Implementing Business Texting Services to Automate Messages
When a business has a distributed workforce, managing messages with automations is key to ensuring customers have a streamlined messaging experience. Top business texting platforms should be able to offer simple and advanced automated messaging capabilities, including:
Scheduled messages. Team members should be able to schedule out mass messages sent to large lists, like appointment reminders or delivery notifications. Business texting platforms allow teams to choose a template for these messages, then, once it’s time to send, the platforms can automatically fill in custom information with merge tokens. Scheduling messages provides that personal touch that customers crave while saving agent time and allowing them to focus on more pressing tasks.
After-hours or during-hours responses. Customers expect immediate responses, no matter whether they text you at two in the afternoon or two in the morning. In fact, messaging etiquette says waiting more than 20 minutes to respond to a text can be seen as rude. That’s why setting both a during-hours response, which informs customers how long average response times are, and an after-hours response, which lets customers know when hours of operation are, is so important. These messages can even be tailored to incoming keywords; for example, a message containing the word “opt in” can receive a different auto reply than one containing the word “reschedule.”
Drip campaigns. Customer follow-ups or check-ins can be easily managed with a simple drip campaign. An SMS drip campaign, which functions like an email drip campaign, empowers teams to schedule a series of templated messages to lists of recipients.
Implementing Business Texting Services to Decrease the Distance
A big part of ensuring cohesion between distributed workers is providing them with a messaging channel that feels personal and works in real-time. This is especially important for teams that work with in-field staff, who often need immediate responses from team members. Business SMS is the ideal channel for internal conversations, offering:
Real-time responses. Considering that 90% of texts are read within the first three seconds of receipt and the average response time for a text is 90 seconds, business SMS is an ideal channel for team communications. Emergency notifications, or daily content like meeting notifications, are more likely to be read, and read quickly.
Emojis and GIFs. While also useful for certain customer conversations, emojis and GIFs are great assets for internal teams, adding personality that certain channels like email don’t encourage. As the Museum Hack team found, having a business SMS platform with emoji and GIF capabilities helped their distributed workforce strengthen team bonds.
Ready to scale your messaging to fit your distributed workplace? Test out an enterprise-class business SMS platform for free.
