Covering cleaning, furniture assembly, plumbing, flooring, landscaping, moving, and storage services, the on-demand home services market is estimated at $400 billion. While home services aren’t known for using cutting-edge technology, all that is changing due to modern clients who expect more convenient communications. More and more home services companies are turning to channels like business SMS to help them grow and manage their expanding businesses.
Business text messaging empowers home services companies to create sleek client, employee, and contractor experiences, all while maintaining that personal touch that helps so many smaller businesses thrive.
Read on to learn more about how business texting is modernizing the home services industry and helping home services businesses succeed.
Business SMS Simplifies Client Communications
In the home services industry, fast and simple client communications are key to client satisfaction. This desire for speed and convenience might be why a 2018 Thrive Analytics homeowner survey found that 53% of millennials preferred to communicate with service providers through business text messaging. Home services businesses that offer business texting services are aligning themselves with a communication channel that is popular for many reasons, such as:
Simplicity. Text-enabling an existing business number, whether it’s a VoIP, toll free, or landline number, is a great way to allow customers to text the numbers they already have in their phone address books or your existing ads. It’s also simple for your business, which has to keep track of just one number.
Convenience. Ninety percent of cell phone users carry their prized possession with them all the time, 71% of adults never turn off their phones, and 97% of Americans text at least once a day. Business SMS is a channel that clients feel comfortable using and will respond to. Some home services companies, like Pillar To Post home inspection, even add their SMS numbers to public websites like Google Business and add widgets to their webpages to make it especially easy for clients to get in touch.
Speed. Business SMS conversations with clients can be conducted in near real-time, which is especially useful when scheduling home visits or relaying timely notifications. Because 90% of texts are read within three seconds of receipt, it is likely that any client queries or conversations will be resolved quickly.
Business SMS Streamlines Employee Operations
Because home services companies are in such high demand in today’s market, client services teams often find themselves overwhelmed with masses of messages to organize, send, and respond to. Business texting platforms help them easily organize their messages, automate simple processes, and integrate their most important business apps with one another.
Organization. Home services companies have to manage field technicians and other workers outside of the central office. With business text messaging, office administrators can easily text field technicians with scheduling reminders, updates, and question resolutions. Some home service companies, like Responsible Pest Control, separate their contractor phone numbers into separate texting lists, so they can text the entire list personalized scheduling details via mass text with custom fields. 
Automation. Automations are another tool of business SMS platforms that home service companies are using to streamline operations. With SMS automations, client service teams can set up everything from keyword-based auto-replies (great for inbound, opt in SMS marketing campaigns), to complex drip campaigns, to holiday after-hour auto replies. These automations save agents valuable time that can instead be used to focus on building client relationships.
Integration. Most home services businesses use multiple communications channels, like email and web chat, alongside SMS. This omnichannel approach requires agents to handle multiple channels, which is much easier with the help of app integrations. App integrations empower client service teams to centralize all of their client communications and easily integrate business SMS into current workflows. Top business SMS platforms offer integrations with popular apps like Facebook Pages and Messenger, Help Scout, and Zapier.
Business SMS Helps Companies Keep It Personal
Many home services companies also happen to be small businesses, and most small businesses pride themselves on one thing in particular: personal relationships with their clients and employees. Business SMS, though a modern technology, empowers businesses to maintain that mom-and-pop touch on a much larger scale.
Client relations. SMS client service platforms allow agents to customize messages that are sent to client lists. By letting agents use merge tokens to automatically fill in templates with custom field information for each recipient, each client receives a message that seems as though the agent wrote the message specifically for them. These personalized texts ensure that home services businesses show that they treasure each and every one of their clients.
Employee relations. Small businesses are well-known for cultivating caring, close-knit working environments. Business SMS empowers company management and leadership to quickly communicate important information, such as emergency notifications, weather warnings, and other necessary messages, to all of their employees at once. They also empower management to schedule personalized holiday greetings for big days—as the owners of My Amazing Maid did with great success one eventful Christmas Eve.
Business SMS Empowers Companies to Get More Reviews
Consumers want to hire home services providers who are experienced, trustworthy, and can handle repairs or projects without needing to return to fix mistakes. Online reviews are a popular way for consumers to determine whether a provider has each of these qualities; in fact, 91% of people regularly or occasionally read online reviews and 84% of people trust them just as much as they trust recommendations from friends.
Business SMS is a fast and easy way to request reviews. Because people open 98% of the text messages they receive each day, it’s a guarantee that they will at least see your request. On top of that, 19% of recipients will click links in business SMS campaigns compared to just 4.2% for emails, which means it’s likely that your recipients will see your survey’s main webpage, too.
As long as your business follows some key best practices, like sending requests after positive service experiences, avoiding asking for positive reviews specifically, and directing requests to popular sites like Google Reviews and Yelp, positive reviews will start pouring in.
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