Workforce Management Featured Article
Your Customers Want to Text You More Than They Want to Talk
Your customers don’t particularly like talking to you on the phone. Don’t take it personally.
Don’t get us wrong. They may like you, and like your company. They may find doing business with you generally pleasant. But they don’t much like speaking with you on the phone. Quite frankly, few people seem to like speaking on the phone anymore. We’ve become a nation of text messengers. Research from Pew (News - Alert) Research has found that 97 percent of smartphone users regularly use SMS, or texting.
They Don’t Like Your IVR
If customers could get you on the phone right away, things might be different. But you use an IVR – of course you do. Few companies could afford to employ enough agents to pick up every call live. Customers feel that their time is wasted when they need to sit listening to IVR recordings, rolling their eyes and resentful that they have to go through the dog and pony show of reaching a live agent, sometimes only to find that “all our agents are busy now.” It doesn’t exactly make them feel special.
Texting Is More Convenient
If customers can text you, they can do it at a time that’s convenient for them. The major bonus with SMS is that you can answer at a time that’s convenient for you. Call center busy right now? Send the customer an automated message that their text will be answered within a set time period – 20 minutes, two hours, or whenever agents are likely to be available.
“Waiting for a response via message is preferable to waiting on hold for an agent,” according to Monet Software’s blog. “Messages also provide a written record of what the company says, which may be helpful later in case there is a dispute. It also allows a way for photos or even video to be incorporated into the exchange, if that becomes necessary.”
Don’t Rely TOO Heavily on Bots
There is a time and a place for “chat bots,” or automated, text-based AI-led messages that can help handle common questions like, “What is my balance?” or “What are your hours?” Understand where they’re likely to be a help for your customers, and where they might be a hindrance to a quality customer support experience.
“Even the better ones [chat bots] give themselves away with the phrases they use and pre-programmed upsell messages that may not be welcome to the receiver,” wrote Monet in the blog. “That’s why a survey at Startek.com found that 8 out of 10 consumers that like messaging still prefer to interact with a real person.”
The ideal scenario is to build a text-based channel into your contact center with help from bots for message routing and common questions, but with a solid backup of human agents to oversee more complex responses. The good news for your labor costs is that, unlike live phone calls, agents can carry on more than one text message session at a time. Build your SMS-based messaging support channel well, and you could find yourself doing more with a lower headcount.
Edited by Maurice Nagle
