Over the past two years, we have seen a dramatic shift in the way customers communicate with businesses, and now we have data to back that up.
According to a Pew Research study, around 300 million American now own a smartphone, and 78% of them says checking and answering text messages is the primary way they use them.
Why do more people text?
It all boils down to simplicity and convenience. Customers needed a way to easily communicate with businesses over the pandemic, and they were looking for new way to do it. Texting quickly filled the void of that missing in-person interaction.
Customers wanted to be able to reach businesses sooner, and this was the way they chose. In fact, the study also found that 61% of people admitted to spending more time texting daily since 2020.
How do you reach customers via text?
This is not as complicated as you may think. Some businesses are looking to start a texting plan, while others may have started texting, but are looking for a better way to streamline the process.
It all starts with choosing a platform. Kenect has found success by tying its platform in with your existing business phone line. So, when you sign up, and add it to your business, you are not having to give out your personal cell phone number to start texting. You can set up the Kenect platform, which is already attached to your existing business phone line. That way any texts will come in through that one number, and any responses you give will also come from that same number.
Once a platform is in place, make sure you are setting expectations about texting with both your employees and customers. With all the latest supply and staffing issues, you want to make sure your customers know what to expect from your responses, and that your employees know what they can say or do to help customers understand.
You also want to make sure you are standardizing workloads. With a texting platform in place, any employee can have access to it, but you want to set boundaries on who is responding to customers at any give time, and how often responses go out. All the time? Anytime before 10pm? Do you have an automated response set up?
Finally, you want to push back deadline that aren’t urgent. This is not to say you should drop everything to make texting work, but rather you should clear the way to make sure it works smoothly. You don’t have to do this forever, just until the texting platform gets going, and your business understands the system.
Why are dealers switching to texting?
Many dealers have already started texting customers as a way to keep in touch during the pandemic, but its also a way to help streamline service and sales.
A powersports dealer in Massachusetts says texting has changed the way they do business in just a matter of months. They are now using texting as the preferred method of reaching customers, and they are seeing a dramatic shift in workload due to the time saved on communication.
“Based on the number of phone calls we save by using Kenect, we are saving approximately 50 hours of labor weekly that would have been spent talking on the phone with customers, just by not having to pick up the phone, play phone tag, leave a voicemail, or have a lengthy conversation with a customer.”
Customers are familiar with texting, and it won’t be a big change for them. Dealers don’t need to change everything, just add texting as another option for customers.
