Best practices in SMS customer care

The mGage team looks at how SMS can help with customer care and offers advice on how to use it most effectively. 

Did you know that, according to TrustPilot, 95 per cent of people who had a bad experience are willing to give a brand another go if they know that their issue was dealt with correctly? Customer care is extremely important for brands, and facilitating customer care over as many communication channels as possible is good business practice. Text messaging, or SMS, is an excellent channel for customers, because it’s convenient, and immediate. We ran a webinar on the Best Practices in SMS customer care and wanted to share some of the key points from that here.

SMS customer care use cases
Customers prefer SMS customer service to voice because it’s more convenient than waiting on the phone. In fact, according to a Harris Interactive study, 81 per cent of all consumers get frustrated being tied to a phone or computer to wait for customer service help. By adding text messaging to your communication, you will reduce operational and call center costs, while at the same time increasing customer satisfaction. Below are a few customer care messaging examples that are used today.

Reminders: Sending SMS reminders to your customers will help decrease missed appointments and ensure payment adherence. With 98 per cent of text messages being read within two minutes (according to RetailDive), sending a quick text message is a more efficient way to reach your customers than trying to reach them with a phone call or sending an email they may not see.

Bank Alerts: SMS provides a much more expedited, seamless experience for fraud notifications and charge authorizations, creating a better customer experience than previous methods. By being notified promptly, customers will feel like their bank is looking out for them.

Call-back Requests: Implementing call back requests via SMS immediately reduces strain on your call center and instantly improves customer satisfaction by reducing wait times. You can even enable your toll-free number for this purpose, so customers who are already familiar with your current contact info can continue to use the same number.

Best practices for delivering customer care messages
Be Very Clear: Clarity is essential when delivering your customer care messages. Be upfront and set the proper expectations, so customers know what they are signing up for.

Keywords are Key: We always suggest you use the keep it short and simple (KISS) approach for keywords. Customers want to receive messages that are easy to read and digest, so keep it simple and avoid special characters. Choose keywords that won’t be autocorrected and be sure to choose keywords that are straight to the point.

Test, Measure & Learn: Finally, learn from all the information you get and use it to improve the customer service you deliver to your customers. Measure the success of your customer service alerts by paying attention to the number of customers opting in and out of your programs. The number of opt-outs is a good indication as to whether the content remains relevant to your audience.

Final thoughts
Provide the best customer support by adding text messaging to your communication channel. These are just some of the best practices we would suggest for your SMS customer care strategy.

To view our webinar on the best practices in SMS customer care, click here.

For more in-depth detail, contact us today and speak with one of our experts.