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Tag: text messaging

How to Measure Customer Success KPI’s

Posted on Cristina Bravo-Olmo

Customer success is vital to your product or service achieving the desired goals you or your company has set. Customer success is the methodology you take to ensure that your customer’s needs are met in a manner that aligns customer, vendor, and company goals. If you are implementing your customer success correctly then you will see your pipeline activity increase and your customer metrics improve. So, the question is, how can you be sure your customer success initiatives are performing? The way you can be absolutely sure how well your company is performing and what areas are performing well is by tracking the correct metrics, gathering them, and then analyzing them. You cannot properly gather, organize, or analyze your data if you do not know which metrics to look for. That is why we wrote this article.

This article looks at which metrics are most important to track the health and vitality of your customer success initiatives. Customer success key performance indicators (KPIs) will not only speak to the health of your customer success strategy, but they will also speak to the health of your relationship with your customers.

Background

Traditionally, the disciplines that were used to measure customer success KPIs were customer service and customer support. Customer service and support have been previously been labeled as ‘cost drivers’ but now, due to advances in customer success technology, service and support are seen as potential sources of revenue generation. The shift in perspective on customer service and support is also due to the paradigm shift in the customer journey. Previously, customers have only had interactions with businesses at certain points in the funnel, but now businesses are finding it extremely valuable to interact with every stage of the customer journey.

This increased focus on the granular aspects of the customer journey has led to an increased focus on the metrics associated with customer perceived value; this is a technical way of saying businesses are now more focused on their customers and their customers’ desired outcome. Companies are making customer pain-points a higher priority than ever before, pouring company assets, time, and capital into strategies and solutions that look to address the concerns of their clients. All of this effort, focus, and investment requires an awareness of the measurements that indicate success or failure. Leaders want to know if their customer success efforts are working. In order to gauge the effectiveness of their campaigns, they are analyzing key performance metrics associated with customer success.

Top 5 Customer Success KPIs

Identifying key performance indicators (KPI) for your customer success programs will allow you to track, measure, and properly analyze your customer success initiatives. Being able to properly assess your customer success campaigns is vital to ensuring their effectiveness. So, let’s jump right in.

1. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

This is the metric that indicates how likely customers would be to recommend your product or service to their friends and family. A good net promoter score means that your customers are more likely to promote your brand via word-of-mouth. You generally want a score that is in the 50 or higher, with 75 being a great score (keep in mind that no company scores 100).

While there are many different ways to gather this information, the most popular way is through a survey of customers. The survey is comprised of one question. Yep, you guessed it: “How likely would you be to recommend this product or service to your friends and family?” The respondents would be asked to rate their willingness on a scale of 0 to 100, the NPS is then calculated by taking your “promoters” (those who give higher scores) and subtracting your “detractors” (those who give lower scores).

Net promoter score is important because it indicates the health of your pipeline and your brand. Just as it is cheaper to retain employees, it is also cheaper to retain customers. Your NPS is THE metric for showing how well you are treating your customers and how likely they are to promote your product or service.

2. Upselling and Cross-Selling Rate

These metrics speak to the number of sales you have made through an alternate offer. Amazon attributes over 35%of its revenue from upselling, and JetBlue used its upselling program to generate an additional $190M. Shoot for a 1-2 percent additional increase in revenuethrough upselling and cross-selling. Upselling your customers is a great way to generate more revenue, but it cannot be accomplished effectively without your customers feeling valued. Customers want to be in a relationship with companies who will meet their needs, both from a product or service fulfillment standpoint and a customer success standpoint. A customer’s willingness to pay for additional or alternative products is very indicative of how well you are doing in the customer success department.

3. Revenue Per Customer (RPC)

This straightforward, but important metric looks at the average revenue a customer brings the business over a certain period of time. In order to calculate this important data, we need to gather the total amount of revenue generated in our period of interest and divide it by the total number of customers in the same time period. Knowing your RPC is a great way to benchmark your revenue objectives and analyze your strategy. Facebookand Apple both use this metric as key portions of its investor reports, these giants both know the importance of knowing your revenue per customer metrics. Customer success initiatives can be judged on the amount of revenue per customer; whether it increases or not is a great indicator of how your customer success program is actually impacting your bottom line.

4. Rate of Returning Visitors (RVR)

RVR is a very meaningful metric for retail, travel, gaming, consumer services, or other consumer-oriented B2C industries. The rate of returning visitors calculates the number of returning visitors to your site. In order to calculate RVR, look at the number of repeat visitors to your site and divide that number by unique visitors. This metric can provide additional insight into your customer success strategies, especially as they relate to your content and user experience. Customers that like the onsite experience and can easily navigate to resources will return again and again. If your RVR is low, you may want to consider options to increase the overall experience of your site.

5. Customer Effort Score (CES)

There is perhaps no other metric more important for customer service accountability than customer effort score. CES refers to the amount of work a customer had to go through in order to accomplish a certain task, like return an item, upgrade their subscription, or any other task that can be accomplished on the client side of your business model. This metric is measured through surveys, where customers are asked “How much effort did you have to put in to make a purchase?” The answers are then scored on a scale of 1 to 7, or 1 to 5, with one being low effort and higher scores indicating higher effort. CES is a great way of examining any barriers or pain points in the customer journey. Once pain points have been identified by CES, it is up to you and your team to fix them.

Final Thoughts

At the end of the day, there are many different metrics that can be tracked and analyzed in order to gain a more granular perspective on different aspects of your customer success strategy and execution. The above KPIs should be viewed as a foundational starting point for gauging the health of your customer success program and for a way to gain insights into areas of your business that can be augmented with additional customer success solutions. If you should want more information on how to gain an even deeper, more impactful look at your customer success programs, you can reach us here.

What is Digital Customer Service and How to Improve It

Posted on Michael Hartsog

In today’s climate, customer service is an essential part of any business. With so many  choices and resources at a buyer’s fingertips, companies must continue to invest in their customer service infrastructure in order to get ahead of the competition. That’s where digital customer service comes in. If you’re asking, “what is digital customer service?” then you’ve come to the right place. In this article, we will define digital customer service, provide some examples, and discuss ways you can improve your own customer service across the digital channels your customers care about. So, without further ado, let’s dive in.

Definition

The most basic definition of digital customer service is the practice of meeting customers’ needs across digital channels and platforms. Customer service can take place across multiple digital channels, such as live chat, SMS/text, or Apple Business Chat. The popularity of direct messaging with brands on social channels like Whatsapp, Facebook, and Twitter have also opened up new ways for consumers to engage with companies.

The channels that are best for your business will depend on your customer’s preferences. For some businesses, offering live chat on the company’s website may be the best way to serve your customer, while others may find consumers reaching out to them on social media. The biggest benefit of digital customer service is deflecting phone calls to lower cost digital channels. Reducing customer wait times and automating part or all of a conversation resulting in higher agent productivity are huge benefits that Quiq’s clients have realized in addition to higher customer satisfaction scores

Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s look at a few examples of digital customer service channels and dig a little deeper into the benefits they provide.

Digital Customer Service Channels

Business Text Messaging

One of the most popular channels for digital customer service is business text messaging. SMS text messaging has grown exponentially in terms of popularity and use due to the fact that 66% of consumers prefer text messages over calls.

Consumers use their cell phones for everything from banking to shopping. Business text messaging gives customers resolution in 25% less time than a phone call or an email. From an operational standpoint, messaging is a real boost to agent productivity, With asynchronous messaging, agents can handle multiple simultaneous conversations.

This is accomplished largely through the automation of routine tasks that were once handled with expensive manual labor. Make sure you are automating every routine task in your customer service pipeline. This will free up labor hours to work for you in another, more profitable area. When digital customer service is done right, it saves you and your customer both time and money.

The ability to engage with a brand over social media has become a foregone conclusion for most consumers. It shouldn’t come as a shock that people expect to see the brands they trust on these apps since they spend so much time interacting with others. For example, Facebook Messenger has over 1.3 billion monthly users and Twitter has 145 million daily users

It’s also not a shock that companies have responded by meeting their customers where they already are.There are 60 million active business pages on Facebook and 92% of companies tweet more than once a day. That’s a lot of activity and companies have seized the opportunity to engage with their consumers.

Live Chat

Using your website as a portal for customer service issues is a great way to make use of the digital infrastructure you already have in place. You can efficiently meet customers’ needs by being exactly where they expect you to be, waiting to talk with them about their needs or concerns. While this feature used to be a high-priced upgrade, it is now considered an essential part of a web presence by 44% of online consumers.

If a customer is browsing your site and has a question, it is much easier for them to click on a chat bubble than to call your contact center With messaging you can offer customer service without having to interrupt their  experienceAs with SMS or social chat, customer service agents can handle multiple conversations.

Now that we’ve looked at a few examples of digital customer service, let’s talk about what you can do to improve customer service channels. Since everyone’s business, market conditions, goals, and budget are different, the best way to approach the improvement of your digital customer service channels is to ask yourself a few questions:

Are you accessible…enough?

When you look across the channels that are available to your customers do you see lengthy queues or spikes in abandonment rates in any channel or during certain times of the day? These are definitely signs that your customers aren’t reaching you on their terms. There may be others you should keep an eye out for but Quiq clients have found long wait times and abandonment rates are the tell tale signs that they aren’t being accessible enough.

Many of Quiq’s clients have implemented messaging to reduce wait times and help customers after normal business hours. Messaging, along with features like routing rules, suggested replies, and bots have helped Quiq’s clients manage conversations with the efficiency their customers  need.

Do you know what options are available to you?

Have you done your research on the latest digital channels? Offering SMS/Text, live chat, and social media channels are the basic channels that your customers expect. Are you familiar with verified SMS, Apple Business Chat, and Google’s Business Messages?

These messaging channels are some of the latest developments that help brands present customers with trusted, secure channels to get pre-sales support or post sales service. For example, Apple Business Chat and Google’s Business Messages are rich communication services (RCS) that can expedite appointment scheduling and shopping. These messaging channels even enables customers to complete transactions without ever leaving their conversation.

Are you keeping it simple?

By encouraging you to keep things simple, we’re not advocating for you to rely on traditional channels like email and phone calls. Quite the opposite actually. We’ve seen companies simplify engagement by adding digital channels. Adding digital channels or implementing more advanced features like chat bots are not as complex as you may think and makes initiating and managing conversations simple for both your agents and your customers.

Quiq’s messaging platform has an intuitive agent desktop that makes it easy for agents to manage multiple, simultaneous conversations across all of our supported channels. Your customers get the freedom to choose their preferred channel to engage with your company while agents have the technology they need to deliver great service.

Quiq customer service messaging platform on mobile and desktop

Final Thoughts

As you begin to investigate your digital customer service strategies and methodologies, remember that the fundamentals of customer service have not changed. People still want to be treated fairly, with respect, and in a professional manner — they just want to get that treatment when and where they want it. As you look to vendors to help you accomplish your customer service goals, look for those can provide all of the things your customers are looking for in a manner that is seamless, fast, and integrated.

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10 Omni-channel Customer Service Best Practices You Can Count On

Posted on The Quiq Team

Today’s purchaser has evolved to a savvy, well-researched shopper who is quite comfortable online. With the prevalence of personalized options and experiences across the wide range e-commerce sites, your buyers are not only used to a personalized experience — they expect it. Therefore, it stands to reason that your website must be able to live up to the expectations of your customers. That means you need to offer up a seamless customer service experience that is both customer-centric and intuitive. You must create a customer service infrastructure that can take into every channel because you never know which channel your sales will come from.

This means developing an omni-channel customer service experience that you can count on. That’s why we made this list of 10 omni-channel customer service best practices. Use these best practices to increase the performance of your customer service platforms and continue to meet the expectations of your customers.

10 Omni-channel Customer Service Best Practices

1. Make the Digital Experience More Appealing

Shoppers today expect their experience on your website to be just as appealing, if not more appealing, than their experience in-store. That means your website needs to be simple, easy to navigate, and overall pleasant to look at. It has also has to be able to handle a wide array of support capabilities that the customer cannot see. In order to pull this off, you really need to understand who your target customers are and then create product descriptions and visualizations that appeal to your target customer’s point of view. Among other things, you will also need to enhance your onsite navigation with features like site search and an automated chat feature that assist your visitors in real-time. Providing a great user experience will alleviate many customer service pain points, freeing up time, resources, and energy that can be directed at more complex issues.

Make the digital experience more appealing

2. Provide a Self-Service Section

Another way to augment your customer service strategy is to let your customers find the information they need, without using your customer service agents. Empowering your customers is a great way to save time and resources, while also serving the customers needs. Set up a self-service section that your customers can access. This area will include a multitude of digital assets that your customers can reference including product images, PDFs, white papers, operator manuals, frequently asked questions (FAQs) and answers, instructional videos, or anything that is specific to your business you feel would be a great resource for your customers.

3. Share Information Across Departments

One of the hallmarks of a great customer service program is the ability to enable your sales team to perform better. The best way to create an organization where the customer service department is an asset to the sales department is by installing a framework that allows for the timely transfer of information across departments. Customer service portals, agents and chat windows, are filled with customer insights that you or your sales team can use to better plan and message your value proposition to potential customers. All of that purchase history, search terms, and website analytics needs to be shared across departments so that it can support the omni-channel experience.

4. Have a Responsive Web Design

This is a fundamental and extremely critical aspect of customer service. Responsive design allows your customers to access your website in any format, whether it be a tablet, cell phone, or desktop computer. Mobile usage surpassed desktop usage over 2 years ago and shoppers are researching and making purchases on their phones more than ever.

Allowing for responsive design will not only make it easier for customers to get in contact with you, as well as allow customers to do whatever they need to on their mobile device. This is more convenient for your customers and will result in a great experience that keeps them returning.

5. Know Your Buyer

Just like your product or service catalog is set up with messaging that is directed at your target buyer, so too must your customer service strategy be positioned in a way that speaks to your target buyer. Millennials are now the largest generation in the US workforce and are handy with every type of digital resource. Not only that, the new generations have the power of customer reviews at their fingertips. Before the dawn of review sites, businesses were solely in control of their brand image. In the modern market, new buyers have the power of social media and review networks.
Millennials have high expectations. They demand great mobile experiences and expect to be able to access the information they need whenever they want. If their expectations are not met, they will let the world know about it. This should underline the importance of providing a stellar omni-channel customer service experience that speaks directly to these influencers.

6. Centralize Internal Information

This best practice goes hand-in-hand with number 3 (share information across departments). No matter what business model you operate under, maintaining and organizing every single source of information related to your business in a single location allows customer service employees to know where they can find the “truth” their customers are after. No matter which channel your customers choose to reach you through, your customer service representatives will be able to access the central hub of information for any of the resources they need to resolve the issue. A centralized hub for your internal information will ensure the consistency of the answers and information that is being put out to customers, whether from a person, automated chatbot, or another messaging system.

Centralize internal information

7. Create a Highly Adaptive Environment

The nature of the modern technological environment all but guarantees that there will be advances in technology, shifts in customer perception, and market factors that demand flexibility. When you are designing your customer service infrastructure, make sure that you create it in a way that allows for additional adaptability and flexibility. If you make your structure to rigid, you will find it difficult to adapt to future trends, technology, or market conditions. Make sure you use technology that is easy to implement and can be configured easily to ensure a smooth transition into the future.

8. Facilitate a Real-Time Environment

Customers are trying to get their problems solved quickly. In fact, per CCW Digital’s recent customer experience study, 70% of customers demand resolutions on the first contact. Making your customer service an omni-channel environment that supports real-time conversations is, without a doubt, one of the best features you can incorporate.

When a customer wants help, its imperative you interact and solve their issues before they find another company who will. With technology like text messaging, web chat, and social messaging, you can have your customer service agents solving your customers’ problems as soon as you become aware of them, increasing customer satisfaction and brand loyalty in the process.

9. Prepare for the Next Generation

Preparing for the next wave of customers is paramount to your business’ future success. A streamlined self-service capability is a great way to do just that. Setting up your customer service strategy to let customers handle any account specific issues like updating permissions, address changes, and other administrative duties themselves is a great way to ensure that the next generation can solve their problems quickly and easily.

10. Use a Data-Driven Approach

Off all the best practices, this is perhaps the hardest yet most valuable best practice you can implement. Think about it from a strategic perspective for a second: data should be influencing your decisions across the wide spectrum of your business. Data is what supports your decision to market towards a certain customer segment, its what directs your attention to growth opportunities — it should be no different for your customer service strategy. Allowing data to guide your approach means that you prioritize the gathering, storing, and analysis of data. Throughout your customer service platform channels, make sure you that you are using the appropriate solutions. Are you using the right solution? You are if it meets customer needs AND provides quantitative feedback.

How do you know if your customers are abandoning the customer service pipeline if you are not tracking the abandonment rate? That is challenge businesses face: how do we collect data from multiple channels and organize it in a manner that we can act on? The first step is to make sure your solutions are able to provide you the data you need to take actionable steps on reporting metrics.

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Increase Conversion Rates With These 7 Business Messaging Tips

Posted on Max Fortis

While conversion rates are more traditionally tied to eCommerce sites, it’s a metric that every company cares about. A conversion can mean different things for different companies. Websites can measure conversions by the number of visits, form fills, subscriptions or, more commonly the number of sales made. The goal you’re measuring can be a macro goal, like requesting a demo or it could be a micro-conversion such as watching a video. No matter what the conversion is, there’s always one universal thread that binds them all together. Everyone wants more of them.

Your conversion rate is a direct reflection of the number of visitors that find value when they visit your website. For the purpose of this article, we’ll think about a conversion as any action that leads to revenue generation such as a cart checkout or an appointment confirmed. In this article, we’ll share a few customer messaging tips to help you increase your online conversion rate.

Text Messaging Increases Conversions

Driving traffic to your site is only part of the conversion equation. Once you get traffic there, that user will either bounce from your site or engage in some way. Messaging may not be an obvious way to get more conversions, but it’s proven to be an effective one. Again, we’re seeking to move a site visitor to complete a transaction. There may be some barriers you have to remove for that visitor before they complete the transaction, such as finding the right solution on your site or answering questions about security. Messaging is the vehicle to help you do that.

The average conversion rate across for online retailer is just about 2%. While that may seem shockingly low to some, achieving that number takes some serious effort. Optimizing your site with compelling copy, clear call to actions and easy, logical navigation are critical to hit even the average number of conversions. It’s not unrealistic to achieve conversion rates higher than 2%, but you need to employ ways to get your site visitors engaged with your brand.

Quiq clients have realized an increase in conversions when they’ve implemented messaging. Retail clients, like The Laundress for example, use messaging to provide customers with personalized help to find and purchase the right products. Messaging has allowed their agents to provide the same kind of white-glove service to online customers that visitors to the retailer’s trendy SoHo location have come to expect.

At Quiq, we believe any customer should be able to reach any business via messaging. Why? Because interacting via messaging is the fastest and most convenient way to do business. We’ve also found that messaging encourages customers to re-engage with your brand.

Whether you already have messaging available on your site or are considering opening this up as a channel for your customers, there are a few critical things to keep in mind to make the experience truly beneficial for you and your website visitor. Follow these 7 customer messaging tips to increase conversion rates.

7 Customer Messaging Tips to Increase Conversions

1. Make live chat available right on the homepage

On a sales floor, you don’t let customers suffer in silence. At a trade show, you wouldn’t let prospects just wander aimlessly around the booth. It shouldn’t be hard for customers to reach you on your website. Put out the welcome mat and let customers know that you’re available to answer questions right away.

There are a few asynchronous ways your customers can contact you that sit under the Messaging umbrella. Live chat, SMS, MMS, rich messaging, and social platforms like Twitter and Facebook all present opportunities for you to connect, engage, and convert. All of these channels can be easily managed with the Quiq platform.

2. Make text messaging just as easy

If you’ve ever tried live chat on a mobile phone you know that the experience is less than ideal. Considering the number of purchase decisions that begin with and end with search on a mobile phone, it would be wise to make sure your mobile experience rival that of your desktop experience.

While chat may be the answer for desktop customer messaging, it can be clumsy and cumbersome on a mobile device. Instead, enable a “Text Us” option on your mobile optimized site so that your customer can communicate via their native messaging app. Most traditional chat experiences require both agent and customer to maintain a constant presence on chat, otherwise the chat “times out” and closes itself automatically. Because Quiq’s chat and messaging channels are all asynchronous, the conversation is never closed and it never ends. This allows your customer to send and respond to messages when it’s convenient for them.

3. Use inviting imagery

Since we’re visual creatures by nature, the use of well lit, clear images will keep customers engaged in the conversation and provide more context around the conversation. For retailers, this could be just the right enticement for customers to explore more product lines.

Modern messaging apps allow sharing of hi-res images, videos, links, PDFs, and gifs. Include attractive images of products, videos of client testimonies, or even fun emojis depending on the conversation to add that personal touch.

4. Add an element of interactivity

No one likes a one-sided conversation where one side is talking and the other side may, or may not, be listening. People and your customers want to be heard. It is critical to ensure there are open, two-way channels to support this requirement. Some communication channels, like email may feel like you were “talking at” your customers, modern messaging apps, like Apple Business Chat and Google RCS helps you “talk with” your customers.

These messaging platforms, allow consumers to easily interact with rich cards. Now consumers can choose from a list of available times to schedule an appointment or select the color of an item from a list products – all within a messaging conversation with just a few taps.

5. Give an approximate time for a reply

Every channel has certain expectations that come with it. The same goes with messaging. Customers expect ease, convenience and timeliness. If a successful promo or other event spikes your wait times on the messaging channel, let your customers know how long they can expect to wait.

Couple their approximate wait time with a message such as “Our wait times are longer than expected due to our successful winter sale”. This seemingly small tweak not only notifies your customers how long they may wait, but also provides some social proof that affirms your brand. As we’ve come to understand, social proof, like referrals or online reviews can help online conversions.

6. Provide multiple options for communication

Contact center leadership may cringe at the thought of having to manage multiple contact points simultaneously. Omni-channel communications can sound daunting but Quiq Messaging makes it manageable.

You never know where a prospective buyer may see you. An intriguing Tweet, an irresistible photo on Facebook, or a search on Siri could prompt a prospect to reach out to you. With Quiq, you can easily manage every conversation that comes in via text, live chat, app, social profiles, or searches on Google and Apple.

7. Have a real person available to assist with questions

Consumers are turning to messaging because they’ve exhausted their patience on FAQ pages and with email, and they simply don’t want to call for help just to wade through a confusing IVR system to talk to a live agent. They want answers, and they want them now.

Quiq clients have found success in using technology such as chatbots to gather information prior to handing the conversation over to a live agent. The main objective is supporting the agent with enough information to help your customer faster. Use automation to enhance the human touch, not replace it.

Increasing conversion rates, no matter what that may mean for your site is about getting visitors engaged. While messaging have proven over and over again to be the friction-free way for customers to get post-sales service, we’re seeing more evidence everyday that proves it is also providing the pre-sales support that increases conversions. Ready to join the growing list of Quiq clients who are realizing a boost in their conversion rates? Request to see a short demo today.

Creditunions.com: 7 Strategies to Support Self-Service

Posted on Mike Zinne

Loan processing velocity, abandonment reduction and expired application rescues; collection prompts including repayment and delinquency; and contact center enhancement are areas text messaging helps credit unions spur member activity and interaction.

Think Quiq!

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Pier 1 Cozies Up To Effortless Customer Engagement

Posted on Mike Zinne

Retailer Pier 1 Imports, has been around for 56 years and knows a thing or two about evolving within a competitive retail market. The importer of home goods and seasonal products also knows about catering to the changing and diverse tastes of their customers.

Shifting Buyer Behavior

Pier 1, as well as all other retailers, are experiencing growth in mobile shopping and purchasing as customers continue to look for ways to buy that are more convenient for them. The company made it a top priority to make their customer experience “easy and effortless”, so that she could shop when, where, and however she liked. The retailer launched its eCommerce channel in July of 2012 and has seen rapid growth in the online sales.

“As the business model became more complex, we realized that a lot of our systems were outdated legacy systems and we needed to upgrade our technology to make our associates more efficient.”

Laurie Simpter, Senior Manager, Customer Relations, Pier 1 Imports

During the first three years after implementing their eCommerce site, their contact center struggled to keep up with the new volume.

Pier 1 decided to implement Quiq’s messaging software as consumer traffic to the pier1.com site continued to grow. The shift to more digital channels proved to be, once again, an evolution to serve their customers better that allowed the company to have a more efficient conversation with their customer.

Motivated by Mobile

Phone with messaging services

The leadership team recognized that email and phone weren’t the most effective or preferred ways for customers to ask questions. It was also suspected that the inability to quickly answer these simple questions in-line negatively impacted website conversions and sales.

Many retailers are experiencing similar issues with email and phone as consumers’ contact preferences have changed. Research shows that 66% of consumers rank mobile messaging as their first or second choice to contact a company.

The company started with chat as a contact channel. The channel was readily accepted, and volume grew rapidly while positively impacting website conversion.

With the effectiveness of chat and an increase in mobile traffic to the website, Pier 1 looked at SMS/text messaging for their mobile site as the next obvious channel. While the retailer normally targets the 35 – 55 age group, they realized that their customer could be any age and that a younger buyer generally uses SMS and text messaging as their preferred channel over phone and email.

Contact Us

Q: What made you look at SMS as a contact channel?

A:  SMS combines the efficiency of chat with the convenience of email – which is not an immediate response channel.

The ability to easily share pictures was another customer-driven requirement. Whether it’s a space they are trying to decorate, an item they are trying to match, or a damaged product they received, the ability for customers to easily share photos and videos from their mobile device directly supports the “effortless experience” Pier 1 seeks to deliver.

Implementing with Efficiency

Prior to launching the eCommerce channel, the contact center had about 25 agents and supported 2 contact channels – phone and email. Contacts were heavily skewed towards supporting stores. The company used a legacy CRM and had over 25 siloed systems & applications that contact center agents accessed for data.

Man holding a phone taking a picture

The company has integrated many of their siloed systems into just a handful, and grown its contact center to over 150 agents with over 85% of

the contact center conversations driven by website and eCommerce purchases. The company also invested in a new CRM solution. Streamlining and efficiency have been top priority over the past few years.  The addition of the messaging channel had to complement the company’s efforts.

Quiq Messaging did not disappoint. Once Pier 1 decided to add SMS as a channel, implementation took about 2 weeks and went live in December 2017. In fact, Chris Thompson, CX Manager at Pier 1 feels it was “one of the easiest implementations we have ever done.” Quiq’s messaging platform also seamlessly integrates into Pier 1’s new CRM system, right inside the agent UI, both ensuring the messaging channel wasn’t siloed and that the agents could easily handle inquiries from multiple channels from one interface.

“Every company wants efficiency. For us, chat and SMS interactions take about half of the total time of a phone call. We are gaining payroll efficiency by shifting contacts away from phone and email to chat and SMS.”

Chris Thompson, Pier 1 Imports

Pier1 ImportsLessons Learned

Pier 1 learned 2 really important lessons about the SMS channel, right from the start:

     1. Phone and email decreased; chat and SMS increased

     2. Customers LOVED the convenience of directly messaging Pier 1

The retailer saw a measurable channel shift. Customers shifted away from phone and email to chat and SMS.

Q: How have customers responded to the SMS channel? 

A:  Our customers loved the convenience of SMS. Within the first 30 minutes of going live, one of our customers said, “Wow, I had no idea that Pier 1 had a texting option and it was so easy. I am using this from now on. Thank You!”

What’s Next

Pier 1 feels that they’ve reached a state of proficiency with SMS, and seeks to expand its presence in their short and long-term roadmap. For the short term, Pier 1 will add a ‘Text Us’ option within the phone channel (IVR) for when hold times reach a pre-determined threshold. They will also be limiting phone hours with an IVR message encouraging customers to reach out to the company through text messaging.

With the continued focus to create an effortless experience for their customer, Pier 1 plans to add a messaging option to social media channels, while expanding messaging options to the desktop and tablet website instances.

Customer Spotlight: Aura Building Trust with Lines of Credit and Communication

Posted on Mike Zinne

To Aura, being customer-obsessed means placing trust at the center of the relationship between its customers and its services. The company was founded in 2014 with a mission to provide economic justice for Americans who have little to no credit history but need access to capital for both ordinary and extraordinary circumstances.

Now its white label lending platform, Lendify, which was recently distinguished by the U.S. Treasury Department as one of the few for-profits with CDFI (Community Development Financial Institution) certification, can be found at seven hundred locations across four states. If not for Aura, hundreds of thousands of borrowers would not be able to access affordable and responsibly underwritten capital. Many of Lendify’s borrowers do not qualify for credit cards and are forced to resort to predatory and costly payday or auto title loans.

Trust as a Two-way Street

Aura views trust as a two-way street. Borrowers prove their trustworthiness by providing evidence of their ability to repay their loans while Aura demonstrates trust by opening up free, ubiquitous access to loan repayment locations, offering transparency of its loan terms in easy-to-understand language, providing credit education together with a free credit score, honoring consumer protections at the core of its policies – like reporting on-time repayment to the credit bureaus – so that each and every borrower is set-up for success at repayment. That’s why Aura looked to Quiq to open the text messaging channel – the trusted, preferred, and convenient way to engage with their target audience.

Aura’s retail network business model is strategically designed to meet customers where they already engage in financial services – at the grocery store, money transfer businesses, and now, on their mobile devices. When the company implemented text messaging in 2017, it had a vision of reaching and engaging prospects and customers more effectively. The text messaging channel has allowed Aura to provide personalized communication through a channel that customers feel comfortable using, and on their own time. In addition to opening up a new channel to drive growth and deepen relationships, Quiq Messaging has helped Aura’s borrowers stay on track with on-time payments by providing an easy solution to payment reminders.

“We want to provide our customers with a seamless application and borrowing experience on the channel that is most preferred to them.”

David Schwartz – Senior Manager, Operations Strategy and Workforce Management, Aura

Before implementing Quiq Messaging, Aura engaged mainly by voice, verifying applications over the phone, so they knew their customer base used their mobile device. Outreach efforts were not as effective over the phone and many voicemails left by agents weren’t being returned. Using SMS messaging was a new concept, but it gave customers a way to engage without feeling invaded, especially if expecting a tough conversation.

Aura viewed engagement with customers as key to helping borrowers improve their financial health by making sure their loans remained in good standing. Aura used collections as their pilot program with Quiq, using outbound text messaging to help customers get their loan payments back on track. Collection agents love using the SMS messaging channel because they are connecting more than ever before and the more people they reach, the more effective they are.

The company has been happy to see that borrowers like to engage via SMS/text messaging even if it is for collections. In fact, Aura has seen more engagements than anticipated. Aura is also happy that many customers are proactive and come to them to look for guidance by texting questions like “When’s my next payment?” or “What do I need to do to get my loan into good standing?”.

What’s Next

The company plans to continue growing and using text messaging to support its commitment to make life better for their customers. Aura will soon be launching a financial health platform to help prospects, borrowers and those who are declined deepen their knowledge of personal finance in support of a more financially healthy future.

Aura is also looking for new ways to bring the messaging channel into their customers’ journey, with an eye towards the loan application process. The company anticipates the application process will be similar to collections in that an Aura agent will walk through loan applications via text messaging to make sure potential borrowers know what the qualifications are and what paperwork is required.

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

Driving Credit Union Messaging Adoption: What Works?

Posted on The Quiq Team

Loan processing velocity, abandonment reduction and expired application rescues; collection prompts including repayment and delinquency; and contact center enhancement are areas text messaging helps credit unions spur member activity and interaction.

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How Messaging Transforms Customer Service And Support: A Visit With Bozeman Startup Quiq

Posted on Lauren Winder

Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, keynote speaker and New York Times and Wall Street Journal, bestselling author. Recently, Shep shared why he thinks some brands have decoded how to connect with their customers. Read the Forbes article to hear Shep Hyken’s recommendation on using messaging to increase customer satisfaction.

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3 Ways Outbound Text Message Marketing Can Generate New Revenue

Posted on Max Fortis

Looking for ways your business can bring in more revenue? The answer may be right under your nose, or at least under your thumbs. The messaging channel, and specifically SMS or text messaging is the hot new communication channel for many companies, and it is one of the most important channels businesses should be focused on. We talk a lot about how companies can use messaging to provide better and more convenient customer service, but what about how messaging can generate new revenue?

Sure, a company could always decide to raise prices to generate new revenue, but there are other ways to skin that top-line cat. At the heart of any new revenue generating strategy is acquiring new customers, or having existing customers spend more and/or more frequently. In this article, we’ll take a look at how text message marketing can generate new revenue by influencing these three levers.

What are the Advantages of SMS Marketing?

You’ve probably been hearing a lot about outbound messaging these days. That’s because outbound SMS messaging is different than other channels for several reasons. By far, the most obvious reason is that smartphones have become ubiquitous. Everyone has a mobile device within reach, almost 24/7, and people primarily use their smartphones for texting. The pervasiveness of mobile technology makes it easy to see why text messaging would be the ideal means to engage with customers.

The second reason is consumers still view the messaging channel as a pure, noise-free way of communicating with friends, family, and even the brands they know and trust. This is evidenced by the incredibly high open rates for SMS (96%) and subsequent response rates (35%) of text messages.

The third reason, and this is probably the most important of them all, is that text messaging fits into the digital-first lifestyle of connected customers. Consumers have to be pulled away from their busy lives to engage with companies via phone or email. With text messaging, the consumer is in control of the pace of the conversation.

Turns out, giving that control back to consumers isn’t a bad thing. In fact, here are three instances when giving control of the conversation back to the consumer encourages them to let their guard down and can even build trust.

  1. Getting New Customers

Conversations about mobile marketing will usually conjure images of mass text messages sent to unsuspecting recipients. When we say get new customers, we don’t recommend sending bulk text messages to people who haven’t opted-in to your brand’s communications. There are many examples of Text-2-Join, Text-4-Info, Text-2-Win campaigns, and the like, that have gone sideways. Some consumers actually consider this type of outbound messaging too invasive and will not hesitate to respond with a “STOP” command, severing mobile messaging ties with the company.

When we talk about using business sms messaging to expand the customer base, we’re talking about using messaging as a way to be accessible to your prospective customers, who have opted-in to receive your communications. Influence their decision to buy by being a convenient, timely and trustworthy source of information. A text message to a consumer who may still be in the research phase of their purchase can serve as a welcome mat to ask the questions or receive the information that will get them to a “ready to buy” phase.

At Quiq, we believe companies that are present at the consumers’ moment of need, are the ones that are invited into a deeper relationship with those consumers. One of those critical moments may be right before they actually purchase and when they need guidance on your products or services. Take the pressure off of consumers to engage with you on your timeframe by leveraging the messaging channel. Invite your prospective buyers to engage with you during the pre-sales process to set your brand up as a helpful, accessible advisor.

  1. Encouraging Customers to Spend More

You’ve earned the right to call them customers, well, Bob’s your uncle. If they are happy with you, then it should be easy to get them to buy more, right? The problem is, you have to cut through so much noise and clutter to get their attention time and time again. Until now. With today’s technology and Quiq, companies can actually engage with customers on the channel that is most preferred to them.

Remember when we said text messaging is a noise free channel and that text messages have a 96% open rate? Well, we should add that most text messages are read within 3 minutes of receipt with a response rate anywhere from 32% to 45%. Now, you can send a call to action where people actually take action.

With messaging, you can take advantage of cross-selling and encourage customers to purchase complementary products or services. You could make larger sales by bundling products or services or encourage customers to buy a new product or service you offer. The real magic lies in the fact that now, these messages aren’t lost in their inbox, like email.

  1. Influence Customers to Spend More Frequently

Given everything that was stated above, the ability to increase repeat business may be an obvious outcome of using outbound SMS to get in front of your customers. But it deserves repeating in this context.

Even if you entice a customer to make a larger purchase once, it doesn’t mean they’ll be back. Mobilizing existing customers to come back may be the key to generating new revenue since returning customers spend 67% more than new customers.

Many a promotion has fallen on deaf ears because it was lost in a stream of emailed offers or thrown away with a stack of direct mail and weekly flyers. Consumers trust that the messages they opted-in to receive from brands are filled with information that can add some value to their busy lives. With Quiq’s outbound SMS, you can create timely and targeted offers and promotions that are viewed as valued communications, and thus, get attention.

Implementing Effective Text Message Marketing Campaigns

Text message marketing is most effective when it’s utilized as part of a greater cross-channel messaging approach. When you give customers the choice to interact with your brand through their preferred messaging channel, they’re more likely to stay engaged with you. Although SMS has the greatest potential reach of any messaging channel (practically everyone can receive and send a text), some customers may prefer to chat over Facebook Messenger or a similar channel. How do you determine which channel is a customer’s favorite? Give them a choice to reach out to you from a range of channels and see which one they pick.

One of the most effective messaging campaign strategies that has emerged recently is the use of questions and polls. Asking for consumer feedback empowers those that want to have their voice heard and shows customers that you care about what they have to say. The brilliance of this strategy lies in the fact that it is not salesy at all, and yet it can build loyalty and drive conversions. Once a consumer has shared some feedback, your business is free to make suggestions of goods and services that could fit their needs.

Realize the Advantages of SMS Marketing

As you can see, the advantages of SMS marketing are very real. Messaging makes it easy for customers to get in touch whenever they need you and you can help them, all in one conversation. Messaging makes it easy to have real interactions with your customers while answering their questions. Helping them at their time of need, learn more about your products and link them straight to the information they’re looking for. Quiq clients use messaging for meaningful engagement with customers across their entire journey. Our clients seamlessly and consistently communicate with customers across mobile, social and web to improve customer relationships.

Quiq makes it easy for customers to contact a business via Messaging, the preferred channel already in use with friends and family. With Quiq, customers can 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. In return, companies get a digital engagement platform to communicate with customers and gain valuable consumer insights.

Discover the true potential of cross-channel messaging for your business by trying out a Quiq Demo today.

SMS Software for Business: Guide To Increase Customer Retention

Posted on Max Fortis

Retaining your customers and creating brand loyalty doesn’t happen overnight. One must be deliberate and take action to create opportunities for great experiences to drive repeat business and build brand loyalty. To keep customers coming back to your business, it’s critical to be where your customers are and foster the communication channels they prefer.

Customers today are digital-first and want interactions with companies to fit into their busy lives. That’s why text messaging is the preferred method of contact for the majority of consumers. It is how they communicate with family and friends, so it is ubiquitous. Text and SMS messaging allows for starts and stops in conversations, putting control and convenience in the hands of your customers. You just have to be accessible over SMS messaging when they need something. In this article, we take a look at how your business can use SMS software to increase customer retention.

Return on Customer Investment

It takes a lot of time and effort to get consumers to click on your ad, visit your booth, or jump on a call with you. Earning a consumer’s attention for the first time can cost 5 to 10 times more than it takes to retain an existing one. We all know customer acquisition takes a considerable investment of time, money, and effort.

The return on that investment depends on how long you’re able to keep customers satisfied and for how long. Over the life of that customer, you’ll reap benefits beyond repeat sales. Long-term customers spend more money because they’re familiar and happy with your brand, will refer your products, and will spend less money to advertise.

Customers Happier With Text Messaging

At Quiq, we exist to help our clients be where their customers are. Leading brands communicate on their customer’s channel of choice at their customer’s moment of need. Being there for connected customers during their moment of need has become our mantra because we know it can make or break whether a customer returns to a brand for future interactions.

The ability to engage with your company, resolve issues quickly, and get timely and relevant information is a large part of your brand, so make sure it’s as easy and convenient for the customer as possible.

There’s plenty of research that, not surprisingly, reveals text messaging as the preferred way to communicate. Consumers rely on SMS messaging as a way to communicate with family, friends, and yes, even companies because it is so convenient and doesn’t disrupt their busy lives. Text messaging has become so prevalent that customers have come to expect the ability to message their favorite brands. In fact, our research reveals that 69% of consumers expect to see text messaging as a customer service communication channel.

Our research also reveals that customers who use messaging as their primary communication channel have significantly higher CSAT scores than those who use phone or email. The higher CSAT scores are partly a result of customers who are able to seek support on their terms – support that happens on their timeline and on a channel that is convenient for them.

Building Loyalty Through Text Messaging

Like any long-term relationship, building customer loyalty takes trust and a personal connection. Traditional means of engaging with a company, like the phone channel and email, can hinder and even damage the client-customer relationship.

Think of the customer who needs immediate help and is frustrated by a long or confusing IVR system, or who sits on hold for 20 minutes to speak to an agent, or who has to continually scan their email to see if they have finally received a response. Those experiences, frustration and all, are now part of that customer’s perception of your brand. It’s hard to make a personal connection if the customer comes into the conversation already frustrated and confused, or can’t connect with an agent at all.

The customer may have been satisfied with their product or service up to the point when they needed assistance. The messaging channel delivers the highest CSAT scores because it gives customers an easy, familiar, and convenient way to engage with you. Whether customers choose to send a text on their mobile phone, chat while they are on your website, or connect through social media, these channels allow customers to leave a message and continue doing what they were doing while awaiting a prompt response.

Texting with your customers differentiates your business and shows your customers that you value their time and your relationship with them. Quiq clients that implement messaging can deliver positive experiences consistently over the messaging channel.

Customer loyalty is built through consistently fulfilling customers’ expectations of service. Messaging takes away the friction that wait times and overly slow responses create and makes it more likely that your customer will engage with you again.

The Future of Customer Loyalty

Think of building customer loyalty as a bank. It takes time to build up a reserve, but consider every positive engagement as a deposit into that customer loyalty account. Since today’s customers use their smartphones for everything from buying products to contacting support, It makes sense that customers expect these engagements to happen on mobile devices.

By 2019, requests for customer support through consumer messaging apps will exceed requests for customer support through social media according to Gartner research. A smart device is always within reach, so it’s not surprising that mobile messaging is one of the fastest growing support channels. Today’s consumers want to be able to reach companies on their terms and when they need something. Text messaging and SMS software an easy solutions to drive positive customer experiences that keep them coming back for more.

Quiq makes it easy for customers to contact a business via Messaging, the preferred channel already in use with friends and family.  With Quiq, customers can 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. In return, companies get a digital engagement platform to communicate with customers.

Luggage Free: Unpacking The New Customer Experience

Posted on Cristina Bravo-Olmo

Luggage Free ships your luggage worldwide giving customers the option to travel without the hassle of their bags. The company provides white glove service that is all about convenience, so naturally, they wanted to make the ability for customers to contact them simple and straightforward.

Over the last ten years, the Luggage Free team has seen mobile searches steadily climb. As searches on mobile and tablet eclipsed their desktop searches, the team looked at their engagement from a user experience point of view. They wanted to make communication easy and decided to deploy Quiq’s chat and messaging channels.

“Text transcends a customer’s whole life. They no longer need to be at their desktop to engage with us. They can send us a chat or a text and go on about their lives. Then, instead of getting an email, they receive a real-time alert when their bags are delivered.”

Jeff Boyd, President, Luggage Free

SMS Software for Better Mobile UX

Luggage Free supported chat, email, and phone channels to engage with customers, but they wanted to be at the front of the competitive curve by offering text messaging. As President, Jeff Boyd puts it “Some people live and die by their email and check it all day, some only check it once a week, but even the ones that check it once a week are always on their phone and we know they constantly check their text messages.” With Quiq Messaging, chat and text messaging are where the vast majority of Luggage Free’s customer interactions take place.

Luggage Free has a worldwide reach and messaging allows customers, no matter what time zone they’re in to reach either of the company’s offices. Their offices are closed for only 6 hours per day worldwide, and Quiq’s messaging platform offers customers who need support outside of business hours, something more dynamic than an automated out of office email. The messages are queued and responded to immediately when agents return to the office.

What’s Next

Following a smooth implementation and ramp up with Quiq Messaging, the company has seen success with pre-sales interactions and can easily communicate with customers during the purchase, booking, and pickup process. Outbound notification messages are next, with an eye towards alerting customers that their bags have been picked up and then delivered to their final destination.

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 at quiq.com.

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5 Critical Times to Set Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for Customer Experience

Posted on The Quiq Team

Service Level Agreements (SLA’s) are agreements that companies use to help their customers understand what kind of service they can expect. SLA’s are commonly used in managed IT services, but that’s not the only place SLA’s are applicable.

SLA’s aren’t just for large companies, service companies, or suppliers. The truth is, every company should use SLA’s to better serve customers – internally and externally. In fact, using SLA’s for customer service is one use that can improve your customer experience and customer satisfaction. The better your SLAs, the more you and your customers benefit. In this post, we’ll take a look at what you can do to make sure your SLA’s improve the experience you deliver.

What an SLA Says About Your Company

A company’s Service Level Agreements can be used to improve customer service levels by instituting an appropriate response time to clients across the entire organization. Setting SLA’s also keeps team members up-to-date on what needs to be addressed.

Setting SLA’s speak volumes about how customer experience is viewed by the company. Setting, measuring, and reporting on SLA’s communicates the importance of timely communication with your customers, sets boundaries and expectations for your staff, and can help define remedies when expectations aren’t met.

While it’s important to meet your customer expectations on every channel, it’s critical for chat and messaging. When it comes to the messaging and chat channels, customers expect, if not demand, timeliness. The ability to get fast, convenient answers or help on demand and on-the-go are exactly why your customers are using messaging in the first place.

There are a number of opportunities where you can set SLA’s in Quiq’s messaging solution. We’ve recognized these events as critical to yield a successful interaction. Let’s look at 5 critical times SLA’s improve your customer experience on the messaging channel.

5 Critical Times to Set SLAs

When we built Quiq’s messaging platform, we wanted to make sure that our clients could set standards in order to consistently deliver an excellent experience on the messaging channel. For the customer service use case, we identified several areas where setting SLA’s could help support the agent workflow, in addition to meeting customer expectations.

Clients who use Quiq can set values that define acceptable standards for specific processes. These values are all editable and may be applied in increments of minutes or seconds.

1. Accepting a conversation –  You can set an SLA to monitor the amount of time an agent has to accept a conversation. A higher threshold increases the time a customer will wait for a response, but also allows multi-tasking agents to finish a task before being presented with new conversations they can accept. Customers don’t want to wait to talk to someone. Setting this SLA can ensure customers receive timely attention. If an agent doesn’t acknowledge the conversation (either accepting or declining the conversation), the conversation before the timer expires, the message will be re-queued. At that point, the agent who didn’t accept that conversation will be placed in a special status called “Current Conversations Only” because the system recognizes the agent may have all the conversations they can handle for now and it doesn’t want an incoming response to a customer to be delayed.

2. Responding to a customer – When an agent is in an active conversation with a customer and a customer responds, the agent must respond back within a timeframe specified by the organization. Much like accepting a conversation, if the agent does not respond before this timer expires, the conversation is re-queued, and the agent is placed in Current Conversations Only status.

3. Pacing the conversation – Quiq’s Adaptive Response Timer (ART) intelligently measures the pace of a conversation based on the customers speed to respond. With that insight, as agents handle multiple conversations at once, the system automatically prioritizes multiple conversations based on which customer is ready for a response. It is important to note that SMS/text, and even chat, conversations may have gaps in time as agents wait for the customer to respond. The customer may be busy with something else, so their cadence has slowed. ART takes this dynamic cadence between replies and responses into account and in addition to automatically prioritizing multiple simultaneous conversations, provides a visual queue for the agent to know how much time is left to respond based on the customer expectations. The settings in Quiq Messaging have been enhanced to even allow clients to control how much the customer’s pace should influence the agent’s response time.

4. Identifying inactive conversations – The beauty of messaging is that customers can step away and go about their lives while engaging in a conversation, unlike a phone call. Conversations, therefore, can take place quickly, or over an extended period of time. Quiq clients have the ability to mark conversations as inactive if the customer has not responded in a certain time period.

What is important to note is that these conversations aren’t closed or disconnected. They are simply set to “inactive”.Marking conversations as inactive allows customers to keep the conversation connected and going with the agent whenever they’re ready. Meanwhile, the agent can focus on other active conversations or accept new ones. Quiq clients can set a timer to determine when a conversation will automatically be marked inactive. An attentive agent will typically mark a conversation inactive before this timer expires.

5. Closing conversations – This timer begins when a conversation is marked inactive, either by an agent or by the system. This allows inactive conversations to be removed from agent lists and closed out. The conversation history is displayed for the agent for every given conversation, so no information is lost as a result of closing a conversation. As for the setting, setting this too low will result in a single interaction spanning multiple, separate conversations. A high setting will cause inactive conversations to accumulate in agents’ queues.

Determining Timeframes for SLAs

Every company is different, so every SLA policy will be different. Defining the values for all of the timers above will be determined by factors such the volume of inquiries from each channel, how many conversations each agent can handle, as well as customer’s expectations.  We’ve made it easy for companies to have access to a myriad of setting around SLA’s so that these values can change as business needs change.

Once you’ve determined initial SLA’s, you can easily monitor and report on the performance of your contact center and adjust as needed. Our real-time reporting dashboards will help you spot any trends, such as missed SLA goals at a company or agent level, which may be an indication that the SLA’s need to be re-evaluated or more training is needed.

SLA’s are really important tools, so it’s worth the investment to hone in on the values for each of the settings mentioned above. Timely responsiveness has always been a priority for our solution and for the company. When you’re ready to talk about implementing messaging and estabilishing SLA’s text us at 646-887-8398 or schedule a demo and we’ll get back to you asap.

Quiq makes it easy for customers to contact a business via Messaging, the preferred channel already in use with friends and family.  With Quiq, customers can 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. In return, companies get a digital engagement platform to communicate with customers. Learn more about Quiq today at quiq.com.

Messaging: Making The Right Choice

Posted on Max Fortis

You’ve been chartered to deploy messaging and web chat in your contact center. You already have a CRM vendor and are hesitant to add any more complexity. You wonder if it is just easier to turn on the messaging and capabilities that your CRM provider offers.

Here are the  3 considerations to help you decide which path to take.

Treat Customers Like People, Not Cases or Incidents

1. Messaging is the new, always-on channel, so think about it differently. The reason you are considering messaging is because it is convenient for customers and offers them a better experience. So don’t just turn the messaging tool on within your existing CRM suite until you understand what you may be giving up when you just flip the switch

CRM systems, like Salesforce.com and Zendesk, were built on “cases” and “tickets.” Since when do customers want to be treated like a case or a ticket?

The only way to deliver a customer-driven messaging experience is to choose a vendor that built it that way, from the ground up. Selecting an incumbent CRM vendor that has either purchased another company to get messaging functionality or tried to build messaging on top of a case/ticket-based system will only lead to frustration and failure.

cases and tickets stop and end, interrupted interactions that are one and done. Messaging conversations are continuous, persistent, connected ongoing dialog

Start the Transition from Contact Center to Digital Engagement Center

2. Do you remember when all the talk was about moving from a Call Center to a Contact Center? That simply meant that it wasn’t just about letting customers contact you via the phone. It meant adding and supporting other channels like email and chat to become a “contact center” in order to help customers reach a company on their terms. We are facing the same type of shift again.

Everyone knows we all have our mobile device practically sewn to our hands. Texting and messaging happens all day, every day, by each and every one of us. Ensuring your organization is prepared to handle all the digital engagement channels is critical. Today, the Contact Center manages phone calls, emails, and web chats in a synchronous fashion.

Synchronous: Conversations where the customer and the company need to both be available at the same time - like a phone call or like most traditional web chats. Asynchronous: Conversations where the customer can communicate whenever they have time and the interaction is never closed down - like text messaging with friends.

A Digital Engagement Center takes the latest channels and manages them asynchronously. Customers never have to re-start and re-explain when they use messaging. The conversation becomes an ongoing dialog that never has to end.

How CRM & Messaging Fit Together

3. The decision to turn messaging and chat on within an existing CRM solution or to select a purpose-built solution is not easy, but it doesn’t have to be an either/or decision. A Digital Engagement Platform can be the connective tissue between the phone channel and your CRM application.

Your organization already has the tools in place to manage phone calls and you already have a repository for customer interaction history. Now you need one place to turn for all your digital interactions that can span texting, web chats, and social.

Quiq offers the Digital Engagement Platform purpose-built for asynchronous, always-on communications. It is the single application that manages SMS/text messaging, web chats, and social conversations. It is incredibly straightforward to integrate Quiq with your existing CRM system. You can also add the option to your phone channel (IVR) for customers to “press 3” if they prefer to text. See how the Digital Engagement Platform really is the connective tissue between your existing contact center systems.

Quiq makes it easy for customers to contact a business via Messaging, the preferred channel already in use with friends and family.  With Quiq, customers can 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. In return, companies get a digital engagement platform to communicate with customers. Learn more about Quiq today at quiq.com.

Digiday: Overstock’s customer service texts have a 98 percent open rate

Posted on Mike Zinne

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Quiq makes it easy for customers to contact a business via Messaging, the preferred channel already in use with friends and family.  With Quiq, customers can 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. In return, companies get a digital engagement platform to communicate with customers. Learn more about Quiq today at quiq.com.

 

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Impact: Best Practices for Getting Started with Conversational Marketing & Sales

Posted on Lauren Winder

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Quiq makes it easy for customers to contact a business via Messaging, the preferred channel already in use with friends and family.  With Quiq, customers can 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. In return, companies get a digital engagement platform to communicate with customers. Learn more about Quiq today at goquiq.com.