This year is pivotal for companies to define themselves by, and for, the customer. The race is on to adopt technology that will enable companies to connect and engage with customers with the kind of convenience and ease they expect in all aspects of their lives.
While emerging technology like AI and bots compete for attention, customer service leaders shouldn’t take their eyes off the one thing the majority of smartphone-carrying people most commonly use their device for – text messaging. SMS/text messaging is the most preferred communication channel for the majority of consumers.
Adapting to the Customer
In a recent article, Shep Hyken, customer service and experience expert, speaker, and bestselling author, digs deeper with his recent Forbes article, “Getting Customer Support From Companies Will Be Easier In 2018”. The article states, 94 percent of Americans own a mobile phone, and 86 percent of them send 23 billion messages daily.
As the article suggests, companies have already started to adopt text messaging, making it easier for customers to avoid the usual roadblocks to finding and receiving support in a way that is convenient for them. While these companies are outpacing the competition by readily adopting this channel, many other organizations aren’t keeping pace.
Win-Win
Messaging allows customers to effortlessly connect with companies at any point in their journey via their preferred channel. That’s a huge win for consumers and leaps and bounds away from yesterday’s customer service experience when customers would have to interrupt their day to make a call, only to be placed on hold. Or worse, email and wait for hours or days to hopefully receive a response. While messaging is a major move to customer-centricity and more effortless engagement for the consumer, companies also realize big wins. Quiq clients who have adopted messaging for example have been able to reduce agent work time by 25% – 40% and have increased customer satisfaction scores by an average of 8 percentage points.
Messaging allows agents to handle multiple requests at a time. With Quiq Messaging, agents can handle service requests via mobile, chat, and social all within one intuitive interface. The asynchronous nature of messaging allows agents to manage multiple, simultaneous text messaging conversations at once, unlike emails and phone calls. In fact, Quiq’s messaging clients are handling an average of 7 conversations at a time
What’s Ahead
Business messaging provides customers with a natural way to connect. Technology, such as WhatsApp and Apple Business Chat, will prove to be driving forces behind many companies meeting customers where they already are – on their mobile phones. The emergence of these platforms is one of the reasons Mike Myer, Quiq CEO believes “messaging will become an imperative for companies to adopt messaging in 2018.”
Read the full Forbes article to learn more about how messaging will make customer service easier this year as well as Shep’s advice on using bots. If you’re ready to make customer service easier in your organization we’d love to show you a demo. Fill out this short form to get started.
Quiq makes it easy for customers to contact a business via Messaging, the preferred channel already in use with our friends and family. With Quiq, customers can now engage with companies via SMS/text messaging, Facebook Messenger, Web Chat, In-App,and Kik for help with their pre-sales and post-sales questions. Learn more about Quiq today at quiq.com.
