Yearly certification training is a must-have in a lot of industries. But it’s hard to manage the training no matter how many years you’ve been doing it. Your team is so busy with their day-to-day work that they accidentally ignore your informational emails and forget to take note of your in-person reminders. Enter business text messaging.
Texts have an open rate of 98%. That means your team members will almost certainly read each message you send. A high open rate is critical when it comes to something as important as certificate training reminders. Plus, your team will reach out quickly if they have any questions. After all, texts have a fast average response time of 90 seconds.
Read on to learn how to manage yearly certification training with business text messaging.
Set Up an SMS Drip Campaign for Reminders
One SMS certification training reminder isn’t going to cut it. You need to keep sending regular SMS reminders until your team members confirm that they’ve completed their certification training.
Your business text messaging platform will make this easy. All you need to do is create an SMS drip campaign. It will send a series of texts to your team on the schedule you choose.
To set up an SMS drip campaign, your team can:
- Choose a list of leads
- Select a schedule for sending the certification training texts
- Create multiple templated messages
An SMS certification training reminder might look like the following example:
Hi {{team member}}! Don’t forget that your {{certification name}} annual training is due {{certification due date}}. Please let me know if you have any questions! —Andy, Team Lead 🌟 Text back with questions, or text DONE when you’ve finished training. Text NO to opt out of SMS services.
Frequently reminding your team members about their outstanding certificate training requirements helps them stay on track. Once they’ve completed the training, they can opt out of the SMS list by texting a keyword like DONE or COMPLETE.
Reply to Incoming Queries in One Place
Your team members—especially new team members—may have questions about annual certificate training. Answer questions about deadlines, processes, and content through one convenient channel.
All team members’ messages will arrive in your shared inbox. You or a fellow manager can answer them from within the inbox or decide to escalate the question to an in-person chat or phone call.
To provide fast answers, you can:
- Set up an immediate auto reply that lets team members know you got their text and will answer soon
- Offer a quick series of FAQs in your auto reply
- Set up automated answers based on key phrases (e.g., If someone texts “Where can I find this training module?” the business text messaging platform can reply with the link.)
A shared inbox combined with automated responses will save you a lot of valuable time. You can spend that saved time focusing on in-depth training questions or other complex projects.
Send On-The-Fly Texts as Needed
A lot can change after you start sending SMS certificate training reminders. You may notice that team members are replying with similar questions. You may even notice that too few team members have completed their training.
In these cases, you may want to deviate from the SMS drip campaign and send a standalone text. That’s easy with help from a business text messaging platform.
You simply need to:
A standalone text template may look like the following example:
Hi team! Andy here. You’ve had a lot of questions about the certificate training deadline. Heads up that you need to pass all the modules by 11:59 P.M. on 2/29. Try to get them done as early as you can, though! Text STOP to unsubscribe.
Sending quick, on-the-fly texts is a great way to keep your team on track—and let them know you’re paying attention to all of their questions and concerns.
Want more tips on using business text messaging internally? Check out our blog.
