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Delve into research, how-tos, trends, and tips on all things messaging.
Category: News
Retailers See 42% Of Online Sales From Mobile Devices
What Will 2020 Bring for AI?
Podcast: Is Messaging the Next Brand Channel?
Today’s digital and mobile environment is driving customer preferences to quickly evolve and affect how consumers choose to engage with brands. The capabilities of messaging are rapidly advancing to give brands more ways to have rich and meaningful conversations with their customers.
Quiq’s CEO, Mike Myer, is featured on this Heard on the Street podcast episode of StreetFight with Mike Boland. Listen in and hear them discuss how they are seeing brands adopt and use messaging, as well as why messaging becoming the primary channel of communication for brands may be closer than it seems.
LISTEN TO THIS INFORMATIVE PODCAST
Apple Business Chat Gains Popularity in Contact Centers
Learn how Brinks Home Security’s contact center is taking advantage of rich messaging with Apple Business Chat to set themselves apart and to set the standard for customer experience in their industry. The latest iOS update streamlines access for Apple Business Chat from any clickable phone number. Learn why business messaging is gaining popularity in the contact center space.
Read this TechTarget article:
Apple contact center chat adds rich media, improved UX
Apple iOS Feature Chat Suggest Brings Messaging to Google Search
Brinks Home Security speaks about their decision to use Chat Suggest, a game-changing new iOS13 Apple Business Chat feature. Chat Suggest makes it even easier for consumers to message with businesses directly by providing the option to ‘Message’ after clicking the business phone number from within Google Search results.
Read more about how this new feature is changing the way businesses and consumer engage and how Brinks is leading the way in digital customer engagement.
Read this MediaPost article:
Brinks Taps Apple iOS Chat Feature On Google Search
Podcast: How Asynchronous Messaging Is Disrupting Customer Communications
“It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when.”
Customer communications are changing and moving beyond traditional phone and email channels to an asynchronous messaging channel. In listening to this conversation, the future of the contact center is clear: “You can either be an early adopter or a follower.”
Quiq’s CEO, Mike Myer, is featured on this Execs in the Know podcast episode of Customer Driven with Chad McDaniel. Listen in and hear them discuss the following:
– Shift in preference of consumer adoption within self-service channels
– Which industries are successfully adopting these technologies
– Complex transactions and messaging channels
– Is it better to be an early adopter?
LISTEN TO THIS INFORMATIVE PODCAST
How Asynchronous Messaging Is Disrupting Customer Communications
New Apple iOS 13 Feature: Silence Unknown Callers
New iOS 13 Feature
Announced in June and being released in early September, iOS 13 is Apple’s next operating system for iPhones and iPads. Features include a Dark Mode, a Find My app, a revamped Photos app, new Siri voice, updated privacy features, new street-level view for Maps, and more.
While there are dozens of new capabilities in iOS 13, there are a couple new features that we find particularly notable and think you will too. The first is a great new addition that will continue to change how consumers and their favorite brands connect. This new feature builds on Apple Business Chat, released in December 2018, and is called Chat Suggest. The second is a new toggle button in Settings called “Silence Unknown Calls” that promises to make millions of iPhone users much happier, but may put your business even further than a phone call away.
Imagine you are enjoying family dinner on the one night you can get everyone around the table at the same time. Of course phones are not allowed at the table, but they are definitely laying on nearby countertops. All of a sudden, one starts vibrating and everyone pretends to ignore it while sneaking a look to see who’s phone is shimmying across the counter. At that point, someone inevitably gets up from the table to check their phone only to find it to be an unknown caller or unrecognized number. The call goes unanswered because we simply don’t answer calls from numbers we don’t know anymore.
Let’s be clear, no one actually wants to answer their phone in this day and age. Privacy-conscious Apple is just helping people do what they want – avoid calls from people they don’t know. Tucked away into the iOS13 release is a wonderful, new, little setting. Apple has come to our rescue by creating a setting to silence calls from unknown contacts. These calls will go directly to voicemail. This means you will need to find some more dinner table topics.
With iOS 13, your iPhone won’t ring if the incoming phone number is not known. Nuisance SPAM calls drive us crazy every day and with the iOS 13, Apple wants to fix the issue with the help of Siri, which will scan your Contacts, Mail, and Messages to see if you’ve previously been in contact with the caller. If you have, it will ring through. If not, it will go straight to voice mail.
While this is music to the ears of consumers, this could have a real impact on businesses that have legitimate reasons to call to reach people. For companies making outbound calls, their already low connect rate will plummet. It isn’t all gloom and doom. If your business has a mobile phone number, you can message someone instead. To comply with privacy laws and the TCPA, businesses need to have permission to text a number, but they also needed permission to call. With messaging, people open and read 96% of all text messages. With Quiq, those messages can be two-way. What does that mean? It means you can send a notification that a payment is due or something is ready to be picked up and the recipient can reply back to you. This can be the start of a conversation that leads to more business and better customer satisfaction, and believe it or not, many messaging platforms can’t do this.
Leave the phone behind and connect via messaging
It’s been getting harder and harder to talk live to people on their phones, especially if you are not a family member or friend. Apple’s Silence Unknown Callers feature makes this even more difficult for all iPhone users. Instead of fighting this tidal wave, it is time to consider a better way to connect. Messaging is, without a doubt, the best way for businesses to engage with consumers. Messages get read. Messages get a response. Messages cost less than phone calls. Why wait? Make your life easier and your business more success. Get messaging.
As an authorized Apple Customer Service Provider, Quiq helps brands present their customers with consistently jaw-dropping customer experiences across SMS/text messaging, Apple Business Chat, 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, go to www.quiq.com.
Quiq Series B Announcement Gets Wide Media Coverage
The announcement of Quiq’s Series B funding round has been picked up my multiple news outlets as an exciting continuation of the companies pursuit of being at the forefront of consumer communications across digital engagement channels. Quiq has set itself apart and this news is a clear indication of the confidence and strategic positioning the company has garnered in contact centers and enabling enterprise customer communications. In raising $12.5 million in a series B round of funding led by Foundry Group, with participation from Teamworthy Ventures, Venrock, and Next Frontier Capital, the company plans to build out its platform to “make it smarter” through AI and bots that “deliver the next generation of conversational commerce.”
Be sure to check out the articles below to see how the market has picked up this exciting news. If you want to learn more about how Quiq is making it easy for businesses to better connect with their customers in more of the ways they prefer, be sure to reach out and we’d gladly show you how the product is transforming customer engagement.
Quiq raises $12.5 million to bring bots and messaging to customer service
Quiq Raises $12.5 MN; To Be Used for Expansion of Its Conversational Engagement Platform
Quiq Raises $12.5 Million to Transform the Way Companies Engage with Customers
Quiq Raises $12.5 Million to Transform the Way Companies Engage with Customers
Messaging Platform Quiq Notches $12.5M For AI Build-Out
Quiq Raises $12.5 Million to Transform the Way Companies Engage with Customers
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Quiq Raises $12.5M in Series B Funding
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The Weekly Notable Startup Funding Report: 7/29/19
Quiq $12.55 million Financing. Michael A Myer Released Jul 29 Form D
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Quiq Gets Funded for Bots, Messaging for Future of Work. Exclusive Interview
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Press Release: Quiq Raises $12.5 Million In Series B Funding Round
Quiq Raises $12.5 Million to Transform the Way Companies Engage with Customers
Bozeman, MT – July 25 2019– Quiq, a conversational engagement platform and business messaging solutions provider, announces that it has closed a $12.5 million Series B funding round, led by Foundry Group, with participation from Teamworthy Ventures and existing investors Venrock and Next Frontier Capital. Quiq works with over 120 clients including major brands like Overstock, Pier 1, Office Depot, and Men’s Wearhouse to power digital commerce and service conversations.
“This investment validates our vision that digital engagement channels, like messaging and chat, are the future of consumer communications and that asynchronous messaging will be the foundation of the next generation enterprise contact center,” said Mike Myer, founder and CEO of Quiq. “Quiq is the only open platform that seamlessly combines human agents, native bots, and third-party bots across multiple digital channels. Quiq’s clients are seeing ROI of 5X or more, while simultaneously achieving improved customer satisfaction.”
Quiq is the only open platform that seamlessly combines human agents, native bots, and third-party bots across multiple digital channels. Quiq’s clients are seeing ROI of 5X or more, while simultaneously achieving improved customer satisfaction.
The company will use the funding to continue to build out Quiq’s industry-leading engagement platform and to make it smarter with bots & AI to deliver the next generation of conversational commerce, including the first messaging-based shopping cart. Quiq will also continue to build its go-to-market team in advance of the upcoming digital transformation of customer communications.
“Customer experience teams are evolving their tools and processes to an asynchronous messaging first approach – the preferred way that consumers want to communicate.” said Chris Moody, Partner, Foundry Group. “Quiq is a product-driven company that has a deep knowledge of customer experience, unsurpassed vision, and has demonstrated tremendous progress in enterprise customer adoption.”
Quiq’s customer engagement platform powers commerce and service conversations between consumers and companies using human agents and bots. Because it is fully asynchronous, customers own the cadence of the conversation, starting, pausing, and stopping the conversations on their terms-unlike the experience with traditional phone and email channels. Messaging has a near-perfect open rate and brands are taking advantage of rich messaging to present dynamic and interactive content, process secure payment transactions, set up appointments, and share augmented reality.
About Quiq
Quiq helps brands present their customers with consistently jaw-dropping customer experiences across SMS/text messaging, rich 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, go to quiq.com.
MarTech Interview with Mike Myer, Founder and CEO at Quiq
MarTechSeries has featured Quiq’s founder and CEO, Mike Myer, in this insightful Q&A conversation as part of their MarTech’s Interview Series. In this fun Q&A style chat, Mike discusses his progression as a technology leader to the founding of Quiq where he identified “a huge gap between the way consumers could communicate with companies and how they communicate with family and friends.”
For businesses considering messaging as a part of their mobile marketing technology stack, Mike outlines several use cases across a variety of industries that demonstrate how Quiq is used from pre- to post-sales and support, truly revolutionizing the way in which customers and businesses engage and build relationships.
Read the full interview on MarTechSeries and get inspired as Mike tells his story and his vision for the future of customer engagement. If you want to know how he’s been so successful, one-word, ‘Persistence!’
Quiq Named one of 2019’s Best Tech Startups in Bozeman
For the second year in a row, Quiq has been featured as one of the best tech startups in Bozeman. The Tech Tribune started the series with the mission to “recognize and honor the most exemplary young companies all across the country, companies that too often do not get a well-deserved turn in the spotlight.” The full list for Bozmena, MT can be viewed on The Tech Tribunes site, 2019 Best Tech Startups in Bozeman.
The Tech Tribune considered the following factors when choosing companies, including but not limited to:
- Revenue potential
- Leadership team
- Brand/product traction
- Competitive landscape
Additionally, all companies must be independent (un-acquired), privately owned, at most 10 years old, and have received at least one round of funding in order to qualify.
About the Tech Tribune
The Tech Tribune delivers the latest technology news, in-depth technology articles, and insights on the hottest technology startups all over the world.
About Quiq
Quiq makes it possible for any company to deliver a world-class customer experience using business text messaging. Quiq’s messaging platform enables companies to use their existing landlines to send and receive messages to their customers via SMS/text messaging, live chat, social platforms, and in their own app.
Brinks Home Security Customer Success Video
Brinks has been using messaging for almost 2 years now. In that time, the company has improved agent efficiency by automating routine interactions, realized double-digit increases in customer satisfaction, and experienced more engaged customers.
Watch this short video to peek under the hood at Brinks Home Security. Learn the many ways the company is using Quiq messaging and how this channel is making an impact throughout the organization.
Brinks Home Security Makes Headlines with Messaging
ZDnet’s recent coverage of Brinks Home Security “Home security firm moves one in 10 customer service calls to Quiq mobile chat channel” highlights the company’s customer-centric motivation that drove the adoption of messaging for home security. The article states that Brinks “wanted to use a communications channel that would be chosen by its million customers to connect with the brand.” And connect they did. The article reports that Brinks has seen at least 1 in 10 of their customers switch from making phones calls to using messaging.
Brinks realized that their customers needed more convenient options to engage with their brand. It wasn’t hard to see messaging as the channel that could provide that and more.
Texting offers immediacy and convenience, highly desirable traits when it comes to engaging with the provider of your security and home automation system. But the requests that Brinks receives over messaging aren’t just the urgent kind. The company also receives messages from customers who need help troubleshooting a major issue or to just replacing batteries in their hardware.
When asked what motivated the company to look to messaging as an engagement channel, the company’s response clearly captured their commitment to delivering a superior customer experience with leadership stating “…We wanted to provide a channel that put the format back in the customer’s control.”
The switch is paying off in a number of ways. The article quotes Chief Customer Office at Brinks, Jay Autrey as saying “By adding the messaging channel, we have seen a double-digit improvement in customer satisfaction, improved agent effectiveness, improvements to the bottom line, and a more engaged customer experience.”
Brinks and ZDnet aren’t the only ones who predict more consumers and companies will prefer to engage with brands via messaging. Other industries such as education and financial services are rapidly adopting messaging to connect with their customers as well.
Business Text Messaging for Credit Unions Covered in CUTimes
The Credit Union Times recently featured Quiq in their article “Ensuring Members Get the (Text) Message” crystallizing the need for text messaging adoption among credit unions. Across a variety of departments and use cases, credit unions are successfully engaging members for lending, collections/delinquencies, and marketing purposes.
Providing members with an easier, more convenient way to comply with requests from their credit unions has led to higher response rates. For example, Community First Credit Union has realized text messaging adoption rates among members as high as 94% while increasing the response rate of applicants by as much as 130%.
How Text Messaging Benefits Credit Unions & Applicants
Adoption of text messaging among credit unions is a testament to the cooperative spirit and shows an institution’s commitment to its member’s interests and overall experience. It’s also not bad for business.
Many credit unions adopt messaging to expedite some of the typical tasks within the loan process that tend to slow an application down, especially when communicating through channels like email, phone, and voicemails, including:
- Requesting a picture of a pay stub for income verification
- Signing disclosures and ancillary docs that loan officers can send to members for digital signatures
- Sending applicants reminders with outstanding tasks
- Discussing the next steps
While business text messaging for some industries, like retail, have already reached a point where it’s required, business text messaging for credit unions is still gaining momentum. The article presents some of the institutions that have found success with business text messaging like Community First Credit Union in Jacksonville, FL and Meridian Trust Federal Credit Union in Cheyenne, Wy. These credit unions have joined the growing list of financial institutions that use Quiq to provide their members with fast, convenient, two-way business messaging services.
Read the full article on CUTimes to learn more about business text messaging for credit unions. If your credit union is looking for a way to streamline the application process, while improving your member’s digital experience, contact Quiq to request a demo or try it yourself.
Press Release: Quiq Receives SOC 2 Type I Attestation
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Quiq Receives SOC 2 Type I Attestation
Independent Audit Verifies Quiq’s Internal Controls and Processes
Bozeman, MT – April 2019– Quiq, a customer engagement platform and business SMS text messaging solutions provider, today announced that it has completed its SOC 2 Type I audit. This attestation provides evidence that Quiq has a strong commitment to delivering high-quality services to its clients by demonstrating the necessary internal controls and processes.
SOC 2 engagements are based on the AICPA’s Trust Services Criteria. SOC 2 audit reports focus on a service organization’s non-financial reporting controls as they relate to the security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy of a system. KirkpatrickPrice’s audit report verifies the suitability of the design of Quiq’s controls to meet the standards for these criteria.
“The SOC 2 audit is based on the Trust Services Criteria. Quiq has selected the security, availability, confidentiality, and privacy categories for the basis of their audit,” said Joseph Kirkpatrick, President of KirkpatrickPrice. “Quiq delivers trust-based services to their clients, and by communicating the results of this audit, their clients can be assured of their reliance on Quiq’s controls.”
About Quiq
Quiq makes it possible for any company to deliver a world-class customer experience using business text messaging. Quiq’s messaging platform enables companies to use their existing landlines to send and receive messages to their customers via SMS/text messaging, live chat, social platforms, and in their own app.
About KirkpatrickPrice
KirkpatrickPrice is a licensed CPA firm, PCI QSA, and a HITRUST CSF Assessor, registered with the PCAOB, providing assurance services to over 800 clients in more than 48 states, Canada, Asia, and Europe. The firm has more than a decade of experience in information security and compliance assurance by performing assessments, audits, and tests that strengthen information security and internal controls. KirkpatrickPrice most commonly provides advice on SOC 1, SOC 2, PCI DSS, HIPAA, HITRUST CSF, GDPR, ISO 27001, FISMA, and CFPB frameworks. For more information, visit www.kirkpatrickprice.com, follow KirkpatrickPrice on Twitter (@KPAudit), or connect with KirkpatrickPrice on LinkedIn.
Quiq Announces Three Brands on Apple Business Chat
BOZEMAN, MT, October 17, 2018 — Today Quiq, a leading provider of business messaging software for customer communications announces that three of its retail clients, Overstock.com, Jos A. Bank, and Men’s Wearhouse are live on Apple Business Chat. Quiq is one of the early Customer Service Platforms (CSP) to support Business Chat, a new way for customers to communicate directly with businesses using the Messages app on iPhones and iPads.
A Customer-Centric Partnership
Quiq is excited to recognize Overstock, Jos A. Bank, and Men’s Wearhouse for leading the retail industry by using Apple Business Chat as a customer experience differentiator. Apple Business Chat makes it easy for consumers to initiate a conversation with a company when searching for a business on their mobile device. Business Chat allows users to ask a question about a product or service, schedule deliveries or appointments, or make a purchase using Apple Pay.
“Overstock is continually looking for ways to use technology to help our customers have the most convenient shopping experience,” Jimmy Budnik, Vice President of Customer Care at Overstock.com. “Utilizing Apple Business Chat via Quiq helps us deliver a unique benefit to the customer journey, providing more ways for our customers to contact us and resolve any problem they may have.”
“Our top priority is to provide an amazing customer experience to shoppers. We are excited to support Apple Business Chat through the Quiq Messaging platform. Our agents easily handle multiple messaging channels, including Business Chat in Quiq’s cross channel UI,” said Melissa Porter, Vice President, Customer Relations. “Apple Business Chat enhances conversations with customers and we expect it to become the preferred customer service channel.”
The Quiq Messaging platform enables brands to connect with customers via Apple Business Chat and other popular messaging services, as well as live chat. When consumers message a business using Apple Business Chat, the Quiq Messaging platform routes their inquiries to agents to quickly answer questions, schedule an appointment, or help them make a purchase with Apple Pay. Agents are presented with unified, multi-channel workspace to easily handle consumer conversations.
“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, secure, and easy. Apple Business Chat is a new channel in Quiq’s multi-channel business messaging platform, allowing agents to seamlessly interact with customers across many messaging channels.”
Quiq’s multi-channel messaging platform provides organizations a robust set of features including routing and queuing rules, service level prioritization to ensure that conversations are responded to within their expectations, and a rich management interface that includes observation, collaboration, and performance metrics. Quiq seamlessly integrates into Oracle, Salesforce, and Zendesk, as well as other internal systems through easy-to-use API’s so that agents have access to customer data during messaging conversations.
For more information on how Quiq Messaging is helping Apple Business Chat work for top brands, please visit https://quiq.com/apple-business-chat/.
About Quiq
Quiq makes it easy and convenient for customers to contact a business via messaging, the preferred channel already in use with friends and family. In return, companies get a unified, multi-channel platform to communicate with customers. Quiq integrates seamlessly with Salesforce, Oracle, Zendesk, and other internal systems. Learn more about Quiq today at quiq.com.
Creditunions.com: 7 Strategies to Support Self-Service
Loan processing velocity, abandonment reduction and expired application rescues; collection prompts including repayment and delinquency; and contact center enhancement are areas text messaging helps credit unions spur member activity and interaction.
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