About 211 Virginia 211 Virginia has served the Commonwealth for over 15 years, connecting the community with essential resources. 211 Virginia is a free and confidential service offering access to crisis and emergency counseling, disaster, food, health care, insurance, stable housing assistance, employment, veteran, family services, and more to a wide population. 211 Virginia is the Commonwealth’s largest information and referral network available for social services. With an easy-to-remember three-digit dialing code, 211 Virginia connects people with help, 24 hours a day, 365 days in the year.
Industry: Non-profit social services
Location: Roanoke, VA
Contact Center Size: 25-50 seats
Use Case: Reduce call volume, increase text adoption
Product: Textel Conversations integration with NICE CXone
The Problem: Overwhelmed by a Surging Call Volume, 211 Virginia Struggled to Keep Up
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, 211 Virginia was prepared to meet the inevitable increase in community needs. By June 2021, the state of emergency was lifted, but another variant of the virus was on the rise. And the team at 211 Virginia saw an unexpected and dramatic rise in inquiries again. Relief services and eviction and utility moratoriums were set to end, placing thousands of renters in Virginia in a crisis. Then, with COVID numbers continuing to rise with the delta and omicron variants, 211 Virginia was in over their heads.
Their contact center was setting records for the number of inquiries they were receiving; their call volume was escalating.
As a result, abandonment rates skyrocketed, community needs were unmet, and their agents had to ultimately suspend collecting demographic data to keep up. Overall, 211 Virginia saw an 18% increase in call volume and a 34% increase in unmet needs through 2020 and 2021. They needed to find a solution to juggle the intake.
The Solution: 211 Virginia Team Added Texting to Reduce Call Volume & Solve Operational Pains
With such a significant increase in inquiries, 211 Virginia needed to find a way to lower its call abandonment rate and provide its inquirers with an additional, more flexible communication channel. Meanwhile, their contact center specialists were overwhelmed, drained by the endless incoming calls.
They turned to Textel for help. In May of 2021, the 211 Virginia team went live with texting, adding Textel to their existing NICE CXone platform in their contact center. In the first year, they saw an increase from initial inbound texts averaging around 580 texts to receiving an average of nearly 14,000 incoming texts. That bump in volume made texting their second preferred communication channel in just one year.
Specialists think of text as a little bit like a break from being on the phone. They don’t have somebody in their ear, but they’re still doing their job.
Margaret Telsch-Williams, 211 Virginia
Texting Supported Internal Operations and Employee Engagement
Textel’s product integrated with 211 Virginia’s existing NICE CXone platform. This made implementation and adoption simple. The contact center staff, varied in its age demographic, took on the learning curve of the new technology and found texting to be a helpful break from the phone.
Because of the nature of calls 211 Virginia receives, it’s important that their employees are mentally prepared to support crisis and emergency situations. “Specialists think of text as a little bit like a break from being on the phone,” said contact center director Margaret Telsch-Williams. “They don’t have somebody in their ear, but they’re still doing their job.”
According to Telsch-Williams, the community resource specialists look forward to handling incoming texts, avoiding the “wear down” and mental burnout parts of helping customers through crisis moments. Texting gave employees a breather and variety in their day, breaking the monotony of talking non-stop or listening to callers who are upset and stressed themselves.
211 Virginia said their texting inquiries take almost twice as long as a call to resolve. This may sound like an issue operationally, but in reality, the interruptions in a texting conversation made it possible for 211 Virginia to help more people simultaneously. Once they found a workflow, specialists could handle multiple text threads at the same time. And, the 211 Virginia team was able to care for multiple inquirers and support their own employees in the process.
Texting also fixed the problem of collecting demographic data. “We have a series of demographic questions we have to ask incoming callers,” Telsch-Williams said. “But when we got our texting set up so that it automatically asks those questions for us via text, that helped us greatly in terms of the duration of time that an inquiry takes. By the time a caller connects with a specialist, we already have so much information on the caller, allowing us to get to the heart of their needs right away.”
With texting, 211 Virginia was able to relieve some of the stress from their overwhelming call volume and streamline operations, driving efficiency in their contact center.
Texting Met the Unique Needs of the Community
211 Virginia’s mission requires them to be available at all hours in the day, every day of the year, to support anyone who calls. Often, their callers are in distress, navigating homelessness, job loss, and/or financial and emotional stress. Many of their inquirers are feeling ashamed and anxious when they reach out to 211 Virginia. By adding texting as a channel, 211 Virginia noticed how texting supported their community’s unique needs.
“A lot of our inquiries are personal and confidential in nature. And some people are not doing well when they reach out,” explained community engagement manager Amanda Holcomb. “Many are ashamed in their situations, so it’s hard to ask for help. But it’s a lot easier when your identity is a bit more distant than with a voice having to share that information. Some people are more likely to send a text or a chat or an email than they are to call because it feels a little less direct.”
Telsch-Williams added that texting is helping their most vulnerable community members navigate a scary and stressful time in their life.
“We had somebody who was texting us from the bathroom of a hotel room. She was actively homeless, but was staying in a hotel,” Telsch-Williams said. “Her kids were in the bedroom area and she was texting us from the bathroom. She was crying, needing help, but didn’t want to be vulnerable or fall apart in front of her kids.”
“With texting, though, she could reach out for help and could do so quietly with us,” she added. “We were able to give her information on how to find housing and how to fix her situation. She didn’t know what to do. She had never been through this before. But because she could reach out over text, she was able to have that moment away from her kids to breathe, problem solve, and still receive help.”
The Result: With Textel, 211 Virginia Cut Down Call Volume and Boosted Efficiency
Increased text adoption by 400%.
211 Virginia saw their texting skyrocket in just one year. The organization went from averaging 579 inbound SMS messages annually to 13,838 messages annually. Inquirers were eager for a channel that offered more flexibility than live chat or a phone call and more anonymity when navigating crisis situations.
Texting became the #2 preferred contact method, second only to their phone line.
After one year of use, texting became the second preferred communication channel in 211 Virginia’s contact center. With overwhelming call volumes following the COVID-19 pandemic, inquirers could choose texting as a more flexible channel to reach out for help and resources.
Streamlined operations and demographic data collection.
Since Textel is fully integrated into NICE CXone, their existing contact center platform, 211 Virginia adopted the new texting process quickly and easily. And with an added channel relieving their phone lines, the team reduced call volume, giving agents a break from the phones. They also figured out how to streamline data collection, creating a faster and more personalized user experience.
About 211 Virginia 211 Virginia has served the Commonwealth for over 15 years, connecting the community with essential resources. 211 Virginia is a free and confidential service offering access to crisis and emergency counseling, disaster, food, health care, insurance, stable housing assistance, employment, veteran, family services, and more to a wide population. 211 Virginia is the Commonwealth’s largest information and referral network available for social services. With an easy-to-remember three-digit dialing code, 211 Virginia connects people with help, 24 hours a day, 365 days in the year.
Industry: Non-profit social services
Location: Roanoke, VA
Contact Center Size: 25-50 seats
Use Case: Reduce call volume, increase text adoption
Product: Textel Conversations integration with NICE CXone
About Valvoline Operating for over 150 years, Valvoline is a global marketer and supplier of premium branded lubricants and automotive services. Ranked as the third best passenger car motor oil brand in the DIY market, Valvoline has powerful brand recognition, notable for its exceptional service and innovative motor oil technology. Valvoline’s operations are extensive, with approximately 1,400 quick-lube locations and with the second largest retail brand by number of stores in the United States. In addition to the services they provide in store, Valvoline also markets its own brands of lubricants and automotive chemicals.
Industry: Premium automotive lubricants and services brand
Location: 1,200+ locations across the United States
Contact Center Size: 230+ contact center agents
Use Case: Decrease AHT, increase customer engagement
Product: Textel Conversations integration with NICE CXone
The Problem: With a Struggling Coupon Program, Valvoline Needed a More Efficient Channel to Send Promos to Customers
Valvoline’s contact center agents have plenty on their plate. On top of answering questions and fielding customer inquiries, they’re responsible for building up Valvoline’s customer experience in some critical ways.
Through the company’s coupon program, their contact center helps customers save money by sending coupons based on a customer’s service needs, automobile type, and more. These can then be redeemed the next time a customer brings their car to a Valvoline retail location. The coupon program has supported the brand’s customer loyalty, providing value straight to its customers.
What’s more, it helps drive direct revenue. But their contact centers were struggling to get the coupons sent out efficiently using only email. With email, agents could only opt customers in for coupons using an integrated page pop-up on their CCaaS platform. Send rates were low at only 17%, and redemption rates hovered at a mere 8%.
“We were emailing all our discounts to customers,” Valvoline’s Joseph Patrick said. “Getting email addresses over the phone left a lot of room for agent error and bounce back, which hurt our redemption rate.” Patrick, the company’s technology manager over customer support at the time, said the inefficiencies and error rates were too great to ignore. So, they turned to Textel.
The Solution: Valvoline Added Texting to Their CXone Workflow, Boosting Revenue, Customer Engagement and Efficiency
Valvoline already used the NICE CXone platform to streamline its IVR and track its customer experience metrics. So, Patrick pulled the data to see if there were any trends in customer preferences. Reports revealed huge clusters of customer phrases like, “Can you text it to me,” and “Text me my coupon.” This, he said, proved the demand for texting options.
After we analyzed our call transcripts, we saw an opportunity to send out coupons to our customers via SMS text instead of just email.
Joseph Patrick, Valvoline
“After we analyzed our call transcripts, we saw an opportunity to send out coupons to our customers via SMS text instead of just email,” Patrick explained.
But, with such a massive volume, +4.5 million estimated customer interactions annually, Patrick wanted a solution that would integrate right into their existing technology, ideally connecting with the contact center platform they already used.
On a recommendation from NICE, Textel provided a quick, easy and trusted text messaging experience for Valvoline’s discount coupon program. And, we connected into their CXone system. Textel worked alongside Patrick’s team to enable business texting at all of their contact center locations, then decided to tackle the issues with the coupon program. In just four weeks time, Valvoline had launched their text messaging solution and started to see results.
Using MMS, Textel Helped Valvoline Streamline the Coupon Program
MMS messaging opened the door for a new solution to Patrick’s problem, giving agents a way to text picture coupons to customers. “Now, they can send picture coupons by text message in the same page pop flow they’re already familiar with,” he said.
To implement this, Patrick’s team used the existing pop-up page agents were previously using to send coupons over email and included a new option for MMS text messaging in the drop-down menu. Pulling in available customer data, the text creates a custom coupon that agents can send to the customer’s cell phone on record. And to cut down on wasted time, Patrick’s team set it so that the customer’s phone number was pre-populated, making it quick for the agent to send the coupon over.
Now, agents are texting location-specific coupons tailored to fit their customers’ profiles with just a couple of clicks. The results are both impressive and unexpected. According to Patrick, they noticed their first positive ROI on the project cost in just two weeks from the launch date.
First, they saw the coupon send rate increase 76%, while coupon redemption has also increased at Valvoline Instant Oil Change stores. The integrated SMS capability also led to some additional efficiencies in the Valvoline contact center. Their average handle time (AHT) decreased by 20 seconds since deploying SMS, accompanied by a 10-second decrease in holding queue time.
“When you’re answering 200,000 calls a month, a 20-second improvement in AHT is very significant,” Patrick said.
With a 90% swing to prefer SMS over email, Valvoline customers have shown they’ll use texted coupons when given a chance. “At the end of the day, it’s about making each contact center interaction better,” Patrick added. “It’s clear that the text option for discount coupons meets our customer’s preference for SMS. Overall, business texting has improved agent efficiency and service level, further enhancing our customer experience.”
The Result: With Textel, Valvoline Improved Customer Engagement & Operational Efficiency
76% increase in coupon send rate.
After adding the option for SMS coupons within their coupon program, Valvoline was able to make their program more efficient and saw a dramatic increase in the number of coupons sent to customers.
20-second decrease in average handle time (AHT).
Once they added texting, Valvoline’s average handle time for customer interactions decreased by 20 seconds. Their holding queue time also decreased by 10 seconds. The improvement of both metrics saved them time, allowing them to connect with customers faster and more efficiently.
8% increase in coupon redemption rate.
With more coupons being sent to their customer base, Valvoline was able to increase revenue in their contact center. Within just the first few weeks of adding texting, they saw an 8% increase in the number of coupons redeemed by customers.
About Valvoline Operating for over 150 years, Valvoline is a global marketer and supplier of premium branded lubricants and automotive services. Ranked as the third best passenger car motor oil brand in the DIY market, Valvoline has powerful brand recognition, notable for its exceptional service and innovative motor oil technology. Valvoline’s operations are extensive, with approximately 1,400 quick-lube locations and with the second largest retail brand by number of stores in the United States. In addition to the services they provide in store, Valvoline also markets its own brands of lubricants and automotive chemicals.
Industry: Premium automotive lubricants and services brand
Location: 1,200+ locations across the United States
Contact Center Size: 230+ contact center agents
Use Case: Decrease AHT, increase customer engagement
Product: Textel Conversations integration with NICE CXone
A good customer service experience can drive success for your company. But a bad one can wreck your reputation. Zendesk reports that after more than one bad experience, around 80% of consumers say they’d bounce, preferring to do business with a competitor. Bad customer service drives customers away.
But a good customer experience means that customers are much more inclined to go easy on you even if another experience goes awry. According to Hubspot, 93% of customers are likely to make repeat purchases with companies who offer an excellent customer service experience.
We’re rooting for you to see that success in your company. And one of the best ways to improve your service is to learn from others’ mistakes. So we’ve gathered a few bad customer service experience stories to see what went wrong and offer what could have gone differently.
Broken Customer Service Experience 1:
The Problem:When you have really long hold times
Sitting on hold has to be one of the most aggravating customer service experiences. Nobody wants to be put on hold, especially when they need help quickly. Studies even show that 15% of customers will simply hang up after being on hold for only 40 seconds. Plus, customers expect the fastest response to be when they call you by phone. So if that expectation isn’t being met, that’s an issue.
The Scenario: I remember one horrible evening before leaving for my honeymoon, I sat on hold with an airline to figure out an issue with my flight’s ticket for nearly 2 hours. Within those two hours, my anxiety to resolve the issue only increased. After a point, it felt like my issue would never be resolved because I’d never get to actually talk to an agent. The whole interaction deterred me from ever wanting to reach out for help again.
The Solution: Long hold times are the result of a lot of possible issues: lack of training for agents, operational inefficiencies, staffing shortages. But one primary reason companies suffer from long hold times is because they haven’t sufficiently used technology to reduce inefficiencies.
Here are some ways to fix hold time:
Use automated messaging to communicate hold times to customers so they can choose whether or not to wait it out, request a call back or hit a texting service option.
Improve your self-service tools so customers can fix simple issues and get quick answers. With better self-service support, you’ll reduce the call volume coming into your support team so they can focus more on the customers with complicated issues.
Deflect customers to asynchronous channels through your IVR. Customers who need immediate help then have other options to reach you — like via texting — to avoid sitting on hold. Then, have separate teams of agents for each channel ready to help.
Broken Customer Service Experience 2:
The Problem: When you lack empathy and compassion
As a customer service rep, your tone is everything. When your tone of voice on the phone or choice of language in a text, chat or email communicates annoyance or is patronizing, it’s a huge turnoff to your customers.
When customers experience an issue, they’re looking for an agent to be on their side. They want the company to apologize and accept fault. Now, I’m not saying the customer is always right, but it’s important for agents to acknowledge any inconvenience caused. If an agent doesn’t emotionally engage with the customer, that communicates a lack of care.
The Scenario: A few months ago I had an issue with my electric toothbrush. Part of the plastic had begun to crack — an expected issue after nearly a year of use. The toothbrush was under warranty, so I reached out to the customer service department to receive a replacement. I included a full explanation of the damage with photos.
The agent responded to let me know they would send a replacement, but then followed up with a long message in a condescending tone to explain to me how the crack could only have occurred as a result of something I was doing wrong in changing the batteries on the toothbrush. There was no recognition of fault in the product. This really irritated me because I had been very careful to follow their tutorials to care for the toothbrush. There has to be a better way of handling this issue.
The Solution: I assume he was trying to be helpful to avoid future damage to my toothbrush, but the interaction still bothered me as a customer and sure doesn’t make me want to have to contact them again. What could this agent have done differently?
Here’s what:
It’s important for companies to own some of the fault. To make that interaction better, the agent could have started by apologizing for the inconvenience.
Make every customer interaction a learning experience. I discovered that the problem with my toothbrush was a common issue with other customers. So this agent could have made this a learning experience for the product team. For instance, he could have asked for an MMS message with a picture of the broken piece so he could share with their product team. That way, they could further improve their design.
Train agents to specifically start an interaction with compassion and empathy. Perhaps create some templates or scripts to guide agents through different scenarios. Record calls and keep transcripts to show agents good and bad examples of customer interactions to help them see how empathetic responses fit into the real world.
Broken Customer Service Experience 3:
The Problem: When you’re unwilling to receive customer feedback
Customers really hate being ignored. We have so many avenues available to offer feedback to companies. And since customers are aware that businesses are aware of their complaints, ignoring them is always worse than acknowledging them. When you don’t respond to customer feedback, that signals that you not only don’t care about your customers’ opinions, but that your customers aren’t valuable to your business.
The Scenario: One customer’s experience with British Airlines exemplifies what’s wrong with ignoring customer feedback. After the airline lost his luggage, the customer tweeted at the airline to get their attention, even promoting the tweet:
But it took eight hours for their social media team to respond! And then, in addition to this, their response was confusing.
Why would an airline that operates around the clock only provide limited hours for responding on Twitter? When an airline has lost the customer’s luggage, the expectation is that the issue is resolved as soon as possible. Brands are expected to respond to customer feedback promptly.
The Solution: Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning. Customer feedback is vital for success. To avoid customers resenting you for ignoring their feedback, be on the front end and seek it out.
Here are some ways to be proactive in hearing from customers:
Use texting to reach out to customers proactively. Texting is an incredibly reliable way to reach your customers. While emails may sit in an untouched inbox or go straight to the spam folder, texts have an open rate of 99%. Send customers surveys or feedback forms via text to get the best response.
Add in a text support line with auto-responders and keywords to begin information collection when live support isn’t immediately available. Customers feel like they’re being proactive in seeking help and your company gathers the info you need to resolve an issue as fast as possible.
Seek feedback after every interaction. Use every conversation as a chance to hear from your customers. That way, customers can respond to the service experience they just had while it’s fresh on their mind. Automate a quick survey to send to customers after any interaction they have with you.
It may be tempting to say, “We offer our customers multiple channels to reach us…so we’re good!” But, customers today don’t really want only a multichannel experience. Instead, they want a seamless experience across channels. Or in other words, an omnichannel solution.
As many as 70% of customers say connected processes help win their business. But what does that mean, really? Maybe it’s having a seamless handoff between sales, enablement and support when they sign on. Or maybe it’s that they want you to automatically have context into what they’re calling about when they call so they don’t have to serve up a triple scoop of repeat pains for every interaction they have. Or, and stay with me here, maybe it’s both – plus more. These are the things that directly impact the quality of your customer’s experience and the loyalty they’ll have in their future purchases.
While an omnichannel experience is fairly easy to understand, it’s much more complicated to manage and deliver well. If you’ve invested in an omnichannel experience, but are still seeing inconsistencies and hiccups in your customer experience, it may be time to rethink some strategies. We’ve gathered 5 ideas to help you improve your omnichannel experience so you can deliver a better customer experience across the board.
1. Connect your systems seamlessly
Oftentimes companies think they’re already delivering an omnichannel experience when, in reality, what they’re offering is just a bunch of different channels that aren’t working together. In other words — a multichannel experience. This is when your multiple marketing and service channels work independently.
Maybe your customers can contact you in store, on the phone, by text, or over email, etc. But if each of those touchpoints are working on their own, when customers move between different channels, they have to repeat themselves over and over. This also only adds inefficiency and frustration among your employees who have to start from square one with each customer when they reach out on a new channel.
To combat this clunkiness and create an omnichannel experience, connect your channels so they can work with one another. As customers move across channels, move the customer data with them. This supplies employees across all your departments with all the company’s information about that specific customer. So as a customer switches from one channel to another, they won’t have to re-explain what they need. And agents won’t have to dig through multiple platforms to get the customer history.
Include this seamless interaction across all touchpoints in the customer lifecycle — websites, texts, live chats, emails, phone calls, and in-person assistance on the sales floor — to offer a more personalized customer experience.
To deliver a solid omnichannel experience, data is key. With every interaction your customers have with your business, they share a lot of info about themselves. Use that information to deliver a more personal and more cohesive customer journey. Take time to understand your customers’ behaviors. Maybe that includes:
Looking at what are the most popular pages on your website
Noting which self-service tools are most used by customers
Analyzing reactions to changes in your product and service offerings
What time of day are most purchases made? Which channels do customers use most to reach out to you? How many repeated times does a customer reach out about a single issue? All of this data provides a 360-degree view of the factors that influence your customers’ behavior so you know how to match your omnichannel experience to their expectations and needs.
3. Add automations
You wanna up your omnichannel customer experience? Add automations and bots to help your operations. Find a balance between bot and human interactions with customers to deliver speed and efficiency while also maintaining relationships.
Use automated texts, keywords, live chat bots, IVR, text IVR, and targeted emails to keep customers engaged and supported on different channels. Then, with the help of automated data collection, lean on automated technology to channel customer data and requests to live agents when the requests are more complicated. Automation can do the heavy lifting for those more menial tasks on your team, giving your employees opportunities to grow and resist burnout.
4. Make your service consistent across every channel
It’s important that if omnichannel experience is being offered, employees are able to deliver consistent service quality across platforms. Companies that can do this retain 89% of their customers as compared to those that don’t only retain 33%. Every channel of communication should deliver the same quality of service. Let me illustrate:
Let’s say I go to your website. I find a massive FAQ page and a live chat bubble pops up to immediately offer help. But when I go to your site on my mobile device, it doesn’t fit the screen. The service portal is clunky to search and there’s no live chat offering. When I email, it takes an agent 3 days to respond. But if I text, they answer immediately. And if I call, your IVR menu is too confusing to get me to the right place. Sure, my data is transferred between channels, but has your omnichannel experience really worked? Honestly, no.
To make this better, make sure information and service is unified across every channel. Train agents on each channel so they know how to navigate them, know how the data transfers over, and understand how service style shifts between channels. Maybe even have teams dedicated to specific channels so employees can focus on delivering quality service no matter which channel they’re on that day. Then, as a customer moves between channels, they get an accurate and smooth brand experience.
5. Include texting alongside other channels
As many as 85% of people keep their phone at arms reach at all times and the average American checks their phone 96 times a day. Your customers are on their phones and use texting to communicate every day. Companies are finding that texting is a reliable way to reach customers. In fact, SMS response rates are 295% higher than responses from phone calls. And on average, it takes people only 90 seconds to respond to a text message versus the 90 minutes it takes to get a response to an email.
Customers want to be able to text you — 63% of consumers report that they’d switch to a company that offered text messaging as a communication channel. So, if you’re not too overwhelmed by all these stats, hopefully you can see my next conclusion. It’s time to add texting to your omnichannel experience. With texting, you can relieve some of the pressure on your other channels.
For example, reduce the number of incoming phone calls, and reduce the number of customers sitting on hold by offering for customers to move to a text thread with your agents. Or include texting as an alternative option in your IVR to deflect calls to text, giving more time to your agents to handle complex issues with customers over the phone and providing fast service to customers via text.
Adding texting gives your customers a more flexible way to contact you. Unlike live chat, texting allows customers to move about while they’re receiving help from you. They don’t have to sit in front of a desktop to carry on a chat, but can carry on their day’s errands and tasks while getting support from you using the phone in their back pocket. Add texting to your omnichannel experience to improve your service quality across the board.
There’s power in storytelling. Stories can shape, strengthen or challenge our opinions and values. And when a story catches our attention and engages us, we are more likely to absorb the message and meaning within it than if the same message was presented simply in facts and figures. The same goes for storytelling in our businesses. And the biggest story worth mapping and telling is the story of your customer journey.
A customer journey is a story about how you understand your users. It’s a roadmap for how they behave, and what you can do to improve their trip so that they keep coming back. When you pay attention to your customer journey, you can understand what they need, what motivates them, what concerns they have. Ultimately, it lets you boost your customer experience, leading to higher conversion rates and improved customer retention.
To know how to navigate your customer journey, though, you need to know how to connect with customers. What do they want? What makes them tick? And how do you make that connection? One way is by texting them.
Build Texting into Your Customer Journey
Business texting has only become more common and popular in recent years. We’re all within reach of our phones at any time, making texting a reliable way to grab your customers’ attention quickly. Texting is accessible to anyone with a phone — 97% of the American population — making it a useful channel to integrate into your customer journey.
Customers today care a lot about speed and convenience. Why would I buy from a brand with clunky technology, slow delivery, and a hard-to-reach customer service team? Instead, I go for the brands that I can reach out to at any time, on any channel, and who will help me fast. Texting helps you to do this — to reach customers instantly so you can guide customers along every step of their journey.
There are a whole lot of creative ways to integrate texting into your customer journey and experience. Let’s walk through the steps together:
Step One: Invite Customers to Reach Out to You Via Text
Before any other steps can be taken, you have to get opt-in from customers to get their consent for you to text them. This is the first touchpoint in a hopefully long-term relationship with your customers. It starts with inviting them to text you and receive texts from you. Find ways to spark that conversation early in the customer journey. On your landing pages or while they’re making a purchase, ask customers to provide a mobile number and accept incoming text messages from your company like Subway’s example below:
Step Two: Build a customer base using promotions, coupons, and rewards.
Once you have their details and consent, build your customer base. Texting opt-ins gives you a reliable list of customers who actually want to hear from you. Incentivize customers to join you for the journey, by sending them limited offers, coupon links, and other marketing messages. This will help to keep your customers engaged and increase sales.
Business texting also lets you segment your customers so you can send targeted offers to fit the specific preferences of your customers. Assign keywords to any customer or group of customers in your database according to the products they bought or showed interest in to establish a more personalized experience.
Step Three: Keep customers supported by carrying on two-way conversations.
Customers won’t stay along for the ride if they don’t feel well supported. In fact, 90% of Americans use customer service as a factor in deciding whether or not to do business with a company. So to effectively use texting within your customer journey, add two-way communication. This lets you provide service and fulfill sales with a personal and casual channel.
We’ve all been there — dragged into an exhausting call with customer service that lasts forever. That hurts your customer experience. But with texting, you can offer a fast and flexible channel for customers to get questions answered. And, when you add MMS messaging, you can include images, links to help tools, pdf files, and even emojis to make your messages more attractive, increasing engagement and offering more help with fewer words.
Step Four: Help customers stay in the know with appointment and payment reminders.
I have a calendar that hangs on my kitchen wall with all the deadlines, reminders, and plans in my life and my husband’s. There are times it gets utterly overwhelmed with pen marks. I’m not always going to remember that one bill that’s due in two days. Or I may have forgotten the date of the dentist appointment I scheduled two months ago. This is where texting adds so much to the customer journey.
Help customers stay in the know, cut down on no-shows and make your front desk staff’s life easier by automating appointment and payment reminders to customers. These automated text messages streamline communication and provide better customer service.
Step Five: Value customer thoughts and gather feedback from them.
Essential to the customer journey is knowing what your customers want. A successful customer journey includes a way for customers to communicate obstacles they faced along the way. Customer feedback, when gathered and used well, improves your product and your service, builds brand loyalty, and makes customers feel valued and important.
Texting is way more effective in reaching customers than any other channel. Customers are more likely to open a text than an email. Use texting to follow up with customers near the end of their journey. Send surveys to receive your customers’ information and preferences. Add in a quick poll, for example, for customers to review how a product or service is doing. Or simply train your service agents to ask good follow up questions after each customer interaction.
Why Texting Should be Part of Your Customer Journey
When you use texting with your other portfolio of channels, you add more touchpoints with customers to keep them interested in the relationship. Ultimately, adding texting benefits everyone. Here’s how:
Quick delivery and response: An SMS message only takes a few seconds to deliver and can reach multiple customers with a personalized message. And customers can get quick help when needed.
Convenience: Since it is sent directly to the customer’s phone, texting is a more personal channel. Allowing two-way communication with the customer makes it convenient for them to send questions, inquiries, and ask for support on the go.
Simplicity: No one wants to read through a 1500 word promotional email. Text messaging is simple. It reaches a larger audience since almost everybody knows how to open the app and send a message. And since messages are short, you’ll have a great communication tool that gets straight to the point.
Traceability: Using a text messaging system enables you to track and analyze the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. With reports, you can evaluate how the strategy works and make the necessary adjustments.
Efficiency: Texting helps you to plan your messages in advance, create your campaign, and target groups of people with scheduled texts. SMS software systems also let you streamline processes by using auto-responses. This leads to time and cost savings, and increases your ROI.
Keeping up with today’s trends is no simple feat. But staying relevant with customer experience trends can make or break revenue and customer retention. Considering 43% of all consumers are willing to pay more for greater convenience, and 42% would pay more for a friendly and welcoming experience, it’s undeniable that customer experience can set you apart from your competitors.
In Oracle’s Global CX Insights Report, over 90% of respondents agree that customer experience should be a priority in terms of company focus — no matter what the discipline, industry, or company revenue is. And every year, with shifts in digital transformation, new customer expectations mean you need to set new goals to deliver an amazing customer experience.
We’ve gathered a few goals to add into your CX strategy to drive your customer experience ahead this year.
Ok, look. I’m not going to tell you to throw out phone support altogether. There’s a time and place for placing a phone call to a customer service team. But honestly, most customers today are looking for any other possible channel to reach you before they consider picking up the phone to call.
Customers today want accurate and relevant help as quickly as possible. In fact, Forrester reports that 53% of customers are likely to abandon an online purchase if they can’t find a quick answer to their question. And 73% of them note that a company valuing their time is the most important part of good customer service. Often, phone support just doesn’t cut it, taking more time and energy than other channels of communication (like texting).
Customer-facing teams need to eliminate those minor calls that clog call queues and distract qualified employees from tackling the more demanding issues. The solution is to not look to voice as your only method of contact. In comparison to phone support, SMS texting alleviates some of this pressure on your call center, reducing call volumes and cutting back on hold times.
Here’s how texting helps your customer experience:
Adding in texting prevents calls to agents by giving customers a quick, more convenient way to chat with support. When you include texting within your IVR, you can deflect calls about simple issues and questions to a text thread. This way, incoming callers have the option to text rather than waste time out of their day languishing on hold.
Texting with MMS messaging gives your agents a way to send more accurate and detailed information in fewer messages. Plus, sending and receiving pictures via text is even better since images are sometimes easier to understand than describing them.
Texting doesn’t require your agents’ full attention. They can handle multiple text threads at one time rather than a single call at a time, making your call center more efficient. And thus making your customers happier with your customer experience.
Goal #2 – Expand Your Omnichannel Support to Include SMS
Online shopping has skyrocketed over the last couple of years. In 2021, consumers spent $870.78 billion online with U.S. businesses, up 14.2% from 2020. That’s enough to pay off every household’s mortgage in the state of Missouri (plus some). Since the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic, customer behavior has all but demanded omnichannel support and strategy from businesses.
Customers expect to be able to reach you from multiple touch points seamlessly. And since over half of all internet traffic is coming from mobile devices, social media support should play a key role in your omnichannel strategy. But social media support is just not enough. Customers want to be able to text you too. Here’s why:
Nearly everyone has access to texting, with 97% of Americans now owning a cellphone of some kind.
When you offer texting support, there’s no added barrier of an app to download. Any customer with a phone can directly reach you.
Customers don’t need to have the app open to see a text, making it far more likely that you’ll reach your customer.
Adding business texting doesn’t mean your agents have to answer every message that comes in. With the help of bots, automated messaging and AI, you can handle simple questions or commonly asked requests without ever reaching a human. Bots can also gather customer information before passing the customer over to a live agent. This makes for a better customer experience and a more efficient call center.
Goal #3 – Make your Customer Experience Personal
McKinsey & Co. reports that 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions. And 76% get frustrated when this doesn’t happen. And 77% of consumers have chosen, recommended, or paid more for a brand that provides a personalized service or customer experience. To deliver a personalized experience, break down data silos across the organization. Then, your teams can freely share customer information.
Work with each department to craft a holistic customer journey. Tie together systems and processes for a more personalized experience. Then, use this customer information to bolster your customer experience in each channel. Some ideas for this includes:
Connect your marketing automation tools to your CRM. Then, your sales team can cater their pitch based on the lead source.
Connect your CRM to your ticketing system to see issue history with each customer interaction. Then, train your agents to use that history to build connections with customers over text threads or on phone calls.
Connect your phone system to your CRM and get customer details on incoming calls and texts.
Integrate your texting platform to route incoming texts to the agent best fit for handling each interaction.
Make mass texts and messages more personal by using custom fields to add in customer names or addresses.
