Improving Your Customer Service With Text Messaging

Text marketing can be incredibly impactful to your customer support plan, simultaneously improving customer satisfaction and streamlining your support workflow.

Here are four ways to incorporate texting into your everyday customer support toolkit:

1. Be Available 

When your customers have a question, are you around to answer it?

Text helps to alleviate this problem in two primary ways. First, if your business has a landline number, Text-to-Landline can allow your customers—who are likely already texting you at that number—to easily reach you via text. Second, EZ Texting's mobile app and 1-on-1 Chat allow you to quickly and easily answer customer queries anytime, anywhere. 

But remember that when you use text as a way to build your customer connections, you need to make sure that you reply to customer queries in a timely manner. Automated responses can help answer frequently asked questions about store hours or stock. Or, if a customer texts you at 1AM, you could reply with a thank you and let them know what time the next day they should expect a response.

2. Answer Questions Via Text

Texting and social media are both fast on the turnaround, and that makes them ideal candidates for in-the-moment customer service questions. When your customers have a question right now, they can text you to find the answer.

According to Econsultancy, while "SMS has historically been used as a one-way channel to deliver notifications and marketing communications to customers," businesses are increasingly using text as a way to interact with customers on a more personal level.

Since most millennials and members of the Gen Z cohort prefer texting to picking up the phone, texting is also a key way to interact with your younger customer base—and that was before stay-at-home orders made the phone the perfect way to reach people. You can even handle these requests anytime, anywhere using

3. Send Reminders

Do you need to remind a client or patient to schedule an appointment? Has it been a while since a specific customer purchased from you? You can use a text service to send out scheduling and top-of-mind reminders to your customers. These help your customers stay on track with their appointments and help you bring in customers on a more consistent basis year round.

According to Open Market, "sending out appointment reminders via SMS is a great way to reduce no-shows and improve the overall customer experience." Whether you focus on car repair or healthcare, you can both remind people to make an appointment and remind them to show up for it as well.

4. Send a Text-to-Vote Poll

Getting feedback from your customers is key to improving the way that you do business. Another useful feature of SMS is its ability to handle customer polls. You don't need to call them or ask them in person, and they might not answer you anyway. With text, they will be able to easily and anonymously answer questions that can even further enhance your customer support.