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Tag: text messaging

Business Text Messaging for Credit Unions Covered in CUTimes

Posted on Lauren Winder

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.

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Texas A&M Graduates from Emails and Auto-Dialers to the Messaging Channel

Posted on Mike Zinne

Texas A&M, a public university located in College Station, Texas, has been providing students with quality education since opening its doors in 1876 as the state’s first public institution for higher education. Today, the school is home to over 68,000 students that benefit from its ability to drive innovation on campus.

But innovation isn’t just happening in classrooms and labs, it’s also evident in the way the school communicates with students. Emails had been the official way Texas A&M shared information with students. Realizing that students weren’t reading their emails, the school looked for alternative ways to reach their students beyond the email, phone calls, and auto-dialer they typically employed. A pilot with Quiq to test text messaging students was launched in June and the school isn’t looking back.

“Students are so glad they didn’t have to wait in a phone queue!”

Rachelle McDonald, Director of Customer Service

Successful adoption of messaging at Texas A&M

When asked about Quiq’s implementation and its integration into the schools existing CRM system, Oracle Service Cloud, Texas A&M’s Customer Service Team “didn’t remember even one problem or issue.” Now the school’s call center, which is staffed by 8 student workers, can handle both inbound and outbound texts from new and existing students.

“The student workers love using text messaging,” states Peggy Carey, Director of Student Business Services. The ability to add emojis makes conversations more personal and staff has found this channel to be much faster than phone calls.

The new channel has also been well received by students who appreciate not having to wait in a phone queue with questions. Students are pleasantly surprised that when they text in, staff can see their profile and past interaction history for more information.

Messaging use cases at Texas A&M

So far, university staff has seen an increase in response rates to some of the most common, but critical communications with students, such as reminding students to choose between locked and variable tuition rates or alerting students when they are at risk of being dropped from classes due to non-payment. Messaging conversations, which are usually resolved in 5 messages back and forth, has proven to be a fast and effective way to engage students, especially during busy times of the year.

Other successful examples of messaging at Texas A&M include:

  • When students are missing a photo for their required ID, the school sends an outbound message with a link where students can submit their photo. With messaging, the school has seen a 14% increase in the number of students who click on the message and comply.
  • Students are encouraged to sign up for direct deposit to receive refunds. This is also communicated through a link sent via text, which opens directly to the appropriate website. Every student that responds to this request saves the university the workload and expense of having to cut a check for disbursements, which costs about $3 per check.
  • When a student leaves the university with an unpaid balance, collections can send a message that complies with the Fair Debt Collection Practice Act instead of calling, seeing a much higher response rate.
  • New students are offered the option of locked or variable tuition when they enroll, allowing them to align their choice to their education plans.

So What’s Next?

The university has seen a lot of students respond to messaging, but they believe there’s more room to grow. Texas A&M admits to taking things slowly with messaging at first, having initially promoted messaging through outbound texts only. Within two months the school added a “Text SBS” button to their website, so students could text directly from there. Now, the university is ready to push the channel further by promoting the “text us” feature on other mediums and expand on the success they’ve seen. For example, Student Business Services plans to promote the option to text on the emailed billing statements. They also plan to present students with the option to send a text message instead of waiting on hold in their IVR.

Along with added promotional efforts, Texas A&M plans to increase communications over the messaging channel, to both broad and targeted audiences. This summer, when online photo submission becomes a requirement for students, the school will push the message via text to all students. Targeted efforts include informing graduating students when their diploma will be held due to non-payment and notifying students to sign up for direct deposit to receive Title IV student aid funds that have been returned.

Texas A&M continues to push innovation past the walls of the classroom to deliver excellence beyond the athletic fields by offering messaging as a way to better engage with students. The school has realized great success in communicating time-sensitive information to new and existing students and doesn’t plan on looking back.

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6 Reasons to Use Business Text Messaging

Posted on Max Fortis

It’s no secret that texting is the preferred channel of communication for most consumers. The ease and convenience of text messaging aren’t lost on any generation. While volume and velocity may differ from the Millennials and Gen Z populations versus Baby Boomers, most would agree that text is best.

Popularity and ubiquitousness aside, there are other reasons that a business should use business text messaging to engage with their customers. In this post, we’ll take a look at 6 of the best reasons companies benefit from a business text messaging service.

Business Text Messaging Benefits

1.Customers expect it

In our post “7 Reasons Why Customers Want to Text You,” we dove into the reasons why customers want to text you, and many of these reasons boil down to one thing: customers want to communicate however they want, whenever they want. More than ever, consumers feel empowered by all of the services at their fingertips, and their patience is dwindling for hold music and restrictive hours of operation.

In other words, customers want to be the ones who call the shots. No one wants to jump through hoops to connect with customer service. Though it may lack the presence of a human voice, text messaging is the perfect channel for users who want instant gratification.

The new world language is instantaneous and emoji-rich, so your business better speak it.

2. It’s easy

Yes, texting is easy for your customers. Most consumers usually have a mobile device within arm’s reach 24/7, and sending and receiving texts doesn’t disrupt their day. “But, what about me? How does it make it easier for me?” a lot of business owners and managers ask. Well, grab a seat and get comfy—this could take awhile.

      • Easy to engage

Since messaging is so popular, engaging with your customers happens with less friction.   Whether you’re receiving inbound texts from customers who want to buy something or to book an appointment, or sending outbound messages to customers to inform them of their order status or to remind them of a promotion, information exchanged to and from your customers happens on their preferred channel, which means you can build stronger relationships to fuel brand loyalty and higher revenue.

      • Easy to implement

Quiq’s implementations typically take days, not weeks. Quiq, for example, can be used as a standalone product, but even integrations into CRM platforms like Salesforce.com, Zendesk, and Oracle Service Cloud, can take place with our pre-built integrations, giving employees the ability to send and receive text messages within a company’s existing CRM system.

      • Easy to train

As easy as it is to implement, it’s just as easy, if not more so, to train employees. Since most employees use messaging on a daily basis, the learning curve looks more like a Nebraska plain versus a Denver mountain. Employees, like the customers they engage with, share texts, emojis, and links on a daily basis, so there’s little disruption to day-to-day operations as they’re learning a system.

      • Easy to manage

Many companies worry about staffing the messaging channel and fret about managing another point of contact with their customers. A business text messaging platform, like Quiq, alleviates these concerns. Quiq brings all of the SMS/text messages, as well as messages received on web chat and social media platforms, into one intuitive screen. Employees don’t have to hop from system to system rather, employees handle multiple simultaneous messaging conversations all within the Quiq desktop.

3. It will actually save you time

Business text messaging can make your operations more efficient. Features like pre-built responses and chatbots make collecting data and sharing information easier. Chatbots, for example, can guide every step of the customer journey, from initial contact to final feedback. They can also route users to the appropriate agent.

Pre-built responses, also known as snippets, help employees quickly send canned messages like greetings or answers to frequently asked questions. Snippets are also a great way to share information that may be lengthy and cumbersome to type, like a return policy or details about a promotion.

4. You can do more with what you have

One of the primary uses of business text messaging is the instant access customers can have to customer service resources. Whether they text you off-hours or during holidays, chatbots can point them toward articles that might help to answer their questions. If the problem is beyond the scope of what can be solved through a chatbot suggestion, a support ticket can be opened up using the details from the message or chat.

With customer satisfaction being the aim of any good business, providing a channel for consumers to get in touch with you whenever they like goes a long way in keeping them satisfied. This also means being available on all of their preferred channels, whether it be through Facebook Messenger, a chat button on your website, or through a simple SMS text. Let your customers know that you’ll be there when they need you.

5.Get your messages read

While sending out marketing emails can be like walking the razor’s edge between the spam and promotions folders, text messages are almost always read. In fact, some estimates put SMS read rate at 98%. Email, on the other hand, might get you a measly 10%.

This is not to suggest you start spamming every number in your database Instead, when a customer buys something or subscribes to your service, ask them if they would like to receive updates via text. You can communicate order updates and other notifications via text and they can easily reply back with any questions or feedback.

6. Get feedback, fast

At the conclusion of a sale or after a customer has been trying out your product for a while, a business text message is a great way to get feedback from them. It’s fast, convenient, and less of a hassle than filling out a survey. Simply asking a customer to rate a recent purchase via text is more likely to get a response than an email would since the read rate is so much higher (as noted above).

Business text messaging at its best

Not all text messaging platforms are created equal. Quiq has built the leading asynchronous messaging software, allowing customers to connect with companies across today’s most popular business text messaging channels such as SMS, live chat, Facebook and within their own app. When customers can connect with your business how they want and when they want, they will be more satisfied.

To unlock the potential of text messaging for your business, request a demo today.

5 Ways Rich Messaging for Customer Service Transforms Customer Expectations

Posted on Max Fortis

Remember when using acronyms like LOL, BRB, and BTW were the only way to express yourself on a text message? For a clever few, with a little time on their hands, the use of textual characters morphed into a new form of art to help convey a message. Who knew everyone would use it to communicate visually ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Fast forward a few short years and you’ll find the insurgence of rich messaging has us sharing the kind of rich media we could only dream about back then.

Rich messaging allows companies and customers to exchange hi-res images, videos, gifs, and even complete sales transactions all within a text messaging conversation. Rich messaging, aside from providing a more modern messaging experience, has the power to change the expectations of your customers. In this post, we’ll look at 5 ways rich messaging is transforming customer expectations for customer service.

Rich Messaging Basics

Although we’ve provided a pretty in-depth primer on rich messaging in a previous post, we wanted to remind you of the basics before we dive too deep into how this new way of messaging is changing the way customers are engaging with companies. Here’s what you need to know.

First, rich messaging is a new standard of text messaging that’s already been adopted by Apple and Google, plus a lot of well-known brands like Overstock.com and Brinks Homes Security. Much like SMS, which is the simple text message limited to 160 characters that most people are used to, rich messaging provides customers and companies a way to exchange concise messages over mobile devices. That’s the messaging part. Unlike SMS, rich messaging allows messages over 160 characters, high-resolution images, videos, and a whole suite of other features that make it a better experience than a simple SMS message.

Rich messaging isn’t just about images though. Rich messaging is really about meeting customers’ expectations of convenience. High-resolution images and videos help to convey a message, but that’s only part of the story. The ability to complete transactions within a message or present customers with suggested responses, enabling them to reply to an agent with a tap of a button, adds elements of speed and ease to interactions that consumers expect.

As customer expectations of service continue to increase, rich messaging will help shape their expectations. Here are 5 ways rich messaging for customer service will change customer expectations.

5 Transformative Ways to use Rich for Customer Service

1. Provide responses better and faster than phone and email

There is no doubt that today’s consumer is busier and on-the-go more than customers were even a decade ago. They expect rapid responses and want to communicate one-to-one with businesses – all on their terms. We can thank the digitization of everything from media to services for shaping consumers’ on-demand expectations.

By leveraging rich messaging, businesses can provide their customers with the same type of on-demand support that on-demand products deliver by removing some of the friction around engaging with a company. For example, if a customer searches for a company on their iPhone that has implemented Apple Business Chat, they can immediately start a messaging conversation simply by tapping a “message” icon in the search results. No need to call the company. The customer can simply message what they have to say.

2. Share media that tells a story

Rich messaging isn’t just a pretty face, or GIF rather. The ability to share videos, recordings, hi-res images and yes, even GIFS has been a gamechanger. The ability to share rich media, up to 10MB per message to be exact, makes it easier for agents and customers to help with purchases or troubleshoot issues.

For instance, customers who want to shop around for a new security system can send a picture of their current hardware to see if it’s compatible with the prospective company’s monitoring or if they’ll need to purchase new hardware. This eliminates the need to schedule an appointment for a technician to come to their home to see their current setup, which means less time and hassle for the customer.

3. Allow customers to complete transactions

Rich messaging is all about making the entire experience with your business as convenient as possible for your customers. There are a plethora of use cases and industries where the value is evident, but none so much as retail.

From browsing for a product to buy to completing transactions, rich messaging can help companies support customers through their entire purchase lifecycle. Helping customers navigate a site or find options within a product assortment can easily happen without the customer switching channels.

With rich messaging, customers never have to leave the messaging channel to complete their transaction. Instead of shoppers clicking around to check out, agents can send transaction cards, where customers purchase through a secure cart.

4. Enable customers to make reservations

It’s not just retailers selling tangible goods that can benefit from rich messaging. Services, consulting, travel and hospitality, or any industry where booking an appointment or making a reservation is important should be interested in using rich messaging.

For example, a hotel can a send reservation card to prospective guests allowing them to make an instant booking. The key word being instant. According to Statista, online travel sales are expected to hit a staggering 755.94 billion U.S. dollars in 2019, with mobile travel sales making up 95 billion U.S. dollars.

Going to travel agencies and booking by phone has become a memory only a dwindling few can recall. Travel and hospitality have set the precedence for making reservations. After all, if you can book a houseboat in Bali for 6 months from now from your phone, shouldn’t you be able to schedule your local lawn service next week with the same amount of ease? Making online reservations, with a focus on mobile reservations, a feature is more crucial than ever for companies that care about increasing revenue.

5. Give customers peace of mind with identity verification

Robo-callers with scam offers and bulk SMS messages from shortcodes that can’t be identified are becoming more commonplace. Consumers are becoming more aware and wary of such behavior and won’t hesitate to block numbers or type “Stop” to avoid receiving further communication.

Rich messaging gives your customers peace of mind that they are talking to the trusted brand they intended to engage with. With rich messaging, companies go through a rigorous verification process. Once verified, the company can use their official brand name, colors, logo and font in their messages.

Rich messaging adds another layer of trust to customer service communications. Regardless if the customer receives an outbound message from your company on their Android device promoting a new product or they send in a text message to troubleshoot an issue with a product on their iPhone, they’ll have the confidence that the information they share is private, secure, and going to the right place.

Rich Messaging Behind the Scenes

In addition to all of the features mentioned above that make rich messaging a better experience for your customer, the ability to understand how your messages perform allows companies to understand and improve engagement behind the scenes. Quiq’s messaging platform gives you key metrics for messages that were sent, delivered, failed, and responded to

Rich messaging doesn’t have to be limited to text messages either. Clients using Quiq are able to provide rich experiences to users across chat and other business messaging channels as well. This means that companies can provide content-rich, personalized experiences across SMS/text business messaging, web chat, social, and even within their own app when using Quiq. Ready to take transform your customer service with rich messaging? Schedule a demo to see Quiq’s messaging platform in action.

Forrester Webinar: Connecting with Customers Through Messaging and Bots

Posted on Lauren Winder

Consumers’ Expectations Around Engagement

Today’s consumers’ expectations around engagement have driven companies to “up-level” their accessibility and responsiveness. In this on-demand webinar, Kate Leggett, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research joins Mike Parish, of Brinks Home Security, to discuss how to connect with customers through messaging and bots.

As the leading expert on customer relationship management (CRM) and customer service strategies, Kate shares deep insights into the consumer behaviors that are shaping how many of the leading brands leverage messaging and bots to better engage with their customers. Mike Parish, Director of Experience and Service design at Brinks Home Security reveals the results and surprises of implementing messaging and bots.

About Quiq

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!

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Top 5 Business Messaging Use Cases

Posted on Max Fortis

Business messaging is the way connected consumers prefer to engage with you. They are mobile and busy and need to reach you on their terms. If they need to ask about the status of their order, they’re going to want to text you. If they need help navigating your website, they are going to use live chat.

As the number of channels that customers want and expect to engage with your company grows, the possibilities for companies to impact customer experience in a positive (and negative) way increases exponentially. In this post, we provide 5, plus one bonus, must-do business messaging use cases that companies need to leverage today to up their customer experience game.

Business Messaging Works Smarter

First, let’s consider why business messaging has become the preferred way for companies and consumers to engage with one another. Sure, the fact that everyone has a mobile device helps and that they use messaging apps to communicate with friends and family more frequently than any other function on their phone doesn’t hurt either. But, it’s not just the pervasiveness and convenience of messaging.

Business messaging also allows for more efficient and streamlined conversations. There are valuable business messaging features that make it easier to engage with digital-first consumers. These features bring the best of older engagement methods, like the immediacy of phone calls, to messaging conversations, while casting off the parts that just don’t work anymore, like long wait times.

Take, for example, the ability for agents to get help. Call centers use call monitoring to listen in on agents and even join calls in some instances. This functionality allows managers to observe calls and intervene if the agent needs help.

Business Messaging offers the same ability for managers to silently monitor messaging conversations and intervene if necessary. With messaging, these features get the added upgrade in the collaboration department. Instead of the agent having to put the caller on hold to ask for assistance, agents can ask for the help of peers or a manager without the customer even knowing. This is just one example of the many business messaging use cases that make digital customer engagement a better experience.

Business Messaging Use Cases

1. Convert shoppers into buyers

Quiq Messaging helps convert tentative shoppers into customers. Clients like Tailored Brands, owners of Men’s Wearhouse and Jos A. Banks, uses Quiq to help customers to choose the right suit, place an order, answer promotion questions, or set in-store appointments. If a consumer wants to make a purchase but has a question, it needs to be easy to get an answer right away.

Back in the day, many companies implemented web chat for just this reason. However, the majority of website visitors today are on mobile devices and web chat simply isn’t the best option for a mobile phone.

Why not make it as easy and comfortable to contact your company as it is to text with friends? Quiq clients have seen a higher conversion rate from text messaging than any other channel (over 5 ppts higher than web chat and 8-14 ppts higher than email and phone calls).

2. Shift phone calls to text

Quiq Messaging can help significantly reduce your contact center costs by converting phone calls into messaging conversations. In fact, Brinks Home Security reduced phone calls by 10% just by adding messaging. By converting a phone call to a text, the conversation is moved from the most expensive channel to the least expensive channel and the customer will actually be happier. Hey, let’s face it, they didn’t want to make a phone call in the first place, but they needed help right away.

Just add the option to text to your phone system (IVR). If they call in, your customer will hear something like this when they contact you:

“An agent will be with you shortly. If you’d rather text with an agent, press 1….”

When the customer presses 1, they immediately receive a text message to start a conversation directly with an agent, resulting in a cost savings of 80%! Customers will be more satisfied because they prefer to text and you’ll be more efficient. Win-win!!

3. Provide post-sales service

Even though most consumers have their phone in their hand or within reach 24/7, business messaging goes beyond SMS/text messaging. Factors such as your target market demographics and the nature of your business can influence the channel your customers prefer to reach you. Younger consumers may look for you on Twitter, while Gen X buyers expect to see you on Facebook.

With Quiq, you can meet your customers wherever they are to provide service and support however and whenever they need it. Quiq can open one or all of these channels to your customers, based on your business requirements. No matter what channel the message originates from, your employees can manage, access, search, and report on conversations through one, unified, intuitive platform.

4. Increase response rates

Business messaging is the way to get a consumer’s attention and response. If you seek to increase response rates to promotions or notifications, then sending an outbound message is the way to go. Considering most text messages have a 98% open rate and are read within 3 minutes of receipt, it’s easy to assume that your message won’t be lost in a sea of subject lines or mistakenly filtered as spam. Plus, recipients can be easily segmented so that only targeted, relevant, and timely promotions are sent.

Even industries like financial services have realized an increase in response rates. Credit Unions, like Southern Chautauqua Federal Credit Union, have seen an increase in collection recovery because they’ve made it easier for members to respond to loan collection notifications with inbound text replies.

5. Gain efficiency

Business messaging, by nature, increases efficiency because employees can handle multiple conversations at once, unlike a 1-to-1 phone call. Messaging has a higher concurrency, regardless of what channel the customer chooses to reach you over. This is due, in part, to shorter more concise messages that are sent over SMS or live chat for example. Efficiency can also be attributed to the asynchronous nature of messaging conversations that allows employees to address other customer conversations while waiting for responses.

Bots, also known as chatbots, can boost your agent productivity even further. A couple simple use cases for bots would be to greet customers, capture data to route the customer to the right agent or department, and close the conversation with a feedback survey. These are tasks that can usually be done prior to a human agent getting involved with a conversation.

6. BONUS TIP: Decrease inbound calls with notifications

Quiq Messaging makes notifications 2-way, allowing consumers to respond. Everyone is familiar with shipping and other notifications delivered via SMS. However, very few companies have the ability to allow customers to reply and to open up a conversation.

Quiq Messaging can send notifications and handle responses just like any other messaging conversation. Why is this important? Proactively informing customers of eliminates inbound phone calls by 10-15%.

Here are a few examples of reasons why 2-way outbound messages that are having huge impacts across a myriad of industries:

Retail Brand: “Your order has been delivered ”. Text us back if you have any questions. Thanks!!”
Customer: “Hi, I received the wrong color. Is this something you can help me with.”

Higher Education: “As an incoming freshman, you need a student ID card. Please click here to take a photo and have your card created.”
Student: “Thanks. I haven’t received any response on my financial aid application. Who should I contact?”

Credit Union: “Good morning. Your loan payment is past due. Please click here to make a payment.”
Member: “Oh thanks, I was out of town and forgot to mail the payment. Can I pay online?”

Now Is the Best Time for Business Messaging

These 6 business messaging use cases are just the basics. They are the “table stakes” to compete for today’s customers who demand ease and convenience when engaging with companies. There are many additional ways to use messaging that will propel your business ahead of the pack.

As the demand for business messaging grows, you’ll need a messaging solution that can scale with your business and has the flexibility to work with your current and future business needs. Now would be a great time to set up some time to talk with Quiq. Schedule a demo today.

5 Ways Live Chat Drives Revenue

Posted on Max Fortis

Using live chat to drive more revenue is just smart business and plenty of companies have embraced this technology as a way to grow their top line. Live chat is always on and at the ready to greet website visitors, field inquiries from prospective customers, and connect consumers to the help they need. It’s really no surprise that live chat has evolved from “nice-to-have” on a website to a necessary feature. There are so many companies currently leveraging the power of live chat and seeing their numbers grow in terms of both revenue and new customers that we felt obliged to highlight 5 of the top ways live chat drives revenue. Looking for a way to build customer loyalty, increase customer retention and boost your average order size? Read on.

Key Stats on Live Chat for Business:

Before we jump into the meat of things, let’s start with a few statistics to whet your appetite on how live chat for business is driving more revenue. Consider these important stats that showcase how valuable this channel is to your business:

How Live Chat Drives Revenue

1. Live Chat Closes More Sales

Online chat provides the opportunity to speak with a customer when the interest in your product or service is at its peak. With chat, customers can get questions answered and concerns addressed before that interest waivers. According to sales consultancy firm, SalesforLife, chat delivers a 20% boost in sales conversions. This can be attributed to the immediate response to specific needs that move the prospect through the buyer’s journey. Consumers know there’s always some risk with a purchase. “Buyer Beware” hasn’t become a saying for nothing. But the ability to have a real-time chat conversation with a representative prior to purchase gives the buyer confidence in doing business with your company because they know help is accessible

2. Live Chat for Business Increases Customer Retention

Live chat is one of the most immediate forms of communication available to online customers. In today’s always-on-the-go world, people want to get answers fast. Your customers will not wait for hours to get an answer through outdated methods, like filling out a form on your website to submit a question and then…you guessed it, waiting for a reply to hit their inbox. When it’s all said and done, meeting your customer’s expectations of delivering fast, personalized service builds customer loyalty and the economics of customer loyalty definitely work in your favor. According to Harvard Business Review, increasing customer retention by as little as 5% can increase profits by 25% – 95%.

3. Live Chat Delivers a More Personal Experience

With the use of live chat for business, you can talk to your customers or potential customers on a much more personal level. Live chat allows you to ask probing questions, provide suggestions, and even offer complementary goods or services based on direct interaction with that customer. Consider this example: A mom is shopping for a bassinet for her newborn. Without any engagement, the customer may just add the item to their cart and checkout, Or, she may get frustrated with all of the choices and tire of reading reviews and look elsewhere. Now, consider the scenario with engagement from a live chat representative. After so many minutes on the product page, a chat window pops up and asks the customer “Can I help you find anything?”. The customer shares what she’s looking for and the agent helps her narrow down choices. In addition to helping her find a bassinet she loves, the representative suggests sheets and some popular sleepwear to add to the cart. This customer-centric approach leads to higher satisfaction rates not only because they are getting fast responses, but also because they are getting the answers that are specifically targeted to helping them with their questions. According to Econsultancy; 73% of their customers were satisfied when they talked engaged on live chat.

4. Live Chat for Business Builds Momentum

You did the work and drove traffic to your website. You’ve got consumers coming in and you need to follow up fast to keep the momentum going. If your shoppers filled out a form so they can be contacted, there’s always a chance that the customer may have failed to provide the right information or made a mistake when entering their contact information. What will you do then if you can’t follow up? You lose the sale. There’s also the chance that a competitor could catch your shopper’s interest while they’re waiting to speak to a representative who can help them make a decision.. Give your customers the opportunity to start a conversation in real-time, when they are most excited about learning more about your product or service and focused on you.

5. Live Chat Increase Order Value

Average order value (AOV) is a key metric to gauge how much revenue a company generates with each transaction. A growing AOV is an indication that either customers are buying larger ticket items per transaction or buying more items in a single transaction. Either way, life is good.   Live chat gives trained agents the opportunity to upsell and cross-sell and influence average order value. Agents can present complementary items or higher ticket purchases to consider. Many times, companies decide to implement chat so that help is available when customers need it and chat sessions are initiated when the customer requests it. In some instances, like what an item is added to a cart, some companies have implemented proactive chat to offer customers additional items they may find valuable.

What is Business Messaging and What Does It Mean for Your Business?

Posted on Max Fortis

What is business messaging, you ask? Oh, it’s only a way to get better customer engagement, attract more customers, and deliver a better customer experience is all. That seems like a tall order for something as simple and commonplace as messaging right? The truth is, the simplicity and reach of business messaging is what makes it so powerful for your business and preferred by your customers.

In this post, we’re going to define what business messaging is and what it isn’t. We’ll also highlight what business messaging means for your revenue growth, your customers, and your employees. Basically, everything that keeps your business going. Let’s get started.

What is Business Messaging?

First, let’s talk about messaging and get really clear about what business messaging is. Business messaging is a set of channels over which companies and consumers can communicate with each other. The most common messaging channel is SMS or text messaging. We’ve all had experiences with shipping notifications, marketing offers, promotional campaigns, and appointment reminders. These are the kinds of messages we typically associate with business messaging.

But business messaging isn’t just one-way and it isn’t just SMS/texting. Business messaging can happen on any digital channel where your customers already spend their time and it’s expected that dialog can flow both directions.  Here are a few scenarios that happen all the time:

  • A home security subscriber who needs help setting up their new video camera.
  • A shopper on your website who needs help finding a product and reaches out via web chat for help
  • A loan processing officer texts an applicant to send in missing paperwork to complete an application
  • Direct messages exchanged over social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Kik to provide one-to-one customer service
  • A heating and air conditioning company setting up an appointment to install a new unit
  • A retailer proactively communicating shipping and delivery information to consumers to help prevent an inbound phone call

Business messaging delivers the ease and convenience consumers have come to expect when they engage with family and friends to pre-sales and post-sales interactions with companies. In fact, 66% of consumers rank messaging as their preferred channel for contacting a company.

What Messaging Means to Your Customers

Your customers want to message you.  Research conducted by Market Strategies International has found that consumers are looking for a company to:

  • Meet them where they already are – on mobile, social, and on the web
  • Proactively reach out to them with relevant products and services
  • Make it easy to do business with you

Quiq Clients like Overstock, Office Depot, Pier 1, and Brinks Home Security have discovered that messaging is an indispensable solution to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. These innovative companies have implemented Quiq Messaging to open new channels of communication with their customers – available wherever and whenever they need it.

CONVENIENCE: Messaging means that customers can reach out to you on any channel they already spend their time on like SMS, Facebook, and live chat when they’re on your website. It also means that your customers can respond to conversations with your company at their pace – as it fits in with their busy lives – versus stopping everything to make a call. With messaging, they can respond and engage in 5 seconds, 5 minutes, or 5 days.

EASE:  Customers keep their mobile device within arms reach at all times. Business messaging makes it easy for customers to shoot off a message whenever they need and then get on with their life. They don’t have to wait until they are in a quiet place to call or vigilantly watch their email for a response.

FLEXIBILITY: Messaging means flexibility to your customers. Customers have the real-time response of a phone call with the ease of reference that an email provides. That flexibility around their busy lives is more than a welcome mat. It’s more like the red carpet and it’s what differentiates companies among competitors and turns prospects into customers.

What Messaging Means to Your Revenue Growth

Increasing revenue is the number one thing that companies focus on. Every strategy and tactic is a means to that end. Often, companies will consider introducing a new product line or service or increasing prices as a way to bolster revenue.

Sure, those paths could lead to higher revenue, but they definitely aren’t the easy way to go. Developing a new product or product line can be a big time and money investment accompanied by the risk that customers won’t buy. Price increases provoke the ire of customers and may even cause some to turn to competitors.

Ah, but let’s not forget, there are people out there who want to buy what you already have. Oh, and don’t forget your established customers who could come back more frequently. Many companies now look at customer experience as a way to attract more customers and increase the frequency in which they purchase. This is where messaging makes the biggest impact.

Messaging makes it easy for consumers to engage with your company when, where, and how they prefer. Prospective buyers can have questions answered with ease, speed, and convenience. Returning customers get timely service and support at their moment of need, which means, they’ll be back for more and will tell others how great you are.

Consider these examples and how your business can help customers move closer to purchase with business messaging:

  • Service companies win when their prospects are able to get the answers they need to make a decision on a provider. Prospects can book an appointment to receive an estimate easily with business messaging. Messaging avoids delays and missed calls that can drive consumers to take their business elsewhere.
  • Companies in the travel and hospitality industry use messaging to provide a premium experience from the very first interaction. Questions on weather conditions and cancellation policies are answered quickly so that potential guests can ease right into the booking process with peace of mind.

What Messaging Means to Your Employees

In any other day and age, allowing customers to engage with your company through so many channels would have been overwhelming. But it’s not that day and we’re past that age. In today’s modern messaging world, Quiq makes it easy for employees to manage conversations.

In fact, Quiq Messaging can help optimize agent performance by providing advanced productivity features that improve the customer experience. With Quiq, employees are able to handle multiple messaging conversations at once, thereby increasing their efficiency and reducing the cost to serve.

There isn’t any downtime for training. Adding business messaging is a pretty flat learning curve for your employees. They are likely using messaging in their daily lives and are familiar with sending and receiving messages. The only difference is they’ll have an easy way to manage conversations.

All messaging conversations are managed within a single, unified desktop with features that help employees prioritize conversations, monitor customer sentiment, and make every conversation more personal and effective. Employees can feel empowered to provide the best customer experience possible.

Business Messaging Means Business

Business messaging makes a significant impact on two ways to grow your business – get new customers or have your existing customers buy more.

  • Attract new customers – Make your business accessible so that it’s easy to do business with you.
  • Keep existing customers happy  – Empower your customers to get service 24/7 through business messaging. Make it easy for customers to address questions and issues that may arise after the sale and they’ll be more likely to come back again.

The key takeaway here is that business messaging isn’t just good for your business. It’s a main ingredient to the secret sauce that can keeps your business running successfully. Ready to see Quiq Messaging in action? Sign up to try it right now for free or have one of our experts walk you through a custom demo.

Live Chat Best Practices for Exemplary Service

Posted on Max Fortis

Don’t deliver good customer service. Aim for the exceptional service that sets you apart from your competition. Customers demand convenience, speed, and ease when they need to engage with a company. When it comes to live chat, it’s critical to provide an experience that welcomes the customer to engage with your brand.

Live chat serves as your front line to the customer on your website. This messaging channel allows you to engage with your customers at their point of purchase for higher conversions. With live chat, customers can reach your brand at their convenience and receive the pre-sales support or post-sales service they need. This article gives you the 11 live chat best practices to deliver the ultimate customer experience.

11 Live Chat Best Practices to Deliver the Ultimate Customer Experience

#1: Be Transparent With Your Availability

While larger brands may have a customer support team working 24/7, other businesses may have limited hours. If you’re one of the companies that limits the hours of support, make sure that you simply disable live chat when your team is unavailable or when your company is closed. Quiq’s chat feature allows you to remove the chat bubble on your site during non-supported hours.

If your chat function isn’t available 24/7 and you prefer to receive after hour messages, tell your customers that you’ve received their message and let them know when you will get back to them.

#2: Choose the Right Place For Your Chat Button

To ensure that your customers know you are easily reachable through chat, one of the best live chat best practices to implement is to place the chat button on the bottom right side of the screen. You should also make sure that the button isn’t too big. You don’t want it to be a distraction. You will, however, want to use a bright color, so your site visitors have a visual indicator that it’s there.

While you don’t want your chat to be a disruption to your customer’s experience on your site you don’t want them to stall for too long in their process searching for help. Sometimes, your customers may need an invitation to start a conversation with you. You can offer proactive chat based upon predetermined criteria such as time spent on a page, page view history or customer segment.

In addition, you should place the chat button on every page of your website, not just the home page. You never know when your customers may have a question or need your help.

#3: Collect Information Upfront

Make it easy for employees to provide a more personalized experience to your customers by collecting a little information upfront. Use a short web form to collect information. This information can be used to route incoming conversations to the best queue or employee. Not only that, this extra information will help your employees identify the customer and the nature of their inquiry immediately instead of having to spend valuable time asking for it. Knowing full name, account number, topic category, or order number will help your team know who they are talking to and allow them to get a jump on helping the customer faster.

#4: Personalize The Experience With Images And Emojis

Today’s connected consumers gravitate to modern chat platforms that allow them to send hi-res images, videos, gifs, and emojis. These are the elements that make live chat conversations more personal, expressive, and fun.

Quiq allows your team to share images, videos, gifs, and to enable approved emojis so that messaging conversations always stay on brand. Customers and agents can use all of these visual elements within chat conversations to provide better context and to more effectively resolve inquiries.

#5: Always Be Ready To Respond

Customers want answers fast and at their pace. That’s one of the reasons they’re avoiding the phone and having to be tied to it. With live chat, customers can send messages in at their pace, whether they do so in 3 minutes or 3 hours. Companies can set service level agreements (SLA’s) so that everyone understands what an acceptable response time is for customers when they do reach out.

Quiq helps employees meet those SLAs with our Adaptive Response Timer (ART). This feature not only provides visual cues to notify employees when a conversation needs attention but it also automatically prioritizes multiple conversations based on how slow or fast the customer is responding to messages. This is critical because chat agents tend to handle 5 or more conversations at one time. Staying on top of the right ones is easy with Quiq.

#6: Never Get Disconnected

Your customers are busy and at times, may need to step away from a chat conversation. Sometimes, it’s only for a few minutes while they check another tab on their desktop. At other times, it may be a lot longer. When customers don’t respond after a certain time limit, most chat platforms will “time out” of chat sessions requiring the customer to initiate a new chat session and start their entire process from the beginning.

Unlike many traditional chat tools, Quiq’s chat platform is asynchronous, which means conversations never end and never have to be restarted. This avoids customer frustration of having to restart a chat conversation and agent uncertainty when a customer goes dark. Customers can return to the chat conversation whenever it is convenient for them. This conversational continuity gives your agents and your customers peace of mind.

#7: Present The Chat Conversation History

Sure, some customers may only need to contact you once, but there are some who need to reach you on a more frequent basis. It’s important that a record is kept of all the past chat interactions you’ve had with a customer. This conversation history serves as an excellent reference point and helps agents or employees know what kind of issues the customer may have encountered previously and the guidance they were given.

Quiq presents the entire chat conversation history to the agent, along with the most recent inquiry. Let’s say a customer starts a conversation with one agent, walks away during the conversation and comes back while that first agent is on break, the newly assigned agent will have the same latest interaction, as well as past interaction history, presented.

#8: Provide A Seamless Experience

From time to time, one of your employees may not know how to answer a specific question from the customer. So, they will need to transfer the customer to another team member. When this happens, you need to guarantee that the customer doesn’t have to explain her question or problem all over again. The new team member should have access to the previous conversation and simply continue the conversation.

Quiq’s transfer and collaboration features allow employees to ask for help behind the scenes from peers or managers. Customers can be easily transferred to other team members with or without them even knowing. Anyone invited to help with the conversation can see the entire history of the conversation and any additional information available on the customer. These features create a seamless experience for your customers while optimizing efficiency.

#9: Provide a Seamless Human-Bot Experience

Bots have gained a lot of attention lately, and with good reason. Bots have become time-saving customer experience superheroes helping companies serve customers more efficiently. From greeting customers to helping troubleshoot issues to soliciting feedback, bots are being used in a myriad of ways.

Consider using a bot to automate some of your redundant live chat processes to reduce the time and money it would take for an employee to do the same thing. Simple and repetitive tasks, such as gathering an order number, updating an address, or even finding the right department to route the customer to, can all be done via bot.

Deliver a seamless experience where humans and bots co-exist peacefully within conversations. Quiq treats bots and agents both like first class citizens. Bots can welcome customers and gather additional information for routing or in order to have an order proactively pulled up on an agent’s desktop. Agents can transfer to a bot during an active conversation and the customer doesn’t even need to know. The bot can collect a few pieces of information and then return the conversation to the agent. During that time, the agent can be assisting other customers. Bots will help you reduce the time to serve your customers and delight your agents as well.

#10: Use Sentiment Analysis

Use sentiment analysis to understand how customer conversations are going. This is particularly important for companies that may have a large number of chat conversations to manage. Managers can see at a glance which conversations are going well and which may be at risk.

Quiq uses simple visual cues that identify if customers mood shifts during a conversation. Agents and managers can quickly see if a conversation needs extra attention or needs to be prioritized.

#11: Ask For Feedback At The End

Your customers’ feedback or opinion about how the live chat interaction went is definitely a best practice. You trained your team members to provide the best service they could but the ultimate test will be what your customers thought about their overall experience. This is a timely way to know that you’re on the right track, as well as a great way to continuously improve your live chat experience.

Live Chat Is Your Front Line

It wasn’t so long ago the only way customers could get in touch with a company was by picking up the phone and calling. Now, with live chat and messaging options, customers can simply click-to-chat with a representative who can provide the pre-sales support or post-sales service they need.

Being available to your customers at their “moment of need” is where businesses turn visitors to their website into customers who love their product and service and rave about their experience. Live chat may be one of the first interactions your customers have with anyone from your company. Make sure you leave a great first impression by implementing these 11 live chat best practices.

Customer Spotlight: TodayTix

Posted on Mike Zinne

TodayTix is no stranger to bringing more accessibility to experiences. The company started with the goal to provide effortless access to shows. Since launching in 2013, the company has brought theater to a new audience of theatre goers with “thoughtful service at each moment along the way”. There’s no waiting in lines or rushing for last minute ticket sales here. TodayTix provides the convenience of buying theatre tickets online with just a few taps of a button.

As TodayTix continues to see growth in subscribers and sales, it has also seen an increase in inbound calls. TodayTix looked at chat as a way to reduce calls while providing customers the ease and convenience of another channel. Today, the New York-based company uses Quiq’s Chat and SMS/text messaging channels to provide their customers with the kind of 21st century communication they were seeking.

Prior to implementing chat, TodayTix provided support through phone (80%) and email (20%). Since opening the messaging channel, the company has seen a drop in approximately 1,000 calls per month and a decrease in emails. James Potter, Senior Guest Services Manager at TodayTix, says that customers appreciate the quick response they get via messaging versus email.

“We were surprised to see a lot of our repeat customers move over to chat. Many of them have an .aol account, so it was interesting to see that shift.”

– James Potter, Senior Guest Services Manager

After just one day of training and some adjustments to the integration of the their existing Salesforce instance, the company was up and running with messaging. TodayTix still looks to their FAQs to help customers, but placed chat on their support page in the event that any of the 2,500 weekly visitors may need additional help.

The guest services team, which usually consists of 3 to 5 people, love that they are able to see a preview of what the customers are typing, in order to get a head start on helping them. They also love that they can handle multiple cases at one time, with the ability to handle up to 5 conversations simultaneously.

While the majority of questions TodayTix agents handle via messaging involve canceling or modifying an order, the company has also been able to improve their concierge service. For a small fee, customers can have tickets hand-delivered to them 30 minutes prior to the start of the show. Since the company sells internationally, and many times to tourists who don’t have access to their email, messaging helps coordinate delivery if meeting times or locations have to change on the fly.

What’s Next

The company has been pleased to see an increase in their NPS scores rising from the low 60’s to the high 70’s in large part due to messaging. It appears that customers aren’t the only ones noticing how the company uses technology. In 2018, TodayTix was named as one of Deloitte’s 2018 Technology Fast 500. The honor recognizes the 500 fastest growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences and energy tech companies in North America.

TodayTix would like to take messaging further and implement the chat feature in their app too, as many of their customers are on mobile devices and engaging via the app. The company is also interested in enhancing their IVR by adding an option that would allow customers to initiate a text-based conversation instead of waiting on hold. These improvements will continue TodayTix’s ability to offer thoughtful service for every customer engagement.

How to Use Simple Automation to Streamline Customer Conversations

Posted on J.R. Rettenmeyer

Customer expectations have grown surrounding the three most important aspects of customer experience: convenience, ease, and speed. Incorporating simple automation into customer conversations that exceed these expectations has proven to be the solution for Quiq’s clients. Quiq is focused on helping brands engage in conversations with their customers over messaging, the preferred channel by, well, everyone. Quiq’s messaging clients have taken advantage of features like “bots” and “snippets” to streamline customer conversations that are repetitive in nature to help save valuable employee time, making them more efficient.

The key to success for the companies deploying automation for employee-to-customer conversations is the calculated use of Quiq’s automation features that not only optimize productivity but subsequently improve the customer’s experience. Now, before you start thinking that automating customer conversations leads to soulless interactions and customer frustration (yes, we’ve sat in one too many phone queues), let’s focus on just one automation feature that is making the customer’s experience better – snippets.

What are “snippets” and how do I use them?

Snippets are pre-built responses to common questions that can be accessed by employees with a few keystrokes. Snippets eliminate the need to retype the same answer to the same questions. and can be fully customized for your unique workflow.

At Quiq, we developed our product with the experience in mind, not just that of your customers, but for agents and employees too. We developed snippets to make it easier for employees to share greetings, ask follow up questions, and address common questions like “What’s your return policy?”. With snippets, employees can create custom responses tied to common questions using shortcut keys, thus reducing the time it takes to look up information and share it with customers.

Snippets can be created at a company level as well, not just by agent. Company-level snippets ensure that information shared across the organization is consistent and accurate. If, for example, you have a promotion running Monday through Friday that you’d like reps to share, a snippet containing details or a link to the promotion will guarantee the same message is shared. Now, let’s say the promotion date is extended to Sunday, the snippet can be quickly updated and then everyone immediately has the same up-to-date information.

Another feature that allows employees to increase efficiency while improving customer service across all channels are Quiq Replies. Quiq Replies are the suggested responses that allow customers to answer common questions with a tap of a button. Quiq Replies are visual presentation of what the customer will see and are created as snippets to keep the conversation moving on both ends.

Share pre-built “rich messages” within snippets

Employees and customer service reps used to save answers to frequently asked questions on a digital notepad that they would pull up and then just copy and paste answers. Quiq has taken these plain text, flat responses and gives you the ability to easily create rich messages.

Rich messages take plain text and add captivating visual elements like images, buttons, and suggested replies to bring context and interaction to every conversation. Quiq allows you to build your own rich messages and to even share those as snippets.

Want to see for yourself? See Snippets in action.

Snippets have been very thoughtfully designed to be easy to use and manage:

  • Employees can access snippets with keyboard shortcuts that are easy to customize and search for.
  • Snippets can be created as plain text or as rich messages.
  • Snippets can be shared across any messaging channel, defaulting to the most visually appealing format supported by the respective channel..
  • Managers can easily see what snippets have been created and exactly how they will appear to customers.
  • Snippets can be used at any point in the conversation to help the conversation progress more efficiently – beginning, middle, or end.

Ways to use snippets or automated responses to streamline customer conversations

Once implemented, automation features such as snippets can improve agent effectiveness, improve customer satisfaction, and differentiate your company. We’ve found this to be true across all industries and company sizes.

Greeting a customer at the start of a conversation and closing a conversation with a standard sign off are pretty obvious uses for snippets, but here are a few other ways snippets can be used by industry. Skim over these examples and you’ll probably find that many of these use cases are applicable to your company as well:

Retail

  • Where is my order (WISMO):Customers checking on order status is a common occurrence that can comprise 70-80% of calls during peak times, like the winter holidays. These types of inquiries may have tighter service level agreements, so the ability to quickly respond quickly is critical. Create a snippet with an embedded link to share and allow customers to track their order.
  • Return policy:Even if you have your return policy stated on your website, you may still get questions from customers who need clarification. Common questions include: “Do I need an RMA number?” or “What address should I ship my return to?.” Snippets ensure that answers to these standard questions have consistent answers. What’s more, employees can use snippets to build out questions to dig a little deeper into the customer’s issue such as “What’s the reason for the return?” or “Was there anything wrong with your shipment?”

Service & Subscription Companies

  • Password reset:Customers who have to log in to an account will appreciate easy access to help if they ever need to reset their password. Create a snippet with a link to your process or to a page that customers can use to reset their password.
  • Save/Cancel:If a customer is inquiring about canceling, you may want to create a snippet that helps the agent gather additional information from the customer to better understand the reasons they would like to cancel and to provide an offer to persuade the customer to stay. For example, if the employee determines price is the main reason for the cancellation, there may be another snippet with a special promotion for the agent to present.

Financial Services

  • Payment guidance:Again, snippets can be used at any point in a conversation. Customers engaged in a conversation about say, a late payment, may want to know where they can pay online. Send a link to quickly guide the customer to the right place.
  • Routing to the right department:Create rich snippets, such as the example shown below, to determine the nature of the customer inquiry. Quiq’s intelligent snippets aren’t just simple canned responses. Snippets with Quiq Replies can leverage the customer’s response and route the customer conversation to the appropriate agent or department.

Higher Education

  • Segmentation:In the same vein as the example above, higher education can use snippets to segment inquiries based off of student status. For example, A Quiq Reply can be used to determine if the person is a parent, prospective student, current student, or alumni. It could also be used to understand the topic of their inquiry in order to route the conversation to the right department.
  • Easy resource reference:Contact information and program details can be stored as a snippet and recalled with keyboard shortcuts. Faculty within Student Affairs, for example, can use snippets to keep a handy reference of the diverse range of programs and resources available to students. Whether students need help with tutoring or finding a support network, the information can be available with just a few keystrokes.

Travel and Hospitality

  • Customer orientation:If you have obtained permission to message a customer, you can use Quiq’s outbound messaging to point out available amenities at your resort after they have booked their stay. Instead of a resort having to list out popular add-ons, like a trip to their spa, available guided tours, or restaurants on site for each guest, a rich snippet can be used to help the customer find and book services that add value to their experience.
  • Follow-up survey:Employees can send follow up surveys to guests after their experience. Quiq allows agents to gather this information and take action immediately. If the guest in the above example had some issues during their dinner and gave their stay a 2-star rating, the conversation could be routed to the appropriate person to address the issue.

Conduct engaging and streamlined conversations with your customers

The simple automation examples presented above are a few easy ways to reduce friction for your customer. Quiq features like snippets and Quiq Replies help streamline the customer experience without losing the human connection that customers want.

Implementing automation doesn’t have to become an overwhelming task but it can have substantial results for your bottom line and customer satisfaction rates.  If you’re ready to improve productivity within your organization with a few simple automation within your customer experience, request a demo.

Brinks Home Security™ Monitors and Responds to Changing Market Demands

Posted on Mike Zinne

Q: What motivated Brinks to look at messaging as a way to connect with customers?

A:  More than 90% of all of our transactions were phone-based. Taking time to make a phone call was a rigid, inflexible pain point for our customers. We wanted to provide a channel that put the format back in the customer’s control.

Unlike phone calls, customers and agents are able to exchange and share attachments, links, gifs, and emojis making the interaction context-rich. These rich messaging interactions help agents understand the question faster and thus ensure customers quickly receive the help they need to resolve their inquiry and get on with their day.

ROI From the Start

Messaging has dramatically and positively impacted the contact center. The first thing to note was the fairly immediate shift of 10% of phone calls to messaging. There is also a significant difference in agent productivity. With phone calls, agents can only handle 1 at a time, but with text messaging, the agents handle from 4-6 unique conversations at a time. Even with an increase in the number of conversations each agent has, there has still been a 14 ppt.(avg.) uptick in CSAT. In fact, Brinks is watching the satisfaction rate with text messaging continue to climb, all while seeing staffing savings.

“In a short 5 months with Quiq, we converted 10% of phone calls to messaging, and we are on track to move 20% of our inbound calls to messaging.”

Mike Parish, Sr. Manager Customer Experience & Service Design, Brinks Home Security

Giving Control Back to Customers

Converting 10% of their inbound phone-based customer contact to a digital messaging experience in 5 short months, the company saw a noticeable difference in how customers and agents interact. Messaging allows customers to have conversations at their desired pace, while enjoying an experience that is as familiar as texting with family and friends.

Brinks proactively promotes and encourages their customers to engage with them via text messaging. Visitors to brinkshome.comare able to initiate a conversation with an agent through a “Text Us” link displayed prominently above the fold under “Contact Us”. Website visitors may also choose to engage by clicking the “Chat with us” icon on the lower right-hand side of the screen displayed on every page.

Phone with texts

As with any new software implementation, Brinks had a number of assumptions going into their exploration of the messaging channel:

  • Our customer base is older and will not utilize text
  • Customers want to call or email us, not text
  • Customers will want to text for this, but not for that

What Brinks discovered as a result of implementing Quiq Messaging was a reality that was a very pleasing contradiction to those beliefs.

Across their customer segments, text has continued to ramp, regardless of age-related demographics. In fact, the slowest month-over-month growth for the messaging channel has been a 135% increase, with the highest monthly increase at 329%. Not only has the messaging channel proven to be a preferred method of engagement, but agents handling the exact same contact types on the messaging channel as they did with phone with a higher average CSAT score.

Messaging Rollout Recommendations

Q: Based on your experience with messaging, what are some key takeaways you would share with CX leaders who are considering opening the messaging channel?

A: One of the biggest lessons learned from the messaging channel has been promoting the channel. It is important to leverage every engagement or touch point to help build awareness and grow a new channel.

That may mean promoting it via social media, outbound emails, newsletters, on the primary website, mobile website, and even in your IVR messaging. Just letting customers, who are calling in, know that they can hang up and text your brand directly will immediately shift calls to text messaging.

When promoting the messaging channel, Brinks also recommends that companies alter their campaign approach monthly, starting with awareness, next adoption, and finally growth. However, the most important thing to do is to avoid letting assumptions prevent success and to lean on your Voice Of Customer (VOC) data to drive you.

Focus on Continuous Improvements

In an effort to measure and continually improve on the digital experience, Brinks built out a short survey and implemented it by automatically sending a link at the close of each text message conversation. The survey questions emulate the main questions used to calculate customer satisfaction rates (CSAT) and Net Promoter Score (NPS). Issuing a satisfaction survey via text instantly yielded a 10% completion rate, which is a 60% increase over surveys delivered over traditional channels.

“Our messaging solution started out as an alternative to offload high call volumes and repetitive tasks, but now we have now expanded the implementation and smart routing throughout the entire enterprise.”

Mike Parish, Brinks Home Security

A smooth implementation of Quiq’s Messaging platform set the stage for the high adoption rate of messaging among agents and customers. Brinks has been pleased with how quickly their customers has embraced the messaging channel.

The company plans to continue promoting the channel so that at least 20% of their interactions are over messaging or web chat, as well as completing Quiq’s integration into Brinks’ IVR system and introducing automated SMS notifications for service updates. The company had originally planned to hit that 20% target in 12-18 months, but with the rapid acceptance and use of messaging by their customers, Brinks expects to hit that goal much sooner than expected.

 

Contact Us

Customer Spotlight: Warners’ Stellian

Posted on Mike Zinne

Warners’ Stellian has been providing families in the St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota areas quality appliances with exceptional service and value since 1954. As a family-owned business, they take pride in their knowledgeable staff and expert technicians because they know those factors contribute to excellent customer service like no other.

Warners’ Stellian wanted to extend that exceptional service by providing more ways for their customers to engage with them. The appliance retailer partnered with Quiq to add SMS/text messaging and web chat to their mobile and desktop sites.

          Q: What prompted Warners’ Stellian to deploy a messaging solution?

          A: We have such high call volume, so enabling customers to have more touch points was the goal.

Warners’ Stellian contact center, which normally receives a high volume of calls, uses messaging to deflect some of the inbound calls for customer support. This capability proved itself to be valuable after a particularly busy summer where they experienced an increase in calls and wait times. The contact center was able to redirect some of the pent-up call demand to text and chat, allowing them to address customer issues much faster.

Messaging agent and form

Getting Started With Messaging

Prior to offering customers SMS/text messaging and web chat for customer support, the company’s call center agents supported phone, online forms, and email. By partnering with Quiq to open the messaging channel, the company has increased efficiency by converting inbound calls to text messages for both sales and service.

Warners’ Stellian promotes messaging on the website’s “contact us” page and during the message the customer hears while on hold. The company has been surprised at how much customers, who initiate conversations via messaging, want and like these new options.

The customer service team has found that customers waiting on hold to talk to a customer service agent would often just hang up to text. When customers were given the option to chat for assistance versus waiting on hold, the company saw a spike in the number of chats created.

Quiq allows the company’s 45 users, which includes 20 call center agents, 20 sales associates in 2 store locations, and select administrative and sales associates to handle all the active messages Warners’ Stellian receives at any given time. When things get really busy, agents will easily handle 4-5 conversations at a time.

contact information on site
Warner's Stellian company van

Messaging Adoption

The majority of the inbound conversations are related to repairs. “When a customer reaches out, they’re really looking for help on a very specific problem, it could be functional or cosmetic,” states Kurt Duhn, Customer Service Manager for Warners’ Stellian. Either way, the customer support team is able to respond in a faster, easier way.

Internally, the customer support team is learning how to most effectively communicate using this new channel. The support team has learned that there needs to be a focus on written communication skills, such as succinctly responding and engaging without the use of slang or abbreviations, as well as determining when to transition from text or chat to speaking directly with the customer.

The ability to easily share photos and videos, which customers can use to explain their situation, has improved conversations. The customers can take a photo and quickly send it within the conversation to reduce some of the back and forth.

“It’s much more convenient to get photos and we get photos immediately. Now, we can make images more conversational”

Kurt Duhn, Customer Service Manager, Warners’ Stellian

What’s Next

Since many of the conversations are about repair issues, contact center agents spend a lot of time reviewing warranty information. The company wants to explore whether a simple bot can be used to help pre-qualify or at least collect the information needed to determine if the customer is still within their warranty.

Warners’ Stellian would also like to use Quiq Messaging to push more “how-to” links and more routing options. If a customer initiates a conversation referencing “Whirlpool” and “microwave”, the customer can be directed to a website resource, like a knowledge article, to look up that information before continuing on to engage an agent.

 

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2019: This Is Your Year to Improve Customer Experience

Posted on Cristina Bravo-Olmo

We’ve all been there. February 15th rolls around on the calendar and all of those great intentions for the new year begin to slowly fade into memories. This year will be different. This year hasto be different, especially if you’re one of the many business leaders who are determined to create a better experience for your customers in 2019.

Now, we’re not saying you should ignore those aspirations to organize your closets, meditate every day, or strive for more balance. Those things are really important too, but if you have plans to create a better customer experience (CX) in 2019, there is no better time to become laser-focused on this goal.

There is one sure-fire way to improve the customer experience that is actually fairly painless. Add the ability for your customers to have conversations with you via messaging – text messaging, rich messaging, and live chat. We are here to tell you that this is the latest holy grail in customer experience – save money by shifting phone calls to messaging, increase your customer satisfaction scores with the loved messaging channel, and close more business faster.

In this post, we’ve pulled together the most popular resources and advice to transform the way your customers can engage with your company.

Messaging conversations have grown over 450%

Over the past few years, we have been working really hard here at Quiq to make interactions between customers and companies just plain easier. We’ve seen first-hand, with clients like Brinks Home Security, Overstock, and Pier 1, the amazing impact of adopting technology that allows customers to have a more convenient and effortless experience with a brand.

Although we beat the effortless customer experience drum all year long, we’re putting a little extra weight on it in 2019. Why?

  1. Because customers are demanding it. Did you know that top brands who added messaging channels to their business have seen customers naturally adopt and clamor to the channel? In our client base alone, the number of conversations our clients have had with their customers grew over 450% over 2017.
  2. Not only are customers expecting the ability to message brands, but the introduction of Apple Business Chat and Google Rich Business Messaging has also put the biggest names behind the growth in the messaging channel.
  3. There is no doubt that mobile usage and the desire to communicate with companies over mobile devices continues to increase.

Messaging is quickly becoming the standard method to communicate with companies and the companies who don’t adopt this channel will simply lose customers.

But, you don’t have to take our word for it. We’ve gathered advice from some authorities in the customer experience space to save you the time of hunting and gathering the information yourself. Let’s start with the general outlook for customer experience and then look at what the industry experts have to say about improving customer experience in 2019.

There’s going to be a dust-up over customer experience

According to Forrester, 2019 is a pivotal time for customer experience. Less than impressive gains in CX quality, coupled with rising customer expectations, will drive some significant watershed events this year.

  • Stagnant CX quality levels will cause short, destructive price wars as some companies decide not to differentiate on CX and start a “race to the bottom” fueled by slashed prices.
  • The need to present more sophisticated business plans to leadership will be critical for CX pros who want to maintain support for their CX transformations.
  • Hot job markets may see more movement for CX pros who look for firms willing to invest in CX.

In order for companies to improve CX quality, Customer Experience leaders will have to put themselves in their customer’s shoes and understand them on a deeper level. According to Shep Hyken, customer service/CX expert, keynote speaker, and NYT bestselling author, one of the ways to do this is by making it easier to do business with your company. Providing customers with ways that are convenient for them to contact you such as webchat, social channels like Facebook and SMS/text messaging.

“A large portion of your customers want – and expect – a quick answer or resolution to a question or problem, and unlike an older generation (as in Baby Boomers), they don’t want to make a phone call to get it.”
~Shep Hyken

In Shep’s recent Forbes article, “Ten Customer Service/Customer Experience Predictions for 2019”, he predicts customers will continue to get smarter and compare companies against their competitors, as well as the best service they’ve ever received. He encourages customer experience leaders to identify who they personally enjoy doing business with and use that as a benchmark to bring their own organization to the same level.

What about Bots?

There were a few recurring themes that popped up while researching this article. One of the biggest themes woven into all of the trends and predictions for 2019 is the increased use of technology. With so many companies focused on creating a more customer-centric organization, it makes sense that leadership will look for ways to provide speed and efficiency with uncompromising attention to delivering a great customer’s experience.

Adopting technology, such as Quiq Messaging and our bot approach, enables companies to do just that. According to customer experience speaker, futurist, and author Blake Morgan, the increased use ofRobotic Process Automation or RPA(think chatbots) will allow humans more time to dedicate themselves to tasks such as innovation, problem-solving and giving customers the human interaction they crave.

“Most of those changes are driven by consumer demand. Customers crave personalized, frictionless experiences, and companies are sprinting to deliver them.”
~Blake Morgan

International market intelligence company,Aberdeen Group, recently surveyed top CX leaders to understand what technology they plan to adopt in 2019. The top 10 technologies include a few classic tools that have been utilized by customer service and experienced leaders for a long time such as live chat, knowledge management, and customer self-service tools. Although these tools have been around for some time, more than a quarter of the respondents stated that they plan to employ them in 2019.

Other tools such as artificial intelligence, real-time decision assist and guidance, and workflow automation come to the forefront. At Quiq, we’ve seen how the automation trend has developed over the years and created our platform to provide many of these features and providing tools to increase productivity.

Take the Quiq Bot API, for example, which allows clients to create their own custom bot to help augment interactions with human agents. Bots can be used to collect information to help inform the agent/customer interaction, determine the nature of the customer’s inquiry and route to the appropriate department or agent. Depending on the nature of the customer inquiry a bot can even handle a customer conversation from beginning to end.

We’ve also included workflow automation features, such as the ability to route conversations based on pre-set rules and our Adaptive Response Timer, which automatically prioritizes conversations based on how quick or slow customer’s responds to agents. These features greatly improve the overall customer experience by increasing the speed companies can respond to customer needs.

A look ahead at 2019

Synthesizing all of the information above, we can see there are three really strong forces that are acting on the customer experience in 2019:

  1. The market demands more convenient, frictionless interactions that rival the best customer experiences they’ve received.
  2. Companies are searching for ways to deliver those experiences as a way to differentiate themselves in hyper-competitive markets.
  3. Technology, such as Quiq Messaging, provide the tools that increase productivity, improve customer satisfaction and reduce service costs. These outcomes add up to a very compelling business case that can immediately impact a company’s bottom line.

We predict that more companies will join the likes of Brinks Home Security, Pier 1, Tailored Brands, Overstock.com, and Tile to provide their customers with the convenience of the messaging channel. If you’re ready to join other high-performing CX brands, request a demo.

Author:

Marciela Work-Time-Calculation
Marciela Ross

Marciela is the Sr. Content Marketing Manager at Quiqwhere she gets to use her love of writing to share how messaging is changing the face of customer service. When she’s not writing, Marciela spends time with family, crafting and looking at dog photos on Pinterest.

Improve Average Handle Time Using This Key Metric

Posted on Michael Hartsog

The way customers can contact companies has multiplied over the years, which has changed the way contact center agents do their work. Previously, Average Handle Time (AHT) was the metric that indicated how long it took to complete an interaction with a customer, which in turn decided staffing levels.

Back in the day, when contact was made primarily via the phone or email, handle time was more straightforward. Now, customers can engage with a company via web chat, sms/text messaging, in their app, or on social media. This kind of asynchronous communication means that a conversation with a customer can span 2 minutes, 2 hours, or 2 days.

Improve Average Handle Time with ‘Work Time’

At Quiq, we’ve developed a metric dubbed “Work Time” that captures the intent of traditional handle time metrics, while accounting for the nuances of the messaging channel. In this article, we’ll dive into the Work Time metric and show you how it’s calculated.

How much time are agents spending on customer interactions?

That is a fundamental question of the contact center. The messaging channel poses new challenges when answering this question owing to its asynchronous nature and a high degree of concurrency.

Agents using Quiq Messaging can typically handle 5 or 6 conversations at one time. Add to this the ability for customers to step away from a conversation at any point and resume the conversation with the agent at a more convenient time, and you can see how calculating agents handle time gets a bit complicated. Quiq Messaging simplifies the calculation and does the work for you through the Work Time metric.

Why is Work Time important?

The way customers can contact companies have changed but the way we measure the success of that contact hasn’t changed much. Regardless of the channel, successful conversations end with a resolved issue and a satisfied customer.

Part of the customer’s satisfaction can be attributed to how long they wait to engage with a representative and how long it takes to resolve their issue. The Work Time Metric helps contact centers track and evaluate these activities to improve the performance of your team and identify what can be modified to make things even more efficient.

How Work Time is measured

When an agent is engaged in a messaging support conversation, he or she might look up an order or do an inventory check. In either case, the work is ultimately represented by a message sent back to the customer. When an agent sends a message, we measure backwards from the time of the message to the most recent of the following events:

  • The oldest unsatisfied¹ customer message on this conversation
  • The most recent message sent by this agent on any conversation
  • The assignment of this conversation to this agent
  • The last reactivation of the conversation (from inactive to active status)

The interval between the most recent of these events and the time of the current message represents a work segment that is associated with the current conversation and agent. These segments will always exclude periods when the conversation is inactive. The diagram below depicts how work segments are calculated with awareness of simultaneous customer interactions by a single agent.

1An unsatisfied customer message is a customer message with no subsequent agent messages

In some cases, the work segments extend back from an agent message to the unsatisfied customer message. In other cases, the segments are cut short due to activity on another conversation, or an event such as assignment.

The sum of all work segments on a given conversation is the total work time and is computed progressively as a conversation proceeds. Quiq exposes this information at several integration points and visualizes it in the Quiq Reports tab.

How to use the Work Time Metric

Work Time is a key productivity metric that can help you manage your workforce in an age of omni-channel engagement. Here are the three main use cases you’ll want to keep an eye on this metric:

  • Staffing Forecasts

Understanding the average work time requirement of customer interactions will allow you to staff appropriately as you direct more interactions to the messaging channel or in anticipation of busy periods.

  • Workforce Assessment

Work time can be used to evaluate individual agents or entire teams. Agents with the same responsibilities but disparate average work time metrics are indicative of under or over-performing agents.

  • Agent Workload Tuning

Quiq allows you to configure how many simultaneous conversations an agent may be assigned through a configuration known as the agent ‘soft limit’. The ideal number of simultaneous conversations varies by use case. Watching the average work time of your interactions while adjusting the soft limit will allow you to identify the optimal configuration. If the work time increases significantly after an increase to the soft limit, you know that agent context switching is taking a toll on your customer interactions.

Measure the productivity of your digital engagement

Messaging is a workforce management game-changer. With messaging, you can do a lot more with your existing staff. That includes decreasing Work Time, while actually increasing customer satisfaction scores. Customers prefer messaging because it puts them in control of the conversation and allows them to engage with a company on their time.

Just because the customer is in control of the conversation, doesn’t mean your contact center productivity is out of control. Agents will have the efficiency of asynchronous messaging and managers have Quiq’s Work Time metric for the data and insights to manage their workforce.

Customer Texting – 23 Reasons Everyone Loves Texting for Customer Service

Posted on Michael Hartsog

Love is a pretty strong word. For those who think that it might be too strong of a word to describe the way consumers feel about text messaging, take a look at these stats:

  • Over 6 billion text messages are sent in the U.S. each day.
  • 90% of text messages are read in 3 minutes or less
  • Texts have an astounding 96% open rate
  • Texting is the most widely-used feature on a smartphone – even more than making calls

Considering these stats, maybe obsession is a better word.

Regardless of what you call it, the attachment to texting is real. But it’s not just customers who love texting. Companies, from retail to credit unions to consumer services, and everything in between, have increased engagement, reduced costs, and improved customer satisfaction by using business to customer text messaging.

Effortless, Connected, and Proactive Customer Experiences

Messaging enables companies to deliver exceptional customer support by providing what has become fundamental tenets of customer-centric companies:

  • Effortless
  • Connected
  • Proactive

We feel so strongly about messaging and how it can transform customer experiences, we wanted to dive into those three points a little deeper. We’ve pulled together a list of 23 reasons everyone, and we mean everyone, from customers to agents to company leadership, loves business to customer texting.

Some customer service leaders may be hesitant to disrupt the status quo. We wanted to make it clear that there’s already a disruption underway. If you’ve been looking for a reason to implement messaging for your customers or a reason to disrupt the status quo, here are 23 of them.

23 Reasons Everyone Loves Customer Texting

    1. Just Human EnoughIt’s not that your customers hate human interaction, it’s just that they’d rather interact with their family and friends instead of waiting on hold to talk to one of your customer service representatives. Messaging delivers interactions that are just human enough. Customers know that there is someone on the other end who cannot only sympathize with their situation but serve as their advocate.
    2. On-demand
      Customers expect to get the support they need, however, and whenever they want it. It can be frustrating for customers to have to work around your business hours. Messaging provides customers an outlet to engage with a company on their terms.
    3. Asynchronous
      We get it — sometimes customers have to step away from the computer in the middle of a chat session. That’s why our chat platform is asynchronous, meaning conversations can be picked up at a later time, right where they left off. There’s no need to restart the conversation — just keep it going!
    4. Convenient
      Waiting on hold to talk to customer support is no one’s favorite pastime. Cut out the holding music and let your customers get in touch through their preferred messaging channel. Customer texting doesn’t require a huge time investment or just the right conditions. The asynchronous nature of text messaging allows the customer to send a text message while they go about their day. Your customer can be on a noisy train, in a room full of people, or just on the go and too busy to make a call.
    5. Intuitive for Agents
      Nearly everyone, including your agents, uses text messaging on a daily basis. That includes your agents. That makes training agents for text support a breeze — often taking less than a day.
    6. Natural for Customers
      There’s no need for customers to download an app or follow any complex instructions. All they do is shoot you a text. In fact, your customers are probably trying to text you already. When Quiq clients get started with business text messaging, they are usually surprised to find that their customers are already trying to message them on their 1-800 number.
    7. Easy
      Finding the right number to call for help, taking a break from your day to call customer support, waiting on hold, and navigating a confusing IVR presents hurdles for your customers. Messaging removes those hurdles by making it easy for your customers to contact you.
    8. Succinct
      People who use customer texting are conditioned to be succinct and to the point. Agents don’t necessarily have to sacrifice the personable, “get-to-know-you” messages with customers but those conversations won’t go too long on messaging.
    9. Fun
      Emoji’s and gifs are a fun way to interact with customers. Agents can set a more casual tone to a conversation with these fun features. Rich text messaging can even allow exciting augmented reality experiences.
    10. Fast
      Quiq clients have discovered that many of the conversations received on messaging are relatively quick questions, like order status. These conversations can usually be resolved in just a couple of short exchanges and take a lot less time than making a phone call.

More Benefits of Texting for Customer Service

    1. Affordable
      Via text, customer service agents can handle multiple conversations at a time — often up to 8. Add in the convenience of AI-powered chatbots, and you have a customer support system that is affordable, efficient, and easy to implement.
    2. Accessible
      We may not all check Facebook regularly or use web chat when it’s available, but everyone has their mobile phone for the majority of the day and will consistently check SMS messages.
    3. Flexible
      Messaging provides multiple ways to share information. PDFs, links, videos, and images can be easily exchanged within a conversation.
    4. Enhanced Interactions
      The rich media offered from Apple Business Chat and Google Rich Business Messaging extends the interaction to include rich cards and list pickers that help customers choose open appointment times or browse a catalog. They can even complete transactions via Apple Pay or Google Pay.
    5. Interactive
      Customer texting provides a way for customers to interact with your company. There’s a natural back and forth, just like a phone call. Messaging gives your customers a way to converse and interact in a way that an FAQ page cannot.
    6. Discreet
      There’s just some information that people are more prudent about discussing, especially when they are in a public place. Instead of sharing their home address or phone number with a company while waiting in line, where anyone can overhear, messaging allows private information to stay private.
    7. Responsive
      In today’s always-on world, you’re either instantaneous or you’re out. Your customers can get a response from a chatbot immediately after they send you a text, and they can then be routed to an appropriate agent if necessary. Quiq messaging helps agents prioritize conversations based on how fast the customer expects a reply.
    8. Unobtrusive
      Making a phone call means a customer has to take time out of their day, to do business on your terms. Customer texting is an easy, convenient, and unobtrusive way to engage with a company where the customer is in control of the conversation.
    9. Efficient
      Agents who use Quiq Messaging have powerful tools that increase efficiency at their fingertips. Tools like pre-written snippets can help agents avoid retyping the same answers to frequently asked questions. This feature really helps customers by ensuring they receive consistent, up-to-date responses.
    10. Effective
      The nature of customer texting requires messages that are brief and clearly expressed. When customers need a quick reply on a simple question, messaging helps the customer and agents get to resolution fast.
    11. Personal
      Quiq clients and the customers they serve have told us that they love the outbound message feature available in the Quiq Messaging platform. Clients who use Quiq messaging are able to send targeted and personal messages that are more relevant to their customers, like appointment confirmation and order status.
    12. Easy to reference
      Customers are able to reference previous messages sent and received by simply scrolling through their conversation history. Agents have the same advantage of having conversation history so there’s no need to ask customers to repeat themselves. Also, a transcript of the conversation is available after the interaction has ended that agents can send via email.
    13. Insightful
      Managers who use Quiq messaging love the insight available to them from the reporting dashboard. Data on customer wait time, the amount of customers in the queue, and information on agent activity helps managers make more informed decisions for their contact center.

Customer Texting: The Way Forward

As you can see, customer texting is rife with benefits to businesses of all kinds. When you’re ready to explore the potential of texting for customer service, click the button below to see it in action!

Credit Union Messaging Guidelines to Build Trust With Members

Posted on Mike Zinne

There is an undercurrent of distrust around promotional emails and robo-calls. Consumers are beyond annoyed with these invasive methods and have turned to text messaging as the preferred way to communicate with businesses. Messaging has earned consumer’s trust. For your credit union to maintain that trust and encourage engagement with your members, we’ve put together some simple credit union messaging guidelines.

The popularity of messaging has spurred a growing number of credit unions like Southern Chautauqua Federal Credit Unionand Community First Credit Union in Floridato turn to SMS/text messaging to reach their members. In this article, we’ll explore why the adoption of text messaging has increased so rapidly among credit union members and how to protect your members and the trust they’ve placed in this communication channel.

Reach Members Easier With Messaging

If it feels like it’s getting harder to get in touch with your members, you’re probably right, and you’re not alone. Phone calls from unknown numbers are ignored and emails hitting the “spam” box are growing, so even if your members have requested information, it is likely you won’t get through to them. Add to that, the sheer volume of incoming emails and phone calls, and it’s possible that your members may just miss you.

Most of the 20+ credit unions that have implemented Quiq Messaging have done so to deflect expensive calls. According to creditunions.com, a growing number of credit unions are “modernizing existing systems by introducing new mobile and text-based services…”which has resulted in the filtering of simple tasks and questions to the less expensive messaging channel. These institutions, as well as many others in retail, travel, hospitality, and others, are not only realizing a lower inbound call volume, but are experiencing higher engagement rates with their customers through messaging.

Messaging has made it easier for credit unions to engage with their members since most consumers keep their phones nearby and will check their phone an average of every 12 minutes, according to The New York Post. In addition, text messages have a 98% open rate compared to email open rates, which are often south of 20%.

While consumers and credit unions are rapidly adopting text messaging to engage on everything from expediting loans to discussing options to bring collection accounts current, there are still scammers out there that are phishing consumers.

What Is Phishing?

The scamming epidemic continues as consumers are bombarded with calls from the IRS and emails filled with promises of unclaimed assets fill their inboxes. Consumers have grown weary of overstuffed inboxes and calls from unknown numbers. Scammers know this and try to leverage consumers love affair with their phone, sending text messages to elicit personal information, known as phishing. To be clear, phishing also applies to emails, but we’ll focus on text messaging for now.

Phishing is when fraudsters attempt to impersonate a legitimate business in order to trick consumers to disclose sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details. These details can then be used for nefarious reasons that can wreak financial havoc. According to the FTC, 1 in 5 people lost money in 2017 due to imposter scams.

While this situation seems daunting, there is hope. Credit unions that institutionalize messaging can help educate their members on phishing scams by creating messaging norms to help members recognize legitimate requests from their credit union. Here are 5 credit union messaging norms to adopt to avoid looking phishy.

4 Credit Union Messaging Guidelines To Follow

  1. Educate your customer

When it comes to scammers, the best offense is a good defense. The first line of defense should be education. As a credit union, advancing the financial education of your members is a top priority.

Make them aware of common phishing scams and what kind of messages they can expect to receive from you. Promote the numbers that your members can use to text by placing them on your website, social, and written collateral so that members can become familiar with them. Encourage members to save these numbers within their contact list so they can have them handy whenever they have a question. Whether it’s a question, as simple as hours of operations to something more complex regarding their first mortgage, your members always have your number handy as a trusted, reliable source.

  1. Systematize messaging

Text messaging is the easy, convenient way that your members are used to communicating with family and friends. The ease, acceptance, and accessibility of the messaging channel make it the prime vehicle to interact. While it might be tempting for a loan officer to use their personal cell phone to contact a member to remind them to submit required documents for their loan, that type of one-off outreach can be hard to manage and may be confusing to a member.

Quiq Messaging can help you systematize messaging. Instead of messages coming from a personal number, you can provision your existing credit union landline or create new ones, to send and receive text messages. Your members will be more trusting of a message that comes from a local number or one that they may already be familiar with and have stored in their contacts.

  1. Don’t use a shortcode

Shortcodes are the short sequence of numbers, usually 5 or 6, that many businesses use for SMS marketing. Since shortcodes are used mostly to send bulk SMS marketing messages, some consumers are annoyed as soon as they see them since so many unsolicited messages are sent via shortcode.

We recommend using a phone number. Not only will using your credit union’s phone number present a send ID the member can quickly look up to associate with the credit union, but also allows for two-way communication. If the member receives a reminder to submit documentation for their loan but has questions about what they should send, they can respond to the reminder to ask their question and even attach the documentation right in the messaging conversation.

  1. Provision specific numbers

Some Quiq clients have designated or provisioned specific phone numbers by department. This can add another level of trust to your communication. If, for example, your credit union assigns a particular number for loan processing your members can save the number in their contacts and know precisely which department is trying to reach them.

Members will also have the full history of their conversations with each department available for review.  If a scammer tries to send your member a message claiming to be from your institution from a different number or a shortcode, this should be an immediate red flag from your consumer.

Set High Standards For Your Credit Union Messaging

Texts from banks and credit cards are commonplace nowadays. A growing number of consumers have become comfortable with the messaging channel as a place they can receive instantaneous updates from a financial institution.

Quiq Messaging can help you set a high standard for your credit union messaging that scammers will find hard to replicate. If you’re new to messaging and would like to understand how you can offer this feature to your members, let’s set up some time to talk.

See a Demo Today

Quiq Announces Three Brands on Apple Business Chat

Posted on Lauren Winder

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.

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