What makes your product so great? The best companies are able to provide actionable, customer-centric information in their products. This data feeds critical marketing, sales automation, CRM, and analytics workflows. SaaS platforms of any kind must be able to integrate multi-channel, or omnichannel communication. This applies to both offline communication channels like email and text messaging.
Today’s complete, omnichannel-orientated, customer-centric data strategy includes the following:
Physical retail locations
Websites & Mobile Apps
Email
Social
Phones and call centers
Chat Online
Text messaging
The last one, text message, was overlooked for far too long despite its widespread adoption by every segment of our consumer life. But no more.
Text messaging is becoming more popular than email and phone calls for marketing purposes. Software platforms are looking to offer virtual phone numbers that allow text messaging and social networking along with email and chat.
Reason #1: Mass Adoption. Everybody is text messaging… everyone.
Nielsen and Pew Internet Research show that text messaging is the most popular activity on smartphones. Pew Internet Research reports that 81% text message their cell phones, while 52% use their phones to send emails. USA Today’s sports blog, For The Win reports that the SMS button has been used to share 3-4x as often as the Twitter button.
What’s the deal with SnapChat and WhatsApp?
Do you think that’s where businesses should be? Text messaging would answer, “The reports about my death have been greatly exaggerated.” Despite threats to wireless carrier revenues, text messaging adoption is here to stay as a means of communication. Why? What other type of communication is available for iOS and Android from AT&T and Verizon to Vodafone and China Mobile? None. Although all-you-can-eat texting plans can be bad for wireless carrier revenue, they are also why texting has become universally accepted and is readily available.
Reason #2: Mobile Engagement, without the “App for That” consumer fatigue
There is an app for that! Customers might not be able to find their mobile apps in their “junk drawer” of digital life, aka their smartphone apps collection. This could lead you to being one of the 95% of apps that never get used. Mobile communication and engagement need to be effortless.
Let’s look at an international hotel and the products they use for marketing. Reservations, check-in, concierge services, check-out, loyalty. Today, most of these systems use the internet, email, and phone calls as their main channels. That works for confirmations. However, as we travel, we are inherently mobile. According to many sources, an average email is opened 48 hours after being sent. A typical SMS can be read in under 4 minutes. It is now more efficient to use text messaging before we check in, during our stay, and at check out. It is no surprise that the hospitality sector integrates text messaging quickly. QWASI, Bandwidth’s customer, has created workflows to allow clients to enable Room Ready Notifications and Check-in Activation using text messaging. The Four Seasons is a good example of this.
Texting is an integral part of the CRM used by auto dealers to communicate with buyers. Managers in the auto industry must have the ability to manage and track communications between customers and sales and service personnel. These communications can be done via email, phone, and now text messaging. Surveys show that more than half of car buyers prefer text messaging for information about service topics, such as recall notices and maintenance updates. This makes it even more important that dealers integrate with their CRM systems.
The list of industry applications doesn’t end there. Customers can communicate and engage with insurance agents, home-improvement services, real estate agents and healthcare professionals. All of these industries benefit from being able to track, manage and align with CRM data.
Reason #3: Simple to integrate and manage
With simple, cloud-based API platforms, texting has never been simpler to integrate or manage. It was once a hosted VoIP phone service that we could access from our PCs. However, the next generation of virtual phone numbers for apps has allowed CRM systems to easily create add-on services for voice or texting just like a traditional VoIP system. Bandwidth has an App Platform for developers. This platform allows CRM providers to provide cloud services while also allowing them to have direct access to the same pricing models as the biggest VoIP companies.
Integration of local or toll-free virtual numbers into software products such as CRM systems allows for offline communications like text messaging to be brought back online. This makes it easy for businesses to manage and track these channels, improving their ability to deliver a better customer experience. It’s similar to moving your SMS messaging from your phone to your CRM platform. This will work across every device that you use, not just your smartphone. Give your users:
Notifications about new messages
Information organized according to customer threads and search history
A team member can manage a conversation.
You can re-route messages according to the time of day, employee schedules and customer type
It’s as easy as using basic web APIs to integrate with your CRM software.
How to text someone who blocked you on Android? Find out at Tech Limbs.
Reason #4: Texting toll free
Toll free messaging is becoming the new channel of customer service. This simple, but important technical change has seen texting expand more widely. Texting can now be sent to any number that is not charged for calling. It is surprising that this technology is still new. Numerous businesses have used toll-free phone numbers for call centers and integrated CRM systems for years. They also preferred short codes to text rather than using phone numbers. But short codes are only one-way communication. They are mostly used for marketing purposes and can not receive calls.
There are toll-free numbers that can be used to make phone calls, send and receive SMS message, and marketing platforms, call centers, sales automation, and CRM software have begun to integrate and add new features to text-in, click to-text and other forms of texting. This is allowing businesses to more efficiently process orders and send reminders about appointments.
Reason #5 – Texting converts easily to phone calls
It is crucial to provide customers with a seamless experience in an increasingly multi-channel world. Customers prefer to text. It is quick, convenient, and easy. However, texting often leads to a phone conversation in our personal lives, as we can’t communicate the details of last-minute events over text. So we pick up our phones and call.
Customers and businesses can use texting to provide the same cross-channel context. When necessary, a text conversation can turn into a phone call on the same virtual telephone number as the text conversation. Then it will return to the original text conversion. This seamless transition between channels is very rare in today’s digital economy. It is very difficult to transition from mobile apps to web to email to phone calls to phone calls. However, text to phone is a simple win for omnichannel CRM systems and sales software systems.