quiq IQ is the no-code, intuitive answer to build and deploy bots in your business. Whether you build a Quiq bot or use a third-party bot, Quiq IQ supports humans, Quiq bots, and third-party bots working seamlessly together.

Easily orchestrate automated conversations involving both bots and humans across every digital channel. Let’s take a closer look at Quiq IQ and how easily you can deploy bots into your business.

Building Bots

Building a chatbot has never been easier with our intuitive bot designer. Our point and click interface helps you visualize and build your ideal conversation flow.

Your customers can engage with a bot to efficiently place an order, quickly get a order status update, or even gather more information on a product. There’s plenty of options. With Quiq IQ, you can effortlessly map out intent, using a few key words to determine the customers motive and make it easy to get to a human agent whenever the customer wants.

Made some changes and want to undo those changes? Hey, we’ve all been there. That’s why we made a bot designer with versioning, so you can revert to whatever saved version of your bot you want to work with. You can work fearlessly within our bot designer to create a basic workflow and build on it as necessary. Read more about versioning in our the Quiq Knowledge Center.

Every bot you create works across all of Quiq’s supported platforms. Build your bot once and run it on SMS/text messaging, rich messaging channels like Apple Business Chat and Google RBM, web chat, and social media channels like Facebook and Twitter. Get the full Bot Designer Guide in our Knowledge Center.

Integrating Bots

The Quiq Bot API is a simple way to make conversations flow seamlessly between humans, Quiq bots, and third-party bots. Quiq’s bot framework facilitates syncing and relaying data between bots and applications.

Quiq IQ enables you to use the right tools at the right time. Quiq’s bot framework allows for integration to third-party systems. Use webhooks to communicate with external systems, trigger other messages, or other bot behaviors.

Conversation Rules

With Quiq IQ, you can build rule sets that can be fired on any conversation event (e.g. start or end a conversation, assign the conversation to another agent or bot, or start a new message). Conversation rules make it possible to orchestrate a seamless experience for your customer throughout the conversation.

Without using code, you can build rules that control when a conversation gets escalated to a human agent or higher tier of support. For example, if the last customer message in a conversation contains the keywords “angry” or “frustrated”, you could create a conversation rule around that condition and add an action to send an auto-response such as “We’re sorry that we’re not meeting your expectations. Let me get you to a human”, and then send the conversation to a human agent for more assistance by routing the conversation to an escalation queue.

Deploy Chatbots today

Clients like Stio and Brinks Home Security have realized major gains in productivity across their digital customer service channels. With the help of Quiq IQ, these clients and many others have quickly deployed bots within their companies to deflect calls, assist human agents, and expedite conversations to resolution.

Quiq IQ is a bot builder unlike any other on the market today:

  • The Quiq bot designer helps anyone create a bot. An intuitive, graphical designer makes creating a bot workflow a breeze.
  • Messages are automatically transformed to the richest form possible for every channel, so bot developers don’t need to worry about channel capabilities
  • Quiq Bots and third-party bots work seamlessly with agents, participating before, during, or after any conversation.
  • Agents can invite a bot to join a conversation to capture information at any time during the conversation and the bot will pass it back when done.

We’re ready to help you deploy your ideal bot strategy. Schedule some time so we can help you most effectively deploy bots across your organization.

See a Demo Today

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