Texting’s a convenient way to communicate with customers and run your business. Text to give direction, reach vendors, or schedule meetings.
Small-business owners often send and receive messages for a variety of reasons, including to give direction and text vendors or to schedule appointments.
You probably send more text messages than you realize. Texting is a convenient way to communicate with your customers and manage your business.
If you only use SMS to send one-to-one messages, you may be missing out on some of text messaging’s more powerful features.
Business Texting Definition
A business text is an SMS (short message services) that can be sent using a mobile phone or desktop communications app and a text-enabled number. You can do this in one of two ways.
The first is by signing up for a standalone business texting solution. The second is to subscribe to a UCaaS solution that includes business messaging functionality.
Utilizing Business Texting
These days, business instant messaging should form the core of customer communications.
Surveys find that 93% of respondents want both text and voice options when communicating directly with small businesses. Customers are more likely to respond to text messages if they are relevant, frequent, and come from small businesses.
Text-enabling small businesses is a great way to interact with customers. This, along with other resources, can help you respond quickly to customer queries.
Text messaging with customers and clients is a great way to communicate with them. It also eliminates the need for long phone calls and makes it easy to let clients know that you’re available.
Flexibility: Work-from-Anywhere
Business texting is one tool your team can use to communicate, especially with the focus shifting from in-office meetings, in-person shopping, and on-site meetings to a dynamic, hybrid, and sometimes entirely virtual strategy. Apps are available on the user’s mobile device or their computer.
Best Practices to Streamline Text Communications
Not only do business messaging solutions add value to your company through the convenience they offer customers, but also, when used correctly, can streamline your internal communications. You can share numbers with your staff so that customers’ texts and calls (when combined with UCaaS) are always answered by the person who’s available.
It’s important to use quality business messaging in a way that simplifies rather than complicates business communications.
Communication with customers is a major concern. It’s important to determine how many customer service representatives you’ll need and what issues they will address.
To ensure customers’ needs are met promptly, assign time slots to team members. However, don’t over-staff this role.
You should also establish a single voice that your company will use to communicate with customers via text. It’s better to plan ahead for the questions that will be asked and then create templates that can be modified as needed.
Business texting, while it is a useful tool, can add complexity to your monitoring. It can be combined with UCaaS to provide a complete conversation view through an at-a-glance display that brings together all forms of communication. It’s easy to pick up the thread and reply if you have the right systems in place, such as uniform language and staffing.
It’s What Customers Want
Most consumers want to support local businesses. Many consumers feel that small businesses do not offer the same seamless customer experience as large corporations.
According to the same poll, 78% of respondents said that being able to instant message local businesses makes it easier for them to help. Customers want to communicate with you via SMS. It’s long past time to respond.
Be Considerate of Tech-Averse Customers
Texting will always remain a vital part of business-to-customer communication as well as customer-to-business communication.
Something to remember, though, is the technology resistance that many customers might have. For these people, and others who, for various reasons, may feel shy around newer technology, texting may not be an option.
So it’s important to keep other, more traditional, avenues of communication open for your customers who are not comfortable texting. This can include email newsletters or even a brief personal phone call.
In fact, a phone call to your most loyal customers can increase business, surprisingly. If done in a professional manner, such calls can generate additional orders. It’s always the personal touch that counts!
