10 Best Practices For Providing SMS Customer Support

Learn the Tips to provide an excellent SMS Customer Support. With an opening rate of a whopping 96%, SMS is a no-brainer means of reaching out effectively to your customers for business deals.

SMS is a popular, convenient and reliably consistent channel that allows you to pick up on discussions from where you left them off.

More advantageously as compared to live chats, SMS chatting is asynchronous – it does not demand both parties to be present in that instant to use.

You can send SMS to your customers with a text messaging service, after selecting the text messaging service you want to use, this article will show you how to provide the best customer care when communicating using SMS.

Observe the following SMS customer service practices to convert more leads into deals:

1) Clarify your Objectives

To persuade customers to take action on SMS texts, you should be clear about what you are offering to them. The main customer support goals you can focus on may include the following:

• Improving productivity of your employees
• Reducing costs
• Improving customer satisfaction

After evaluating which goal is more significant, you should consequently prioritize the elements of your SMS that relate to your goal the most.

Also, while ensuring that your message is clear, your replies should be as concise as possible.

People prefer texting to using emails when they are anticipating a quick response. Besides increasing read and engagement rate, a clear and concise text message will portray a picture of organization and orderliness in your brand.

2) Apply Telemarketing Ethics

You don’t want to spam people’s inboxes with the latest promos and hottest offers just because a prospect reached out for technical support.

To avoid infringement of privacy and personal space, you should only send messages to customers with their consent.

This is because, unlike emails, messages sent via SMS go directly to their devices which they likely have in their hands and are commonly read instantly.

If need be, you must reintroduce yourself to them and mention how you obtained their number. You should also send such messages at convenient hours to avoid irritating your potential customers. Remember, they reserve the right to chunk automated messaging in their blocklists.

3) Provide Multi-channel Options

A business plan creates 30% greater chance of growth to a business. A business plan is vital because it’s what you will use for your business when applying for loans, grants, and any other type of funding.

It helps explain to the lender what your business is all about, how you plan to make money from it, and why the demand for your product or service will be high in the future.

The business plan should include financial projections, marketing strategies, and other information to help convince them that your business is worth their investment.

4) Balance Automation and Human Support

AI-driven chatbots are helpful and extremely cost-effective. They help address customer queries without the need for a customer care agent.

However, you will need a human touch in your messaging services to enhance a more personalized customer experience.

Since SMS messaging offers a more personalized means of communicating, it becomes more appropriate when customers require tailored support for services such as accounts, subscriptions, payments and other similar queries.

However, much chatbots are becoming more sophisticated, they can never match the amount of personalized touch that human customer care will offer.

5) Choose an Appropriate System for Prioritizing Messages

You need to choose a definitive means of managing demand for SMS support once text messages start rolling in. A first-in-first-out (FIFO) approach is good but an SMS system that prioritizes importance and urgency would be better.

Classify the messages you receive into requests, queries, suggestions and other catalogues which will determine the customer value and urgency of feedback.

This will allow you to employ the help of chatbots in handling simpler replies that do not require a lot of personalized attention.

6) Collect Customer Feedback

According to Groove, a negative customer experience will be addressed by one in every 26 customers. Out of the remaining 25 customers, 91% will move on to the next brand for a similar service directly.

Therefore, to avoid such instances, your SMS service should support an option for feedbacks, typically made of a one-word or one-number response.

Such options provide them with a neutral platform for expressing their negative opinions without experiencing an awkward feeling.

7) Set Reminders about Impending Appointments

Reminders allow us to keep track of what we should do in the next few hours, days or even weeks. If you utilize your SMS support appropriately, you can set reminders in advance that will prompt your customers to recall an appointment they had forgotten with the hustle and bustle of their busy lives.

An effective trick of making use of SMS reminders is allowing the receivers to respond with one-word or one-number replies to questions about whether they will come along or they need a reschedule. Unlike emails which may be left unanswered or phone calls that might disrupt their activities, an SMS is effective and appropriate.

8) Publicize your SMS Customer Support Service

You need to let more customers understand that they can access customer support through your SMS customer care service. You can use the following platforms to promote your messaging services:

• Phone – Customers can listen to a call tone that gives the details of your messaging service whenever they make calls to your company.
• In-app or on-site – Include details of how customers can reach out through SMS in your page headers or application pop-ups.
• Social media – Include information about your SMS service in your social media bios, headers and banners.

9) Follow up with your customers

What is harder isn’t replying to a customer’s question but rather following up with each one of them. Show them that you care by reaching out to them if they don’t visit in a while.

Use such opportunities to offer them a discount or incentives. Besides promoting your product, it will prove that you can go above and beyond for them.

10) Maintain the same SMS Messaging Number

Your SMS number should be easy to memorize and should be open all the time. Moreover, it is important to ensure you don’t switch them over periods. SMS codes are a magnificent means of communicating with your customers since they are easily notable and quite hard to forget as compared to 10-digit SMS numbers.

Conclusion

Text marketing is an instant marketing tool that allows you to reach a large number of potential customers at the same time. With it, you can send and receive text messages, communicate product offers, announcements, discounts and beyond, directly to your customers’ phones. Start your free trial with our text marketing tools now!