5 Ways to Utilize SMS Services to Improve Your Customer Experience

As the channels that our customers use to communicate with us change, we need to adapt our communication methods. Phone calls and email support will continue to exist, but in the spirit of improving the customer’s experience overall, we can do better. SMS, or text messaging services, are becoming a popular way to meet our customers where they are… their phones! Here are a few ways to implement the SMS channel in your business, in a way that’s both efficient for the customer and cost effective for your business:

1. Mass Deliver Announcements

• • A simple, yet effective way to reach your subscribers, employees, or customers; utilize SMS to deliver general announcements. All you need is a database of contacts, your message, and a set of business rules for when you’d like the message to go out. This could serve as a way to announce a new promotion to customers, an appointment reminder for patients, or a meeting reminder for employees. Although this is an automated message, the set up would be simple with no artificial intelligence required. Links to a separate web page could also be included if additional interaction is needed.

2. Customer Satisfaction Surveys (CSAT)

• • • When is the last time you filled out an email survey, or called the number on your store receipt to give feedback? We know customers often have strong feelings on their experience, but it can be difficult to collect that feedback in an efficient way. If you’re able to capture your customer’s phone numbers, whether it’s from a customer service phone call or a form fill, consider utilizing an SMS automated messages to reach out directly for feedback. It’s possible to include a link to a survey, but we would recommend offering an interactive experience directly in the text. With our SMS tool at Callzilla, we’re able to program the message to ask your survey questions directly in the “chat”, and record customers responses from that message thread. Different questions can be asked based on a pre-programmed decision tree. For example, if the customer has a negative response to the initial CSAT question, they would receive a separate set of follow-up questions than if they had a positive experience.

3. Tier 1 Customer Support

• • • Proactively check in with your customers with a quick text to see if they need assistance or respond to a prompted service request. People are always on the go and will appreciate the option to deal with their support issues on their own time. Tier 1 SMS support would be a great tool if you have a few qualifying questions to ask before transferring the customer to the applicable tier 2 department, or if there are generic troubleshooting steps that each customer needs to try before transferring. The transfer could be offered as a phone call, email, or even directly within the SMS chat. This leads us to option #4…

4. Interactive Customer Support

• • • This is where artificial intelligence (AI) comes in to play. At Callzilla, we’re able to offer full service ChatBots directly through our SMS or WhatsApp channels. This means a fully automated experience that mimics that of a live agent. Just like ChatBot, we work together with our clients to create an initial database of potential questions and responses, and then the AI component learns from conversation variations and makes suggestions for improvement. Getting smarter every day, this bot is a great cost saving option if you’re looking to offer efficient, full service support to your customers without hiring, training, and maintaining live agents.

5. Interactive Outbound Sales

• • • This is not just a customer service tool, it can be used for sales as well! One example could be for cart abandons; if a customer abandons a product in their cart, we can program an automated SMS to their phone to complete the purchase process. This could be a simple message with a link, or an interactive chatbot process that answers any questions they may have and walks them through the purchase process. We could also link this with our VoiceBot service, which allows customers to call and give their credit card information to a PCI compliant system without agent interaction.

These are just 5 unique ways to implement SMS into your customer service or sales department, but the possibilities are endless. Contact us to discuss your options, and revolutionize your customer experience today.