#GoToGetsIT: This article is part of an ongoing series from GoTo’s thought leaders on the frontlines: Our Solutions Consultants deeply understand our customers’ unique challenges and connect the right solutions to meet their goals using GoTo technology. Here, they share their industry knowledge on what it takes to help businesses everywhere thrive in a remote or hybrid world.
When thinking about customer interactions, there are two sides to the coin — reaching out to your customers and your customers reaching you. In this blog, I will focus on the outreach side.
Nearly all of the 7.33 billion mobile phone users in the world check their phones within 30 minutes of waking up in the morning. With consumers of all ages checking their phones multiple times an hour, it makes sense that the open and response rates of SMS are the highest of any engagement tool. You’re missing out if you aren’t utilizing messaging in your communications strategy.
So, where do you begin? First, think about your own experience messaging with businesses. Which messages are helpful, and which messages are a nuisance? Perhaps sale notifications and appointment reminders are part of your routine. Or you might notice the frequency of messages you prefer. Ask your colleagues, to get a sense of different preferences.
Here are a few additional questions to ask:
- Would you rather receive a call or a text from an unknown number?
- Are you more likely to see a promotional email or a promotional text?
- Are you more likely to return a missed call or reply to a text message?
- How often do you answer a call from an unknown number?
The answers to these questions can create a baseline for how and when your customers may want to be reached.
When running a promotion, you might send out an email blast to your customer base. Typically, about 35% of emails are opened with a click through rate of only 1.33%. Using text messaging to share that same promotion can increase engagement by over 6x.
When composing texts and text campaigns, it is best practice to keep your message clear and concise. Tools, like GoTo’s Customer Engagement, offer AI (Artificial Intelligence) options to help convey your message. Below are a few examples of how you can provide a basic prompt to GoTo’s integration with ChatGPT and turn it into an engaging message to send to your customer base.
So, is adding a messaging channel worth it? The numbers speak for themselves. Approximately 90% of mobile phone users read a text message within the first 3 minutes of receiving it.
The benefits of customer messaging
The benefits of an outbound messaging channel go beyond customer outreach — it can also increase employee productivity. My friend works for a large alarm company, which offers technical support via phone and chat. The average chat agent can handle up to 3 chats simultaneously and resolves 7 chats per hour. In each work week, a single chat agent can comfortably resolve around 280 chats. Comparatively a phone agent averages about 20 minutes per call and resolves around 3 calls per hour. In each work week, a single phone agent can comfortably resolve around 120 calls.
By having a messaging option for tech support, this company can handle 70% of their tech support interactions by chat in the same amount of time as the 30% by phone.
A study by Forrester found that on average, a customer service call costs $16, whereas text costs between $1-$5. If we think about that in reference to my friend’s company, the 120 calls cost them $1,920 and the chats cost between $280-$1,400. Even on the higher end, chat is still considerably less expensive.
Increases in productivity can be seen across the organization. For the sales team, there is a 2.4x greater annual increase in cross-selling and upselling revenue. For the marketing team, a text campaign is 134% more likely to be read than an email campaign.
Using surveys with customers
Post-chat and post-text message surveys are another great tool to serve your customer base. Even simple surveys with thumbs up/thumbs down or yes/no responses can add a lot of insight. Giving options for multiple choice answers, rate-on-a-scale responses, and text responses enables you to do more of what's working, give recognition to high achieving employees, and tackle customer frustrations before they escalate.
Consumers spend more time texting on their mobile devices than doing any other activity, including social media, gaming, online shopping, and consuming videos. With this knowledge, implementing messaging for customer interactions is a no brainer. A tool like GoTo’s Customer Engagement solution gives your customers quick and easy contact channels and empowers your employees with a simple tool to maximize their productivity.
