American companies lose more than $62 million each year due to poor customer service, and more than half of American consumers have backed out of a planned purchase due to customer service complaints. In addition, nearly half of all consumers say that they have switched companies in the past due to poor customer service. Not replying quickly to social media posts, online reviews, or customer questions can give the (often untrue) impression that your business isn’t interested in your customers. However, with less person-to-person contact due to the COVID-19 pandemic, finding ways to connect with existing and potential customers can be a challenge. That’s where texting with TrueDialog can help.
What Is TrueDialog?
TrueDialog offers an enterprise-grade, text messaging service that’s designed especially for businesses. It allows users to send and respond to multiple text messages from a single dashboard. The company’s proprietary system enables seamless texting from both short codes and long codes, which is combined in the same thread, allowing you to send mass text messages and then effortlessly engage in one-to-one conversations at scale. You can also assign a thread to an individual or team. Team-enabled texting allows multiple agents to participate in the same text thread at the same time. This saves time and improves efficiency by saving the customer service agent from tracking down answers to customer questions from different departments. The TrueDialog system works with both Android and iOS phone systems and can be integrated with a variety of CRMs, including Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle, Marketo, and Hubspot.
The TrueDialog system includes dozens of features, such as:
- landline texting
- an automatic URL shortener
- SMS scheduling
- international capabilities
- SMS couponing
- opt-in, opt-out, and subscription management
- drill-down reporting
Over the course of 10+ years, TrueDialog has perfected its cloud-based texting system. The company has done the work, so you don’t have to.
How Texting Can Improve Customer Service Efforts
Texting helps you ramp up your customer service efforts and get the most out of your employees’ time and your company’s investment.
- Texting improves your customer service response time. Texting is faster than calling, leaving voice messages, and waiting for a call back. Less time on the phone means that your representatives will be able to get back to customers more quickly.
- Texting for customer service improves your representatives’ productivity. One-to-one calls and in-person conversations take more time than interacting with customers via text messages. Plus, a single customer agent can participate in multiple text threads at the same time, improving efficiency.
- Texting is the preferred method of communication for a growing number of people. The vast majority of younger consumers prefer texting to calling for business communication. They cite the ability to quickly glance at a message and fit the communication into their schedule as major advantages of texting. Plus, with texting, your customers are never going to be put on hold. Communicating by texting is, therefore, good customer service.
- Customers are going to text you anyway. Texting is so pervasive that customers will assume they text your business with inquiries and customer service issues, even if your system isn’t set up to accept and process such messages. Without a robust texting system, you’re missing out on messages from both current and potential customers.
- Texting gives customers a greater degree of privacy than phone calls. When you make a phone call, your conversation may be overheard by anyone in earshot. If they need to discuss something delicate, such as a medical issue, insurance claim, or financial transaction, giving customers a texting option helps them respond to you with privacy, even in a busy store or transportation hub.
- Texting can be more personal than calling. Texting has a bad reputation for being impersonal, but it can be more personal than bulk emails or even telephone calls. By enabling text messages as a part of your communication system, you’re sending the message that your customers are important to you. In addition, communicating by text allows your business to be available to customers 24/7, 365 days a year. In today’s age of instant gratification, you can be available to your customers when they need you, whether that’s at midnight, on a holiday, or during more traditional hours.
- With texting, you can automate a portion of your customer service functions. You can set up automatic messages for appointment reminders, special event announcements, delivery notices, birthday wishes, and welcoming new customers. Just be careful that your automated messages don’t sound so generic that your customers will get the impression that they are just a number to you.
- You can resolve problems more quickly with text messaging. The majority of texts (as many as 95 percent) are read within three minutes of being sent. There’s less room for confusion, and you can resolve customer issues promptly. With team-based texting, customers don’t have to tell their story over and over again with different representatives.
Getting Started with TrueDialog
TrueDialog makes it easy for your business to benefit from using text messaging for customer service. You can try out the system for 15 days at no charge. After that, choose from five different pricing plans, including a “pay-as-you-go” plan, so you never have to pay for features and services that your business doesn’t use.
Learn how to help your company’s customer service efforts be more efficient and effective with TrueDialog. Visit truedialog.com.
