For most of today’s B2C businesses, facilitating strong relationships with customers (both prospective and current) is key to running a successful company. Today’s consumers expect personalized, engaging connections with the brands and businesses that they invest their time and money in. To this end, brands are now trying to figure out how exactly to deliver this personalized consumer experience without relying on expensive investments or manual processes.
Thankfully, there is one direct-to-consumer channel that meets all of these qualifications and is readily available to both brands and consumers: texting. 95% of the world’s population has some sort of mobile connection and businesses are finally figuring out how to turn this popular line of communication into a corporate advantage. In the upcoming year, around 82% of marketers plan to increase business texting spend and implement full-scale business texting strategies. While business texting allows brands to connect with consumers when and where they prefer, it can also help companies save time and money while doing so.
Here are just a few ways business texting can help brands save time and money while creating personal, engaging conversations with customers:
Cut down the time-to-response
Building personal connections between people and brands doesn’t happen overnight. And, in order for this loyalty to form, there can’t just be a one-sided conversation. Brands must be able to facilitate a two-way conversation in which both sides are able to ask questions, give answers, and share comments. Whereas traditional channels like email and voicemail leave brands waiting for consumer responses, texting cuts down this wait time and streamlines the buying process. Brands are 7x modre likely to receive a text back from a customer than a voice call. Plus, the time in which consumers text back is also expedited because of the channel itself. 90% of people read text messages within the first three minutes of receiving them.
Reduce time spent leaving voicemails and on-hold
Many service-based B2C businesses rely heavily on outbound communication to alert customers of service updates or to deliver order notifications. Traditionally, this communication is done via phone and requires a dedicated person or team responsible for manning the phones. With business texting, FTEs no longer have to be tied to the phones in order to deliver these critical messages. Business texting can decrease voicemails by up to 84% and reduce the number of calls on-hold by 81% – freeing up employee time to focus on other critical areas, like customer service and satisfaction.
Increase team efficiency
Although brands realize the importance of engaging consumers and delivering one-to-one communication channels, they don’t have enough hours in the day to reach out individually to every single consumer. While B2B businesses rely on marketing automation and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to automate and streamline internal operations, B2C brands can also automate business texting. Companies can run all incoming consumer texts through a dedicated solution to automate responses to FAQs and redirect critical inquiries to the right person for an answer.
Create organic online reviews
When it comes to growing a successful B2C business, word-of-mouth marketing and digital recommendations are necessary to keep new business coming in. Consumers now look online to learn about the quality of products available, the level of customer service, and other important details. By now, brands have come to realize that consumers don’t like unsolicited calls and they really don’t like marketing emails with flashy click bait. Business texting makes it easy to ask consumers to leave a review and even helps facilitate higher-quality reviews by streamlining the process and taking the guesswork out of the digital review process.
Ready to get started with business texting?
With Kenect, businesses can convert existing phone lines to text-enabled lines to start engaging with consumers, increasing business, and delivering amazing customer experiences. Plus, with the Kenect business texting platform, brands can do all of this while streamlining internal operations and decreasing extraneous spend. You can learn more by scheduling a personal demonstration of the platform here.
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