4-steps to implement text messaging to engage your customers

Deploy a mobile ready messaging strategy across your organization

The way that consumers research, find, and engage with dealership has changed significantly in recent years. In the past, dealers would buy newspaper and radio ads, put up a billboard, get listed in the Yellow Pages, and wait for customers to call or show up to their dealership.

Now, the process is much more detached. While traditional advertising and marketing are important to create awareness, they are no longer the primary sources car buyers turn to when deciding which dealership to choose. Online searches are now king. Today’s car buyer typically searches for dealerships near them, reads reviews, maybe looks at your website, and then calls or messages you directly from your listing.

The option for customers to message businesses is a new addition. Google recognized that more and more customers would prefer to message a business as opposed to placing a call. In fact, 90 percent of consumers want to use messaging to interact with a business – with 50 percent preferring to message via SMS text.

The problem is only 48 percent of businesses are capable of messaging with their customers, but that number will likely increase with the launch of Google Click-to-Message. To help you get started, we have outlined the steps to get your dealership’s account set up to accept messages from your customers.

Here are the four steps to setting up Google Click-To-Message:

• Login to your Google My Business page
• Select messaging in the left menu and add phone number
• Verify that number with a code sent from Google
• Now searchers can message your dealership

                                       : Tips for interacting with customers via text:

 

Now that your dealership is all set up to take incoming texts, let’s review some tips that will help you successfully interact with your customers.

 

1. Be responsive

Oftentimes when consumers are conducting an online search on their mobile device, they want their questions answered immediately. This is because they are likely experiencing what Google refers to as micro-moments. These are when consumers want to know, want to go, or want to buy. If your online presence isn’t able to quickly answer their questions, they will probably move on to your competition.

One of the main reasons that online searchers want to connect with you via text is they feel like it is a quicker, more efficient method of communication. But that’s only true if the dealership is placing an emphasis on quick response times.

To ensure this happens, general managers should make sure their team is well equipped to offer quick responses to customers. If you don’t consistently respond to messages in a timely manner, customers will know because over time Google will post typical response times on your listing.

2. Don’t ask for sensitive information via text

This might seem obvious, but it bears repeating. Businesses should never ask for sensitive information like credit cards, banking information, or social security numbers over text. While text messages seem secure, the information isn’t encrypted so the data could be vulnerable.

3. Ask for customer feedback

Another valuable way to utilize text messaging in your customer interactions is asking for feedback. A lot of times customers don’t want to take the time to fill out a lengthy customer satisfaction survey, but they would be willing to answer a few questions via text. That is because asking questions via text comes across as more personal and less intrusive than a survey.

One way to approach this is by asking your customers after a transaction is complete, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely would you be to recommend this business to a family or friend.” And then follow that up with one or two questions about the service your business delivers. Our research has shown that approaching customer feedback this way results in significantly higher open and response rates than traditional CSAT surveys.

4. Invite customers to review your business

Text messaging is also a good method for collecting public facing customer feedback on your Google My Business listing. One of the biggest reasons to use text messaging to do this is many people are already signed into their Google account on their smartphone, so it’s much easier to connect them directly to your Google reviews page.

5. Encourage customers to add you to their contacts

Texting with your customers will help you build stronger more loyal customers. To help you reinforce that loyalty, try texting them a vCard with your contact information on it. If customers have access to your phone number in their contacts, it removes one of the steps in the car buying journey. It will help you evolve from being just a dealership to being their dealership.

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5 ways to use sms marketing for the legal industry

  Best practices for  SMS  marketing  for the legal industry

 

 

Mobile Messaging has made a phenomenal impact on diverse industries, by acting as a cost-effective marketing tool, thereby improving the revenues of companies to a considerable extent. The Even Legal industry has understood the potential of the text messaging platform and hence is taking active participation in using the mobile messaging platform. Law firms regardless of size are slowly and steadily harnessing text messaging medium to not only improve their services and making them more effective but also in helping them  increase reach and get new clients 

The bond between a lawyer and a client is a rather sensitive one, which includes credibility as well. Without credibility, it would be really hard for a lawyer to go forward with the case. To strengthen the relationship between the lawyer and the client, the mode of mobile messaging can be used. A Lawyer can send timely alerts and other important notifications such as court case hearing to their respective clients through a SMS.

 Independent Lawyers who have their own law firm are using the mobile messaging medium to market their specific services to as many customers as they can. In fact, seeing the trend attractive, more and more lawyers globally are coming forward to use this platform and gradually build their law business. Individuals accused of  crimes can get legal counsel through the medium of mobile messaging.

Texting can also be used for confirmation of appointment on a particular time, and also for scheduling and rescheduling meetings. On the contrary, clients who are mostly convicts have their mobile phone. This, in turn, makes it very easy for lawyers to send certain important information through text. Certain regulations have to be followed by the conversations that happen between a lawyer and a client is of a formal nature.

 How can Law firms use mobile messaging in an optimal manner? 

1. Permission-based messages: It becomes the rightful duty of the lawyers to first ask for the permission from their valued clients, before sending any worthy information. This ultimately builds trust.

 2. Use targeted mobile keywords: This greatly helps the lawyer to categorize clients. For example “Text bankruptcy to 91000” will bring in all those clients who are in real need of services pertaining to bankruptcy. Similarly, “Text Assault to 81000” will bring in all those clients who are booked for assault. 

3. Be Concise: Because text messages are short in length, it becomes utmost important that the text is specific and concise. This will, in turn, help the clients know as to what are the legal services that your firm is offering, and so help them make quick decisions. 

4. Timing is utmost important: When any notifications or alerts have to be sent, ensure that they are delivered on time. This builds loyalty and shows that your firm is really serious about helping clients. In turn, when a client sends any query through SMS, see to that the response is sent as soon as possible. Many of the lawyers who have used texting, were happy about the fact that their clients responded immediately upon receiving the message. Another pertinent point that the lawyers have mentioned is that time and money have been saved to a significant extent using this medium. The text messages which the clients receive can further be used for evidential purposes in a court or for other legal matters. Upon that, clients can document all the messages they have received by sorting out on a date and time basis. Whether you are a lawyer or a client, you can save and print all your text messages, which might eventually help in solving your legal cases.

four questions to consider before creating a chatbot for your business activity

Engage enterprises and customers in real time conversations

The customer experience model of today looks different than it did even five years ago, yet certain pillars of customer experience remain.

With the introduction of any new tool for customer engagement, you must strive to make experiences more personal, available and efficient.

Many organizations today struggle to implement new technology, while maintaining that human touch we all yearn for when dealing with organizations. To face this head-on, companies need to remember that innovations in technology should always augment the overall human element -- not necessarily replace it.

Case in point: Artificial intelligence (AI)-based chatbots. When implemented strategically, they can help enhance their customer experience by changing business processes and making customer service functions more seamless. 

Chatbots can help streamline overall productivity across contact centers. While chatbots won’t replace humans any time soon, they can help save time for customers while allowing agents to dedicate their time to more complex interactions.

If you're considering chatbots in your contact center, take a hard look at why you're implementing these tools and how they will help your organization achieve success. These four questions are key to avoiding a complex implementation that adds more costs than value:

1. Why Do You Want to Implement a Chatbot? 

Chatbots can improve contact center operations. However, the technology is still evolving and must be carefully evaluated and deployed to ensure success. Be sure that chatbots are the right tool for your business. Before taking the plunge, evaluate the cost of deployment and scale the needed skills within your organization. Chatbots can unlock new potential for contact centers, but only when done with the appropriate goals in mind. Chatbots, like other self-service channels, enable 24-7-365 support for customers with basic questions who are looking for fast responses.

2. How Can You Make Sure Your Chatbot Is Actually Intelligent? 

Your chatbot is only as good as the underlying data it's built on, so evaluate if you have an effective foundation. This involves mining and collating vast amounts of data derived from many systems. This includes reviewing prior customer interactions, understanding the types of questions asked and ensuring the correct answer is documented. With this information, your organization can better address the complexity of questions, and ensure that there is a correct answer available for the chatbot to provide customers.

3. Can Every Customer Can Benefit From the Chatbot? 

For a customer, being misunderstood during an interaction is frustrating and reflects poorly on your brand’s reputation. The prevalence of social media and flattening of the consumer world means more brands are dealing with more diverse customers. To address this, your contact center must provide service to customers across all languages and geographies. By layering a customized translation solution on top of the chatbot, you can provide support across all languages, regardless of what language the chatbot was trained in.

4. When Is It Time to Shift a Customer Interaction From a Chatbot to a Live Agent? 

Chatbots are not something you should set and forget.They need to be continually monitored and evaluated to make them smarter, as well as to determine the tipping point for when a customer engagement should move from bot to agent. Customer problems come in all shapes and sizes, and regardless of how much a bot understands, there will always be instances when an interaction needs to be handled by a human agent. The chatbot must be able to determine sentiment to know when a customer is frustrated and needs to talk to a live agent.

Contact centers must embrace new technology, but with every deployment should come a period of intensive evaluation — all with the goal of enhancing the customer experience at the center of every decision. Our increasingly connected world offers an abundance of new customer opportunities for businesses, but this expanding and diversified customer base comes with challenges. Regardless of industry or company size, customers expect seamless, efficient responses to their questions.

The human point of contact is always important in customer engagement, but tools like chatbots will play a key role in augmenting the traditional customer experience. Organizations that take a thoughtful approach to deploying chatbots will not only alleviate challenges for inundated contact centers, but also enhance support, reduce costs and provide unprecedented customer experiences for every customer they touch.

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brands increasingly using AI-powered chatbots for automating customer care

Engage enterprises and customers in real time conversations

One of the most visible ways artificial intelligence (AI) is entering the business world is the consumer-facing chatbot. This AI-powered virtual assistant uses natural language processing to understand key words and context from customers and help them without the use of a human representative. Naturally, this offers powerful incentives to companies looking to offer 24/7 customer service without ballooning costs.

But how are consumers reacting to chatbots? Are they really an effective way to augment customer service or are they a finicky, early stage technology that still has too many bugs to work out?

Business News Daily spoke to consumers and companies that have stepped into the world of AI in customer service to find out more about how chatbots are evolving and changing the way we think about customer service and sales automation. Check out these big trends that illuminate the future of customer service

How do chatbots work? 

 

There are two primary types of chatbots: one works on a rules engine, and the other is powered by machine learning, a subset of AI. The rules-based bots are a lot simpler and won't understand complex commands and requests, or be able to discern context.

The machine-learning versions, however, are more adaptable and intelligent. They can better understand context and react appropriately, especially as they interact with more humans over time. Machine learning incorporates natural language processing to do this, and as a result, can carry on far more sophisticated conversations than their rules-based counterparts.

Chatbots engage consumers on messenger platforms – which are quickly becoming the No. 1 place users spend their time, especially on mobile – and you'll need to determine where yours will exist prior to development. Facebook Messenger and Slack are common places to build chatbots, or you can host them locally on your own website.

As soon as it's live, your customers can begin interacting with your chatbot, which can answer questions, facilitate purchases and more. The more your bot interacts with people, the smarter it gets. That's the beauty of machine learning.

Early experiences with chatbots

Do chatbots really work in the real world as well as they do on paper? AI has been around for a while, but its development has been a story of peaks and valleys. Can machine learning-based chatbots really be so reliable? The short answer is sometimes.

"In a time where automation is prevalent, personalization is key to connecting with customers, and chatbots have helped personalize that experience," Albizu Garcia, CEO of GAIN, told Business News Daily. "However, there are drawbacks. Chatbots cannot always translate needs and may respond inappropriately to a customer's request. There is no doubt that chatbots are here to stay, but there are limitations that will need to be resolved, like increasing response capability, should they be the future of customer service."

Still, chatbots are a new phenomenon, and continuous improvements and new iterations are being developed every day and has positively impacted business even as they continue to work on it.

Customers like a human experience, even when they're dealing with a machine. In fact, customers tend to prefer chatbots that are so convincingly human that they might well be speaking with a customer service representative. That is why natural language processing is so important.

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future of mobile communication : top 3 trends

Third-party messaging services have become very popular with billions of monthly users

These digital communication services have the advantage of being free to the consumer, which means they don’t have a per message charge beyond the cost of the underlying data connectivity.

What’s next for mobile communications?

The mobile communications landscape is evolving, as carriers are already moving on to the new Rich Communications Services (RCS) standard, which is part of the new, more advanced mobile messaging standard, designed to improve the messaging functionality installed on phones by default.

Along with text messages, RCS will also allow for higher quality picture messaging, group chats, location sharing, and video calls. The service will also support read receipts and typing indicators that you’re probably already familiar with from other services.

mobile messaging platform

So, why the push for RCS if the “new” features already exist in other apps?

RCS has a few notable advantages over other messaging services:

• A single inbox for traditional SMS, MMS and feature rich messages
• Universal profile – no account sign up required
• Out of the box support – no app download required
• Open and cross-platform standard – It is hardware agnostic. Unlike Apple’s iMessage, RCS is designed to work across all phones and software.

What still needs to happen:

• Adoption by carriers globally – The reality today is that only around 52 carriers have implemented the RCS standard, but the GSMA – Google Android RCS initiative – provides the opportunity to rapidly deploy RCS to a potential 800 GSMA carriers.
• Interoperability – Users on different carrier networks must be able to send/receive RCS messages to/from each other. There must also be interoperability between RCS and non-RCS phones.
• Apple support – If tens of millions of iPhone users can’t join RCS chats, then a large part of the appeal is lost.

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how bulk sms is the easiest and fastest way to to increase your business reach

Deploy a mobile ready messaging strategy across your organization

Text messaging has become part and parcel of modern business life, an especially useful means of communicating information when timely response is the desired result. Safety alerts, real-time information updates, appointment reminders/confirmations, service scheduling, order status, password resets, marketing promotions... all these, and plenty more, now regularly find their way to workers or customers via text message. 

The ability to send text messages for such purposes is typically integrated into workforce and customer engagement workflows, automated via a process known as application-to-person, or A2P, messaging. If you can't tell from the number of business-related text messages arriving on your own smartphone alone, A2P is a booming market. IDC estimates the worldwide market for A2P messaging will grow from $27.2 billion in 2016 to $34.3 billion in 2019. That's a 26% growth in four years.

Given the rising importance of text messaging, companies need to think strategically about how to incorporate the technology into their communications portfolio. Business-grade text messaging comes in a variety of deployment options: on premises, Web portal, API, text-enabled business lines, and Internet-based messaging applications. The goal should be selecting a solution that improves engagement with employees and customers, integrates with existing applications, and meets security and compliance requirements.

Critical selection criteria should include the ability to:

• Archive messages in a secure system that stores business messages -- on premises or in the cloud, depending on preference -- and allows for quick and easy retrieval from a Web portal
• Integrate with a wide range of messaging protocols and endpoints, including basic SMS and SMTP, as well as entrenched messaging protocols such as WCTP and TAP
• Allow message lengths of up to 1,000 characters, scalability to 20,000 employees at once, and global messaging
• Support security features such as end-to-end encryption and remote wipe, and provide a secure app for users
• Integrate with applications and other communications services via APIs
• Manage and send text messages for employee productivity and promotions via simple, easy-to-use features, with administration functions simplified through a Web-based interface
• Text-enable landline phone numbers

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how to keep text messaging communication channels of your business secure

Deploy a mobile ready messaging strategy across your organization

IT needs to put strong texting policies in place, educate users, and implement a mobile messaging platform that provides encryption, storage, and archiving, as explained below:

Text messaging has taken on a life of its own in the enterprise, providing a sure-fire way to grab a colleague's attention quickly and all but ensure an instantaneous response. But all this text messaging comes with a gotcha. While the business can benefit from such efficiency, text messaging used in such an unrestrained manner can put a business in jeopardy of being noncompliant and at risk of security breaches.

Consider the use of text messaging among business colleagues using any old messaging apps from personal devices, for example. Consumer-grade messaging apps like WhatsApp or WeChat can be vulnerable to hacking and other threats, making those business conversations open to interception by malicious third parties. What if those messages contained sensitive financial or personally identifiable information on an employee or customer?

When business users send each other text messages via unsanctioned apps, IT has no visibility into the information riding over such services. They can't archive those business conversations, and wouldn't be able to find them during discovery proceedings -- which may very well mean the company fails to meet regulatory compliance mandates.

Tough as drawing a line between acceptable and non-acceptable use of messaging may be, businesses must do so. For one, they must put firm policies in place that define what types of communications workers can exchange on personal devices through SMS and other types of messaging, and back up those policies with user education. Additionally, businesses must implement messaging platforms that can provide compliance and security while allowing users to rely on texting as a means of reaching out to colleagues.

While a business-dedicated messaging app is the strongest way to differentiate between personal and professional messaging, some businesses like to use containerized mobile app deployments as a way to secure communications apps and software. Mobility management software suites often provide the means of containerizing apps, and can offer secure versions of peer-to-peer messaging along with other popular business tools, including email, browsers, and calendaring. On the downside, this type of solution can be difficult to implement in BYOD environments.

Businesses that do allow personal device use need to look for a secure/compliant mobile messaging platform that provides auditability -- i.e., message retention and archiving -- and encryption, both of the communication channel itself and data while at rest.

And businesses that deal with sensitive data, especially if they operate in regulated industries, would do well to seek out vendors that can provide a dedicated messaging service that handles encryption as well as the storage and archiving of text messages for legal discovery and compliance. A cloud-based service is particularly beneficial, allowing businesses to centralize all the messages and communications among employees.

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why instant push notifications are absolutely essential for messaging

Increase engagement with your APP users and drive conversions

There have been concerns for years (and years…) about security holes in the Signalling System 7 (SS7) protocol – the telco standard that is used to send SMS. Furthermore the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has started the process of deprecating SMS due to security fears. And now it has been reported that hackers have drained some bank accounts in Germany by exploiting one of the flaws in SS7.

In this case, online banking customers needed to get a code sent via SMS to their phone before a transaction between accounts could be completed. The hackers, who had obtained login and password details already, routed the SMS to themselves, and bingo – transaction successful. It wasn’t particularly sophisticated, and the hardware is easily available. What is frustrating is that nobody seemed surprised – it felt like an inevitability. The bottom line is that it appears that sending anything ‘secure’ over SMS is no longer acceptable. Would this have happened if the two factor authentication was carried out via push notification? Probably not.

Push Offers Increased Security

 

Compared to SMS, it is safe to say that push notifications offer much more security. Take Apple Push Notification service (APNs) for example, which “enforces end-to-end, cryptographic validation and authentication using two levels of trust: connection trust and device token.” Without delving into a deep technical exploration (you can read it for yourself in Apple’s developer docs, and let me off the hook), there are token and certificate based encryptions in place which ensure that push notifications are sent only to the intended end user, which SMS just doesn’t have or do anywhere near as well. Furthermore businesses are required to apply for the Apple certificate in order to send push for their apps, and they can be revoked if there is a breach in trust.

More Benefits Of Using Push notifications

Push notifications provide better security, but they also come with other benefits for enterprise businesses. Let’s take a look:

Efficiency – Push notifications are much cheaper to send than SMS, so you will be saving your business money by doing so. As well as this they are much faster to deploy, and they can be sent at huge scale. For enterprises that need to send millions of push notifications in less than a minute – no sweat.

Richer Interactions – Let’s face it, SMS has not been impressive technology for at least 15 years. Push notifications, on the other hand, provide a much more sophisticated and attractive interaction, especially with the advent of Rich Push. This includes the ability to personalize and contextualize messages at a much more individual level in real-time. Add to this the use of emojis, and now with Rich Push the use of images, GIFs and videos, and SMS look like a real museum piece.

Tracking – We also get extra information from push notifications, such as which users have turned off push or uninstalled the app. This is useful information that you can use to re-onboard users or engage them through a different channel.

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Why SMS marketing is one of the best ways to promote your products and services

Before web-based and mobile messaging apps took center stage in digital communication, short message service (SMS) was the most convenient way to send messages.

Texting has maintained its relevance among over 4 billion people worldwide registers a 45 percent response rate with smartphone users checking and responding to most of the text messages that pop into their inbox. Further, 75% of consumers like to have offers sent to them via text.

With these in mind, SMS is definitely a powerful tool that your business can use to promote your products and services to customers.

                                                              SMS Marketing

SMS marketing is a type of marketing that uses text as a channel to share promotional content to existing and prospective customers. It involves using a web-based software that lets you schedule and send text blasts to those who have subscribed to your text messaging campaign.

Dynamically Send, Receive & Enhance Text Message Campaigns.

  

Your Guide to SMS Marketing Campaign:

 

If you’re looking to venture into SMS marketing, it’s important to draw a concrete plan to help you give direction to your initiatives. Your SMS marketing plan, which should identify your goals, as well as the tools and resources you need can help you come up with an SMS strategy that has a good chance of working for your business.

Here’s a guide you can use to implement SMS marketing for your business:

1. Goal Setting

 

All marketing tactics are developed toward a goal, whether it’s to improve branding, increase sales numbers, drive website traffic, or keep customers engaged, among others. Within these goals, however, there are several specific objectives you want your teams to achieve to come up with a unified marketing approach.

Suppose you want to build customer loyalty. It’s a very general goal, so you try to break it down into more specific ones. You could then list those goals as follows:

• Increase the rate of returning customers by 25 percent through free shipping on bulk orders for the next two months
• Send order confirmation via text no more than three minutes after the customer places an order
• Remember, whatever it is that you’re trying to achieve with your SMS campaign, you need to have clearly defined goals and measure them using key benchmarks.

2. Opting In Your Subscribers

 

Obviously, the success of your campaign will largely depend on the number of customers who choose to subscribe to your SMS marketing services.

However, an equally important consideration here is to ask permission from your customers to receive marketing text messages from you. Breaking this rule is not a good practice that can put your business in a bad light among customers.

You could choose how to encourage your customers to opt in to your text message alerts. You could send them an opt-in code on their phone or have them sign up a form on your website.

Whenever you push out marketing content on social, email, and the rest of your marketing channels, there should be an opt-in box for customers. Be sure to highlight what’s in store for them when they opt in to your SMS notifications such as exclusive deals or huge discounts on purchases.

If your customers want to opt out, you should provide some means for this as well, and give clear instructions about it.This way, your customers will appreciate the fact that you’re not tying them down to a service they no longer need.

3. Using SMS Marketing Software

 

You’ll need an SMS marketing software to send text messages about your business and special promotions. Providers of this service use a special program designed to accomplish everything that your SMS marketing campaign is aiming for—build your subscriber list, choose designated numbers, schedule a text blast, and send out all your messages, reminders, and promotional coupons via text.

Depending on the SMS marketing company you choose, you have the option to integrate your provider’s SMS API (application program interface) into your marketing system to help run your campaigns efficiently.

Software programs in SMS marketing also offer other helpful features like automation, customer polls, and sweepstakes contests to help you engage with your customers. These programs can provide insightful data such as customer demographics, as well as opt in and opt out rates so that you could see which campaigns are working well and which ones you need to improve.

Along with the features that will work best for you, you might want to factor in the cost of the service or package that you’re getting from your vendor. Some companies offer free trials, which you can later upgrade to a premium account to get all the features you need.

4. Developing Your Marketing Strategy Through SMS

 

One of the most important things you need to consider is how you can include SMS marketing into your overall mobile strategy.

Some common uses of SMS marketing are listed below:

 

• Text for info – Customers interested in your monthly events, for example, can request for more information using a keyword (example: “DECEMBER”) that they can send to a shortcode (the number you assign to receive the text) so that they don’t miss out on any promotions available in a particular event.
• Follow-through messages – When customers purchase an item, send them a series of texts to thank them, give them pointers about proper usage, issue warranty reminders, and offer after-sales services.
• Appointment reminders – If you have a business that allows customers to make appointments, you could use SMS to send schedule reminders on your customers’ mobile, which is one way of preventing cancellations or missed appointments.

SMS marketing has great potentials that would bring you and your business closer to your customers. But before you can reap the full benefits of SMS marketing, make sure to know how it will fit into your overall marketing strategy to make your business grow fast and easy.

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how sms truly molds itself to the needs of business

Dynamically Send, Receive & Enhance Text Message Campaigns

Marketing is an important strategy for the success of your business, and there are a lot of ways you can approach your marketing strategies. You could start by simply establishing a reliable and working online presence. The Internet is a global platform that is available on all your digital devices.

Well, you may be satisfied with having just that or think that’s pretty much it, but you’ll be surprised to find out that there’s more to it. Have you ever thought of SMS marketing? If so, the Internet has all the answers you need.Most people may tend to overlook SMS and feel that it may be costly for a business setup if you’re using it to send out mass messages.

Instantaneous Message Blasts

 

You might ask why it is important to send an SMS messages when you can simply email them. Emails are effective but they are not time-sensitive. You may argue that an email is received as soon as it is sent; but for the recipients to read the information, they will first require to have a push notification which may not appear right away and, on the other hand, they also have to have a stable network connection.

Compared to emails, SMS messages are transferred within a few seconds. The benefit is that it doesn’t need an internet connection to be received or sent out. The SMS notification comes right away, and the recipient can immediately read it. Push notifications can be easily deleted and forgotten, but a text message has to be opened before its push notification disappears.

Efficiency of SMS Messages
 
SMS messages are far more efficient. Well-constructed messages should convey a sense of urgency and prompt the customer to respond to that urgency. The opportunity to text your customers is one which you want to make the most out of. To begin with, customers need to trust you with their personal mobile numbers; otherwise, they will simply unsubscribe from the text messages if they feel that these are a nuisance.

Creates a Loyal Relationship
 
SMS messages is a good way to establish a relationship with the customers. You would want to keep the text messages short and simple, and you should also get straight to the point to avoid any unnecessary information in the text. Keep it precise and ensure that you refer to the customers using their name.

Simplicity of the Messages
 
SMS messages are very simple, and they are easy to construct in a manner to convey what you need with just a few characters. The text is supposed to urge the customer to go an extra mile for them to find out more.

For it to be even more effective, focus on pointing out the key elements within the short text message rather than going into the details which you can later send in the email or a newsletter. This means that your customers can later read the more detailed information about the products and services that you’re offering. You can answer all questions and attend to customer feedback and support via email. An email is best for detailed information, lengthy texts, and anything that doesn’t require your customer’s immediate attention.

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3 reasons why mobile messaging is more preferred than ott messaging

Deploy a mobile ready messaging strategy across your organization

 

Why OTT messaging cannot takeover Mobile messaging in the near future? There is a lot of hoopla going around that OTT (Over the Top) messaging will take over mobile messaging in the coming years, but that’s not true. There are quite a few studies that have been carried out to understand the business trends of OTT and Mobile messaging, and it’s quite clear that both the messaging mediums have got their own significance in the marketplace.

While there is no doubt that OTT messaging which includes WhatsApp, Facebook, WeChat, Viber etc., have made a huge impact  and a dent in the global messaging global market, OTT cannot completely replace SMS and mobile messaging

 Mobile messaging is now considered the most important marketing strategy when it comes to customer acquisition and engagement.

3 strong reasons as to why OTT Messaging cannot take over Mobile messaging in the near future: 

1. Companies rely on Mobile messaging: There are a massive number of companies who have experienced the power of A2P Messaging, in terms of reaching out to millions and that too with little cost spent on marketing related activities. Companies strongly believe in A2P Messaging, and how it has helped them improve their revenues over a period of time, and thereby improved their customer acquisition and engagement rates. 

2. 2 Factor Authentication (2FA): The real potential of Mobile messaging lies in providing 2 Factor Authentication. Companies have leveraged upon 2FA and thereby carried out their business activities in a better manner. 2FA builds credibility between the customer and the company thereby improving customer relations and enhancing customer engagement. 

3. Internet connectivity is an issue in developing nations: Developing and emerging markets should be taken into perspective: The power of SMS can be experienced anywhere in the world, no matter how remote the location might be. But in the case of OTT messaging the same cannot be said, as they still doesn’t have a proper channel to reach emerging markets. Countries like Nigeria and Somalia can be taken into perspective, where though SMS has made its presence over the years, the same cannot be said about OTT messaging. Another important aspect that can be taken into consideration is that most of the companies strongly rely on Mobile messaging for business communications, whereas when it comes to WhatsApp and Facebook which comes under OTT messaging, the majority of the text messaging part is used for personal or informal purposes. 

Businesses worldwide that have relied on Mobile messaging for brand building and customer engagement were around 19%, when compared to OTT services like WhatsApp and Facebook which stood at 1.4% and 2.1% respectively. Another key point is that in the case of OTT messaging, there has to be an internet connection, but when it comes to text messaging there is no need of internet connection. You might know that not all regions across the globe have got internet connection. ‘Ubiquity’ and ‘Reliability’ are the two most important assets of SMS Messaging, because of which companies doesn’t want to switch to any other communication channel, thereby sticking to the traditional text messaging platform.

sms comunications : 5 ways its heradling a paradigm shift

Five ways to smartly use mobile messaging and build your business 

Mobile messaging has been playing a key role in the corporate world from the last two decades. Many companies around the globe have benefitted hugely from this cost-effective marketing tool. Industries such as retail, healthcare, finance, education, hospitality, real estate have been able to successfully capitalize upon the mobile messaging platform. Text messaging platform have helped industries to improve their revenues to a considerable extent over a period of time. A2P (Application to person) messaging has been considered as one of the best tactics, when it comes to communicating and marketing with consumers.

Mobile messaging is also considered as one of the best marketing methods when it comes to engaging customers and building relations with them. Another important point to be considered is that text message marketing is also known as permission-based marketing. In certain scenarios, if a company wants to send a text to a particular customer then they have to first ask the permission of the customer. This builds credibility between the company and the customer. 

Dynamically Send, Receive & Enhance Text Message Campaigns

Benefits of Mobile Messaging and how its enabling a paradigm shift in communication 

1. The power of ‘short’: Text messages are short, as there is a specified character limit to send a SMS. Customers like to know about the product and service in a few words. On the other end, companies have to develop specific and relevant content in order to gain attention from the customers.

 2. Customer loyalty: As the text messages are personalized, customers feel that the businesses are authentic in their promotional activities. Customers also feel that they have been treated in a special manner. It has been observed over a period of time that the medium of mobile messaging has been attributed to higher customer response rates. 

3. Low marketing costs and high ROI: One of the predominant reason as to why the majority of companies globally rely on mobile messaging medium is because it is both cheap and rewarding. The overall marketing costs spent for text messaging marketing is way too low compared to other marketing methods. Messages are sent to a massive number of consumers and that too within a shorter timeframe. It is also rewarding because the revenue that is being generated from this platform is considerably good, and that is diverse industries are coming forward to use this marketing tool in an optimal manner. 

4. High Open Rate: There are already many studies that have stated that over 90% messages are read within just three minutes of receiving it. This directly means that when the bulk SMS are sent to customers, almost all the customers will open and read the message. Due to high open rates, there is a possibility that the conversions will also be high. It also depends as to how smartly marketers use the text messaging medium.

5. Exploring unexplored territories: A mobile phone is used in almost every nook and corner of the world. This means that niche businesses who want to explore new territories and thereby build new customers can give it a try by using mobile messaging. Companies have seen that through the efficient and consistent use of mobile messaging they were able to steadily grow their list and also manage their subscribers’ systematically. Targeting specific customers is where text messaging stands apart, as this platform focuses on sending messages only to a specific set of customers. Text messaging is considered as a quick way of marketing. Competitors hoping to gain customers attention first, it becomes vital for your business to use mobile messaging as the message is being send in just a few seconds to your customer’s mobile phone. Lastly, this platform doesn’t require internet connection.

four questions to consider before creating a chatbot for your business activity

Engage enterprises and customers in real time conversations

The customer experience model of today looks different than it did even five years ago, yet certain pillars of customer experience remain.

With the introduction of any new tool for customer engagement, you must strive to make experiences more personal, available and efficient.

Many organizations today struggle to implement new technology, while maintaining that human touch we all yearn for when dealing with organizations. To face this head-on, companies need to remember that innovations in technology should always augment the overall human element -- not necessarily replace it.

Case in point: Artificial intelligence (AI)-based chatbots. When implemented strategically, they can help enhance their customer experience by changing business processes and making customer service functions more seamless. 

Chatbots can help streamline overall productivity across contact centers. While chatbots won’t replace humans any time soon, they can help save time for customers while allowing agents to dedicate their time to more complex interactions. 

 

If you're considering chatbots in your contact center, take a hard look at why you're implementing these tools and how they will help your organization achieve success. These four questions are key to avoiding a complex implementation that adds more costs than value:

 
1. Why Do You Want to Implement a Chatbot? 

Chatbots can improve contact center operations. However, the technology is still evolving and must be carefully evaluated and deployed to ensure success. Be sure that chatbots are the right tool for your business. Before taking the plunge, evaluate the cost of deployment and scale the needed skills within your organization. Chatbots can unlock new potential for contact centers, but only when done with the appropriate goals in mind. Chatbots, like other self-service channels, enable 24-7-365 support for customers with basic questions who are looking for fast responses.

2. How Can You Make Sure Your Chatbot Is Actually Intelligent? 

Your chatbot is only as good as the underlying data it's built on, so evaluate if you have an effective foundation. This involves mining and collating vast amounts of data derived from many systems. This includes reviewing prior customer interactions, understanding the types of questions asked and ensuring the correct answer is documented. With this information, your organization can better address the complexity of questions, and ensure that there is a correct answer available for the chatbot to provide customers.

3. Can Every Customer Can Benefit From the Chatbot? 

For a customer, being misunderstood during an interaction is frustrating and reflects poorly on your brand’s reputation. The prevalence of social media and flattening of the consumer world means more brands are dealing with more diverse customers. To address this, your contact center must provide service to customers across all languages and geographies. By layering a customized translation solution on top of the chatbot, you can provide support across all languages, regardless of what language the chatbot was trained in.

4. When Is It Time to Shift a Customer Interaction From a Chatbot to a Live Agent? 

Chatbots are not something you should set and forget.They need to be continually monitored and evaluated to make them smarter, as well as to determine the tipping point for when a customer engagement should move from bot to agent. Customer problems come in all shapes and sizes, and regardless of how much a bot understands, there will always be instances when an interaction needs to be handled by a human agent. The chatbot must be able to determine sentiment to know when a customer is frustrated and needs to talk to a live agent.

Contact centers must embrace new technology, but with every deployment should come a period of intensive evaluation — all with the goal of enhancing the customer experience at the center of every decision. Our increasingly connected world offers an abundance of new customer opportunities for businesses, but this expanding and diversified customer base comes with challenges. Regardless of industry or company size, customers expect seamless, efficient responses to their questions.

The human point of contact is always important in customer engagement, but tools like chatbots will play a key role in augmenting the traditional customer experience. Organizations that take a thoughtful approach to deploying chatbots will not only alleviate challenges for inundated contact centers, but also enhance support, reduce costs and provide unprecedented customer experiences for every customer they touch.

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how mobile messaging provide a immediate way to reach and interact with your customers

Deploy a mobile ready messaging strategy across your organization

In a relatively short time, mobile messaging has eclipsed all other modes of communication as the way we connect, share, and engage in conversations. It’s how people prefer to communicate today.

Based on our experience with companies like Uber and Airbnb, we’ve learned the best practices of mobile messaging firsthand. In order to help you navigate the mobile messaging landscape and develop your company’s strategy, we created a framework that we call The Four I’s Framework for Mobile Messaging.

The four pillars of the framework are: interfaces, integration, intelligence, and infrastructure.

Let’s take a closer look.

1. Interfaces

 

Interfaces are the messaging channels you use to reach your customer, which include SMS, push notifications, in-app chat, and dedicated messaging apps. Email and voice communications are additional interfaces. There will likely be more than one interface that works for your customers.

Here’s a brief summary of each:

 

• SMS: the grandfather of messaging – with its invention dating back to 1992 – is still the most-used mobile feature.
• In-app: many businesses add full-featured chat directly to their web or mobile app. Contextual information such as recent activity in the app and data typed into fields can be shared between parties over chat.
• Push notifications let an app send one-way messages, badges, and alerts even when the device’s screen is locked and the app is closed.
• Messaging apps have been the most exciting interface in recent years, and include Facebook Messenger, Viber, Apple iMessage, WeChat, WhatsApp, and Kik.

2. Integration

 

Mobile communication needs to work in lockstep with the natural flow of business, using information that’s relevant to each stage of the customer journey. When you integrate information from your CRM, ERP, and other enterprise systems that may contain customer shipping information, past orders, or ongoing support issues, your communication will be much more effective.

Integration gives customers a more personalised and efficient, experience. Internally, with this additional context, businesses can pick the most convenient way to communicate with customers, including the best timing and the most useful interface for the message or task.

3. Intelligence

 

Messaging is more than just exchanging content between people. It involves a tremendous amount of intelligence to analyse content, deliver the message to the right person (or bot), and respond in the context of that interaction. It’s also a very powerful solution – giving businesses the ability to communicate with more users at scale, at a far lower cost.

Intelligence can help you engage with larger numbers of customers without sacrificing the quality of the interaction. Today, AI powers chatbots that respond to customers, and can be seen in apps like Skype, Facebook Messenger, and Slack.

Sometimes, businesses harness both human intelligence and AI, with chatbots supported by human agents. In this approach, a bot is a first-to-respond entity that falls back on a human agent if it doesn’t know how to respond effectively. Facebook M, Fin, and Clara are examples of this type of bot.

4. Infrastructure

 

When adding messaging to your software, you used to have two choices: build everything from scratch, or buy an off-the-shelf SaaS solution. Recently, a new method has emerged: cloud building blocks for messaging. With cloud building blocks, services are delivered from the cloud using APIs. You effectively get the customisation of a build-your-own architecture with the ease of an off-the-shelf solution.

What’s next?

 

In order to truly set yourself apart from the crowd, you need to prioritise the customer experience and use your mobile messaging technology effectively. Once you’ve discovered the right channels for your company and created a strategy for communications, you’ll also learn how you can design and build an experience your customers will love.

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how sms chatbots are revolutionizing customer service

Chatbots are becoming a more familiar way for people to interact with brands, as mobile phones have found their way into every Indian home. It is not just the younger generation who is comfortable with technology, but also the millennials and older generations who are showing an eagerness to befriend information on demand on their smart phones. This tech savvy audience is not patient enough for information or services unless they are delivered to them “NOW”.

Giving into this instant gratification phenomenon, Amazon has launched grocery deliveries within two hours of placing an order. Cabs are at your pick-up location “NOW”. Funds can be transferred and received effortlessly via Paytm, without the need to login on banking apps. In this age of instant information, customers find it frustrating to be queued up either on call center calls or waiting for someone to visit them and sign them up for new services like DTH or bank accounts.

Most organisations spend more than a few million every year on building contact centers, retail and sales manpower and all the technology that is required to power them. Interestingly, half of the calls received at such contact points end up getting dropped as the incoming customer service calls either go unresolved or leads are not managed effectively to realise the ROIs of instant gratification. This not only results in huge losses for the enterprise but also immense customer dissatisfaction. And it’s a known statistic that 90% of the detractors will not do a repeat purchase instead initiate an immediate lookout for alternate service providers.

Engage enterprises and customers in real time conversations

Companies and brands foresee the possibility of significant cost savings by improving customer service with scripted algorithms promptly delivered via chatbots. There is a major incentive for companies to invest more heavily in these platforms which can help to reduce customer service costs by 30% and increase sales by over 30%.

With this promise, many enterprises took to building chatbots either through social messenger platforms or other chatbot stacks. However, early experiences broke down as soon as you scratched the surface of basic dialogue. Enterprises were adopting this to improve their brand visibility than for lowering the barriers to information. The design process being clunky left the users even more frustrated. As a result, engagement and conversion rates proved underwhelming and chatbots simply added to the channel clutter. They were more FAQ driven than really an effective marketing or utility driven application.

The platforms are using push feeds to serve as a discovery platform for more information than just neatly designed FAQs. As an example, if you ask enterprises what they would prioritize when it comes to the bot strategy—they are likely to say, “Improving our dialogue with consumers.” However, if you ask the customers, what would please them the most; they are likely to say—“never needing a dialogue with anyone”. In these evolving dynamics between enterprise and customer, what matters most isn’t how talkative or friendly a brand can be, but how efficiently consumers can access its services.

This is where the industry has tried to fill the gap with its powerful chatbot solution that not only works regardless of form type—desktop, mobile, tablet—but also works as seamlessly with or without data.Highly personable experiences that understand customer queries and can be enabled on SMS as well as data enabled mobiles. The industry wants the platform to be the catalyst that transforms our discussion from a B2C model to a C2B model. In the age of Uber, Paytm, Airbnb and the likes, services have become available on-demand, posing a new challenge for the banking and the insurance industry. Our value proposition is to make the power of information accessible to consumers for financial inclusion of the masses.

We have also seen banks taking the lead to provide its users the ease to interact with them for banking requests using simple conversational commands without the need to memorize specific and hard to remember keywords. Whether it was “please recharge my phone for Rs 50 or transfer funds to an account number “XXXXX4137”, as it provides a friction and keyword less SMS banking solution like what has already been done for a leading bank as part of their digital rural banking initiative. This was even before the term “chatbot” was coined as a service model.

This journey has led to the evolution and adoption of chatbots across other industry verticals as well for increased conversions and an enhanced customer service experience. The Goal has been to let enterprises assimilate chatbots in their sales and service cycles. The platform has evolved into a more conversational user interface (UI) which allows the customers to raise issues, order new connections—bank accounts or DTH, report complaints, get constant updates on their complaints—the same way enterprises allow customers to track their orders. Empowering the customers with this visibility and accessibility can go a long way towards garnering a lasting goodwill towards the enterprise and its processes.

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