There’s more to messaging than just sending characters, images, and emojis back and forth, at least when it comes to business messaging. Text messaging between companies and consumers has certain inherent expectations. Understanding, meeting, and managing these expectations are the key to successful customer interactions.
Here are 5 key capabilities required to ensure you manage the messaging channel to deliver a world-class customer experience:
1. Engage at the customer’s pace
Messaging conversations are asynchronous, meaning the agent and customer can communicate without being “on” at the same time. While customers may expect a certain level of immediacy from your company, you can’t always expect customer responses to be as snappy.
Make sure you to engage at the customer’s pace by selecting a vendor that proactively prioritizes multiple incoming conversations for each agent. For example, Quiq Messaging automatically prioritizes conversations based on the customers level of engagement. When customers are responding quickly, that’s a signal that they want more immediate attention. Quiq automatically moves those conversations to the top of the agent’s dashboard and provides color-coded cues to ensure they handle the most time-sensitive conversations first.
2. Pick up where you left off
Messaging allows customers to take a break from the conversation and continue when it’s more convenient for them – just like two old friends. If customers have to take a break from the conversation, they can come back and pick up with the agent wherever they left off.
Unlike other channels and almost every chat solution, Quiq makes sure conversations never get disconnected. Instead of repeating information over and explaining their situation to a new agent, the customer continues the existing conversation. All the content and context is still there. You’re welcome.
3. Ask for help when you need it
We all need a little help sometimes. We’ve made it simple for agents to raise a virtual hand when then need a little extra help from their peer or manager with the ability to collaborate and transfer. Initiating any of this functionality is simple and intuitive. There is the option to tell a customer you’re transferring a message or bringing someone into the conversation, but it can also happen seamlessly and “behind the curtain.”
Customers don’t even have to know if their question is answered by a different agent or someone just collaborating on the conversation. There’s no more “can you hold while I get my manager” involved here, just fast, convenient service for the customer.
4. Set expectations and response goals for agents
While it’s probably pretty obvious, you want to make sure that you’re meeting the customer’s expectations of response time. We’ve made meeting those expectations a priority that can be set on a corporate level through Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
When an agent is in an active conversation with a customer, and a customer sends a message, the agent must respond within the timeframe agreed upon in the SLA. If the agent does not respond before this timer expires, the conversation is re-queued, and the agent won’t be allowed to accept any new messages until their current queue is reduced. SLA’s ensures your agents can handle the current conversations with a timely response or gracefully hand them off to another agent.
5. Monitor performance in real-time
What gets measured gets done. Measure how your team is performing on the messaging channel with real-time stats and critical performance metrics to make sure you’re consistently delivering a top customer experience on the messaging channel. Quiq provides valuable reports and easy to understand dashboards out-of-the-box.
In fact, managers can click right into an active conversation from those dashboards if they would like to observe how agents are doing. Use this feature to facilitate better coaching and onboarding, and help your agents become more effective faster.
Getting Messaging Right With Quiq
Messaging can be a powerful tool to strengthen relationships with customers, but don’t approach it with a laissez-faire attitude. All good relationships are built on the foundation of communication and trust. So don’t leave a well-managed conversation that creates trust up to chance. Go with the experts.
Quiq was purpose-built to handle the messaging channels. Our messaging solution helps companies connect, engage, and improve relationships with customers on their preferred channel. Our team built the Quiq platform to make implementation a snap and managing messaging at the forefront.
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.
