5 Good Reasons. Your Software Platform Can t Ignore Text Messaging

Transcription

1 5 Good Reasons Your Software Platform Can t Ignore Text Messaging

2 If you ve got a CRM, lead generation or customer experience software platform of any kind, the concept of omni-channel communication is likely top of mind. Fact is, your users expect that actionable, customer-centric data will be accessible to them within your platform helping to sustain a host of lead generation, marketing, sales automation, CRM and analytics workflows. What s more your users expect to be able to interact with that data through both online channels like and offline channels such as text messaging as well. Today s best omni-channel, customer-centric data strategies include: Phones and Call Centers Physical Retail Locations Websites & Mobile Apps Social Online Chat Text Messaging Despite its mass adoption across every segment in our consumer lives, text messaging has been left out of many CRM solutions for far too long. But today, text messaging is moving beyond the traditional marketing use cases to a widely used two-way communication channel that is often preferred over and phone calls. If the fact that 99% of text messages are read and the average text message is read in just 90 seconds weren t clues enough, here are 5 good reasons your software platform can t ignore text messaging any longer. 1 Cellular Telephone Industry Association (CTIA), Pew Research 2

3 1 Reason #1 Everyone likes to text including your customers. We text more than any other activity we do on our phones that s according to Nielsen and Pew Internet Research. Pew reports that 81% of cell phone owners text message vs. 52% that are using their smartphones to . For sharing, the SMS button has been used 3-4x more often than the Twitter button ever was according to USA Today s sports blog, For the Win. What about tools like WhatsApp, SnapChat and Over-the-Top (OTT) messaging? Is that where today s businesses should be? If you asked, text messaging would say The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. In fact despite the threat to wireless carrier revenues from text messaging by OTT mobile apps, text messaging adoption as a form of communication is here to stay. Why? What other form of communication works across ios and Android, from AT&T and Verizon, to Vodafone and China Mobile? None. Despite the fact that all-you-can eat texting plans may be bad for wireless carrier revenues, they re also the reason why texting is now universally adopted and available. 3

4 2 Reason #2 People are tired of downloading special apps. There s an app for that! (Sigh ) If you re requiring customers to download, install, update and find your mobile app in the junk drawer of their digital life, aka their smartphone app collection, you might find yourself in the 95% of apps that never gets used. Mobile communication and engagement must be quick and effortless. Look at an international hotel, for example. Today, many use web, and phone calls as their main CRM channels. That works for room confirmations, but as we travel we become inherently mobile. It s widely quoted that the average is read 48 hours after it is sent, while the average SMS is read in 90 seconds. So before check-in, during our stay and at check-out, texting becomes a more effective channel. Therefore it s no surprise the hospitality industry is integrating text messaging at a rapid pace. For example Bandwidth customer QWASI, has created workflows for clients that enable room ready notifications, check-in activation, and concierge chat using text messaging. The Four Seasons has done the exact same thing. 4

5 Auto dealers use texting as part of their CRM for sales and customer service to communicate with buyers. In a multi-channel world, managers in the auto industry need the ability to track and manage communications between customers and their sales and service departments whether those communications happen via , phone or now especially text messaging. In a survey, over half of car buyers said they prefer text messages for topics such as service updates, recall notices and maintenance information making it even more critical that Auto dealers have CRM systems integrated with text messaging. And industry applications don t stop there. Insurance agents, home improvement services, real estate agents, healthcare, financial services and more all of them benefit from allowing customers to engage and communicate over text messaging all while tracking, managing and aligning with CRM data. 5

6 3 Reason #3 Texting is easy to integrate with your platform really. Texting has never been easier to integrate and manage using simple on-demand, cloud-based API platforms. What we all once thought of as a hosted VoIP phone service running on our PCs has now given way to the next generation of virtual phone numbers for applications. This change has made it easy for CRM systems to create add-on services for voice and texting, just like a traditional VoIP phone system does. Bandwidth provides a developer platform, the App Platform, ap.bandwidth.com, that provides exactly these cloud services to CRM providers while giving them access to a direct-to-carrier pricing model just like the largest VoIP companies. By integrating local or toll free virtual phone numbers into software products, like CRM systems, the flow of offline communications such as text messaging can be brought back online. This suddenly makes these channels easy to track and manage improving the business s ability to provide a better overall customer experience. It s like moving your text messaging from your smartphone to your CRM platform, and across every device you use. 6

7 Give your users: 3 Notifications of new messages 3 Information organized by customer thread or search history 3 The ability to manage a conversation as a team 3 The ability to re-route messages by time of day, employee schedules or customer type It s all as easy as integrating with a few basic web APIs, which is making it possible for every type of marketing or CRM software to bake these features right into the offering. Your Bandwidth Text-Enabled Virtual Phone Numbers Your Software Platform Text Message Text Message HTTP Text Message Bandwidth Network 7

8 4 Reason #4 Texting over toll free lines is now available (very cool). Toll free texting is being called the unexpected new customer service channel. Texting is starting to roll out more broadly because of this simple but powerful technical change toll free numbers can now text. Most people are surprised to learn that this is new. Many businesses have used toll free phone numbers for contact centers and call centers integrated with CRM for decades.these national brands tended to favor use of short codes, five- or six- digit codes for texting rather than phone numbers. However, short codes are inherently one-way forms of communication and mostly used for marketing. They are expensive, take a long time to set up and are not capable of receiving phone calls. 866 Now with the availability of toll free phone numbers that are able to handle both phone calls and send and receive text messages, marketing platforms, contact centers, sales automation and CRM software are integrating and adding new features for text-in, click-to-text, and many other forms of texting workflows alongside voice calling. This is helping businesses more efficiently process orders, send out appointment reminders, answer customer questions and more. 8

9 5 Reason #5 Texting and phone calls really do go hand-in-hand. In this increasingly omni-channel world, the ability to move from one communication channel to the next is critical to a customer-centric experience. Texting is preferred by customers. We also prefer it in our personal conversations. It s easy, quick, and convenient; however, it often progresses to a phone call when the conversation becomes more nuanced or involves additional parties. For customers and businesses, texting gives that same cross-channel context. A text conversation can progress to a phone call when needed on the same virtual phone number, then revert back to the text conversion. This kind of seamless transition across channels is rare even in our digital economy. From web to mobile app, to phone call to is extremely complex but the simplicity of text to phone calls is an easy win for omni-channel CRM and other software systems. 9

10 Don t have texting and virtual phone numbers in your software product today? In the near future, texting will be as common as features are in today s CRM products. Still on the fence? Give Bandwidth a text. Our sales and product teams can share use cases that make sense for your product, with easy-to-use APIs that will get you up and running quickly sales@bandwidth.com 10