How To Profit From SMS Engagement In The Contact Center
By Rick McFarland, CEO, Voice4Net
As a solution provider selling into the contact center space, you’re aware of how omnichannel communications has been addressed thus far. End-companies have looked to accommodate omnichannel customer engagement by adding social media channels to their voice-based customer service offerings. This has left businesses jumping through inefficient hoops, monitoring Facebook pages and Twitter inboxes that are eventually abandoned. It’s turned into an exercise in futility.
That landscape may be changing yet again, creating a new opportunity for solutions providers. According to BI Intelligence, text messaging is now the most widely used communications channel, and messaging applications have in fact eclipsed social media apps as the most frequently used smart phone apps. Forrester Research reports more than six billion text messages are sent in the U.S. every day. And Pew Research Internet states 97 percent of Americans utilize texting at least once per day. Here’s how you can take advantage of this development as a reseller.
- Acknowledge SMS As A Business Tool
SMS messaging capabilities have been overlooked in the contact center since texting has been considered more appropriate for personal use. However, when a method such as texting becomes as ubiquitous as it is now, the buying public is prone to develop a comfort level that allows it to transition from a personal communications platform to a business platform. Case in point: mobile phones and the bring-your-own-device trend made personal smartphones just as crucial and liberally-utilized a business tool as the desk phone. This opens the door for savvy providers to seize an opportunity by adding text messaging capabilities into their contact center offerings.
VARs may in fact be remiss if they forego text-based customer service as a component to their solutions. To do so would be to neglect a potential differentiator — one that could significantly enhance the productivity of their end-users’ engagement solutions. SMS in the contact center caters to a generation of consumers whose communications preferences continue to lean toward text messaging, including coveted Millennial consumers.
- Leverage The Statistics
In poll after poll, consumers have expressed a desire to conduct customer service via SMS messaging, yet the market barely supports it. The data is overwhelming:
- Text messaging has a 45 percent response rate, while email only has a 6 percent response rate. (Velocify)
- 79 percent of surveyed companies believe customers want SMS/text support. (Forrester)
- More than half of the customers said they would be likely to text with a customer support agent. Fifty-two percent would prefer text-based customer support over their current form of communication. (eWeek)
- Millennials prefer automated text messaging over IVR, including speech-based solutions. (Frost & Sullivan)
- One in five consumers is just as likely to prefer a text message from a business to a phone call. (ICMI)
Share these findings with your end-customers.
- Upsell Existing Customers, Enhance New Offerings
Applications exist now that can facilitate both incoming and outgoing messaging between contact center agents and customers as easily as the standard voice call. These solutions can be added to an existing environment or incorporated into a new deployment. This flexibility empowers contact center resellers to not only enhance future sales, but to go back to existing contact center customers and upsell SMS customer engagement capabilities. VARs should stress the value of this as a means to engage a whole new audience of mobile customers in a true omnichannel experience.
The market is not only ready to conduct customer service via text messaging, but according to a long list of research posts, it is in fact clamoring for it. By incorporating the world’s most favored and widely-used communications channel as a business tool in their contact center solutions, VARs can take advantage of what could be a watershed opportunity.
Telecommunications and software development entrepreneur Rick McFarland is chief executive officer of Voice4Net, a provider of customized engagement solutions for businesses, including an SMS text messaging module for the contact center.