No matter how streamlined your product or service is, your customers will have questions about it. And as overwhelming as these questions may seem, they must be prioritized.
But here’s the thing: consumers don’t want to call a helpline and bark orders at a monotone robot while they desperately try to get in contact with a human. Nowadays, consumers want immediate, personalized replies to their queries.
At the same time, consumers don’t like talking on the phone—but they do like texting. A 2016 study showed that on average, Americans spent six minutes a day making calls, but a whopping 26 minutes texting.
Texting is one of the fastest ways to answer customer questions, which is important when you consider that the majority (66%) of adults think that valuing their time is the best way to provide a good customer experience. If customer support teams make an effort to reach their customers on the channel that makes them the most comfortable and performs the fastest, they’ll be more likely to improve customer satisfaction.
Here are five ways your customer support team can make the most of business text messaging, from helping with product setup to simplifying follow-ups with customers.
Collaborate on Training and Installation Questions
When you sell products that require some work to get going, you can expect a lot of incoming questions. Unique products require a unique setup—and your product sells well because it’s unique, right?
As soon as you sell your product, make it clear that customers can text your business number for customer support. If your loyal customers are used to calling your landline or toll free number, don’t worry: Heymarket can easily SMS-enable your original number while keeping your voice service intact.
A customer will send a text in, and any team member assigned to that shared inbox in Heymarket will be able to view it and respond. Even if your team members all take a coffee break at the same time, the message will reach them on their mobile apps, where they can quickly reply as they walk back to their desks.
By collaborating with your customer on the installation and training process via text message, you’ll be able to sustain a conversation that is convenient and fast, making it likely that they’ll follow through with your instructions—and enjoy your product to the fullest.
Eliminate Troubles with Troubleshooting
When customers have difficulty getting your service or product to work as expected, they can get frustrated.
Not only is a product that they invested in not working like they want it to, but now they have to talk to a stranger about how they can fix it. Most customers are used to suffering through long and painful troubleshooting processes to figure out where their product is going wrong, which involves tedious phone conversations and multiple holds.
That’s why your easy text-based customer support line is going to give them the (good) surprise of their lives.
Customer support team members can get frustrated with troubleshooting, too, and Heymarket can simplify that experience. Members of a shared inbox can send one another private comments. These come in handy when an employee is not sure how to help a customer. In these cases, employees can circle in with a knowledgeable team member, like a manager, to answer questions they aren’t sure about without putting a customer on hold or revealing a side conversation.
With business texting, troubleshooting will become less of a trouble and more of a streamlined, collaborative experience between two positive parties looking for a solution to a common problem.
Soothe Conflict Resolution
We’ve all been there: sometimes, customers don’t want to troubleshoot; they’re rightfully upset and want to be heard. In these cases, it’s vital to provide your customer support team all the tools it needs for conflict management.
When there’s a conflict, a fast response is absolutely imperative. As soon as customers text in their issue to a team’s inbox, a manager can quickly assign a chat to a specific agent or the entire team, so everyone remains updated on the progress of the conflict. Assignments can be automated for even faster service.
Texting can be tricky when dealing with an upset customer, which is why emojis and typing indicators are of the utmost importance. Team members can use plenty of friendly emojis with a customer who is especially irate, and ensure they’re not interrupting a team member who is in the middle of typing.
Private comments come in handy again in these cases, as a team member can refer to his or her coworker to ask what they did in a similar situation, or ask for relief if they’ve been texting a furious customer for hours. If a conversation ends due to a temporary resolution or an agent needs to pass off his or her customers for the day, team members can leave comments on a conversation. The comments are private, of course, so Amy doesn’t know that she is considered a “worrisome case.”
Regulate Responses
Whether agents are training, troubleshooting, or resolving conflicts, it’s important for them to uphold your brand’s tone and messaging.
Training agents to text within certain style guidelines is an important task, as each customer issue will be unique and responses cannot be completely uniform. However, you can ensure that most of the messages your team sends out are similar in tone by creating template messages for general responses to customers.
Templates can be easily personalized. If you’ve set up custom fields for your customers, you can dynamically insert into them into templates. Personalization is imperative, as it leads to higher reply rates.
A template for initial conflict resolution responses could be:
Hi {{first name}}, Tan’s Shoe Company here. I’m sorry you’re experiencing trouble with {{Order Name}}. Can you give me more details about the problem?
With the help of templates, your team’s initial responses will be fast and on-brand.
Simplify Final Follow-ups
When a customer support agent has successfully helped resolve an issue or facilitated a product exchange and won back a customer’s good will, celebrations are in order. However, there is still plenty of opportunity to let your customer know that he or she is a valued patron.
After a situation is resolved, you can schedule a message to be sent later in the week. This message can ask anything from whether the installation is still working to whether the customer is satisfied with the conflict resolution.
Another option is to set up a campaign. Once your text conversation is complete, add your customer to a list titled “Resolved on <<Date>>.” You can set up a campaign to send each of these list members personalized follow-up messages, satisfaction surveys, or just friendly check-ins a week later to let them know your company cares.
To any customer support team, the prospect of providing faster, more convenient service to well-meaning customers while easing the process on their side is a dream. Make it come true: talk to us about setting up business texting capabilities for your team today.
