Phone calls are becoming more and more outdated as time goes on. Customers don’t like to use the phone to call friends and family, so what makes you think they want to call you? With texting being such a convenient option for communication, and AI Chatbot making it even easier on your business, why haven’t you started using SMS for your customer service team? Here are some reasons why you should make the change.
People spend more time texting than on the phone
It seems confusing that people prefer text over phone conversation. Customers spend five times longer every day texting than they do on the phone, and Millennials exchange 67 texts a day on average with others. When talking to someone is so much faster and easier than typing every word through SMS, why would people still prefer it?
Well, when you have to call someone, you have to set aside time to talk to them. Businesses are even more difficult to set aside time for because you never know if it is going to take them five minutes to help you or an hour. If you text, however, you can go on with your day while you wait for a response and get other things done. People are too busy to get on the phone, so they prefer texting.
Offering an immediate response
One of the big advantages of SMS customer service is the ability for your customers to receive immediate responses. They don’t have to wait for a customer service agent to review the message and send a response when a machine can do that for you. Customer service departments know they deal with a lot of repetitive questions, and it would save a lot of time if they could have those questions answered by a machine instead of a live person.
Don’t think you will be able to get rid of your customer service team in place of AI Chatbot though. While you will definitely save a lot of time by not having to answer repetitive questions, your other interactions with customers may get more extensive. Research shows the average communication over text for a company is 86 minutes, which means you’ll have to train customer service reps on how to use their time wisely and teach them how to manage more than one text conversation at a time.
Messaging for marketing too
The other advantage to having a texting system set up with your customers is that anyone in the company, potentially, could text your customers. A business focused heavily on sales could allow their salespeople to use texting to stay in contact with customers. Other businesses can use text marketing to send advertisements to their customers on a regular basis. You can even use it as an emergency system where customers are sent texts to notify them of an emergency happening in the area or to your business. Having the ability to communicate with your customers through SMS gives you endless abilities for what you can do.
