SMS Messaging Benefits for Call Centres - At a Glance
Increase customers served by 8x
Decreased cost-per-interaction
Multilingual - Messaging means automatic translation. No customer misses out.
Analyse data from every message received
In a world where customers work all hours of the day (and always want problems solved immediately), how can call centres cope with massive call volumes? You don’t need to go offshore to reduce costs - just change your strategy.
Research by McKinsey shows that for every 8 customers spoken to via phone - 60 can be helped by messaging.
But time and cost efficiencies are not just the key benefits of messaging. The true king is data.
Having all messages coming through one platform, you can quickly identify trends, common queries, customer demographics, and countless other statistics from the thousands of incoming messages you receive. This level of data is impossible to extract from phone calls, yet with messaging it can be seen at the click of a button.
Forget online surveys; this messaging data is collected from every customer and is invaluable for your business operations.
How has COVID impacted customer behaviour?
COVID forced us inside and online, and while some of us were starved for human interaction and craved long phone line queues, many dived into SMS and online communication with businesses.
SMS is overwhelmingly favoured by Gen Z and Millennial customers, but since COVID began, Forrester reported an increase of 40% in customers using SMS to contact businesses across all age groups. Web chat, such as through a business’s Facebook Messenger, also saw a 37% increase in the same time period. This includes 1 in 10 people trying mobile chat for the first time.
COVID has influenced a massive shift in the way customers interact with businesses, and brands that harnessed SMS and web chat technologies profited from it. Forrester reports that “Brands with advanced communications (as defined by number of channels, first-contact resolutions rates, and channel investment) have significantly higher Net Promoter Scores and Customer Satisfaction scores. They are also 3.4 times more likely to have experienced significant (5% or greater) revenue growth in the last year.”
Is SMS relevant in a post-COVID world?
Short answer: Yes.
Many call centres switched to other forms of communication with customers - but this was done reactively and quickly. Now is the time for businesses to re-evaluate which channels are working best, and where resources should be dedicated. Without an all-in-one platform, operators must move between multiple channels to perform simple tasks or businesses require multiple operators, each using individual platforms.
This is frustrating and not at all cost efficient. So where to begin? Analyse your demographic, how they communicate, and how difficult their problems are to solve. Some simple tips to reduce incoming queries are:
Update your FAQ page with relevant, detailed information
Add keywords to your inbound calls or messages, to more quickly find a resolution
Consider a simple (sometimes free) AI chatbot on your website which can handle the most basic of queries (this can handover to a human on the Jeeves.Plus platform, for instance)
We’re ready for messaging - but which channel?
Call Centres looking to try messaging should always start with SMS. It is by far the most straight-forward solution for three key reasons:
Every cellphone has SMS functionality
Customers don’t require an internet connection to reach you
You simply add a dedicated SMS number to your website’s contact page, just like your regular phone number
Yes, other channels are important too, and suit different demographics. With the right messaging platform, you will be able to incorporate common touch-points such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp into your call centre. But start with SMS - it’s fundamental.
What about multilingual messaging?
Language is a major barrier for customers seeking help. SMS messaging allows for automatic translation, and this can be advertised on a business’s contact page too. Automatic translation means that a customer messaging in Chinese will receive a reply from your operator in Chinese too - while the operator has seen both messages in English!
If you’re considering Jeeves.Plus for you SMS Messaging needs, you can see our 109 available languages below, or book a demo with our team! We'd love to show you how Jeeves.Plus can work for you.