In today’s hyper-competitive world where businesses and organizations do their best to outperform one another, your company needs to stand out from all the noise. The best way to do that is to leverage communication as a way to deliver excellent customer service.
Out of all the communication channels available to you, SMS text messages should be your priority. How exactly can text messaging help improve customer experience, you ask? Read on to find out the answer.
What Are the Advantages of Communicating Through SMS?
Looking at the numbers, about 64% of customers prefer to communicate with companies via SMS. The reason is very simple: text messaging is simply more efficient and convenient to use.
There’s even evidence that suggests that customers are more likely to stay loyal to a brand that offers SMS two-way communication. To further understand this, let’s look at some of the main advantages of using SMS when communicating with customers:
- Reliability – SMS messaging is convenient and does not require an internet connection to use. As long as you have a phone with a SIM card that’s activated by your preferred network provider, you can already send and receive text messages. Unlike email, SMS doesn’t have to go through junk email filters.
- Low Entry Barriers – Again, the minimum requirement for SMS is a phone and a SIM card. You don’t have to download any app or set up a profile. You can just send and receive messages right away from your phone.
- Global Reach – Most SMS services are universally synced between all of the global mobile phone operators, and can reach any of the nearly 10 billion phones currently in use.
- Better Open Rates – The open rates for SMS text messages are significantly higher than those of any other platform like email. On average, only 15% to 24% of emails are opened by the recipients, while SMS stands at a 98% open rate.
- Fast Delivery and Results – Composing an email or calling a customer takes time. Most of the time, customers aren’t available or interested in investing that much time to speak with you. On the other hand, SMS takes much less time to open, read, and respond to than phone calls or emails.
- Cost-Effectiveness – Text messaging is perhaps one of the cheapest ways to communicate with other people over the phone. Buying them in bulk or employing a bulk SMS scheme will make it that much cheaper.
- Privacy – Phone calls can be a little intimidating and distracting for other people. This is another good reason why they prefer to get SMS text messages as it is discreet, and you can keep your conversations more private even if you’re in a public place.
- Personalization – Mobile phones are pretty much very personal devices. You should take advantage of that level of personalization by communicating with your customers. They’re more likely, to be honest, and respond well with personal immediacy.
Conclusion
It’s the very nature of SMS and text messaging that makes it the preferred marketing channel to use among advertisers and businesses. Most people are just more familiar and comfortable with communicating with other people through text messaging. As a business, you must use this to your advantage and make your customer experience a better one.
Main Street Contact is a powerful web-based platform that allows you to send and receive voice and text messages with ease and flexibility. Our SMS service gives you access to appointment reminders, special announcements, scheduled meetings, and emergency notifications to make your SMS marketing campaign much more effective. Contact us to learn more about our messaging platform.