She immediately contacted the manufacturer. Here’s what happened:

1. The company asked for proof of purchase.
2. She found her Amazon receipt and sent it.
3. They asked what was wrong with the machine.
4. She explained the display was flashing.
5. They agreed the machine was dead and sent her instructions for submitting a claim.
6. She cut the cord on the machine, took a picture of the machine sans cord, and sent it in.
7. The company replied that her replacement machine would be shipped that day, and she could expect it to arrive in two or three days.
8. Her new machine arrived, and her caffeine addiction was saved

Our colleague was amazed. She expected the interaction to be time consuming and unpleasant. Instead, it took only minutes to report a warranty issue and have a new machine on its way to her. She didn’t have to argue or justify or complain or talk to multiple customer service reps.

For all she knew, she was dealing with a chat bot and that was fine. She didn’t necessarily need human interaction to solve the problem. All she needed was instructions for getting a new coffee maker ASAP.

Kudos to the manufacturer for making their warranty service process so customer friendly. They couldn’t have done it without a technology commitment.

Bring Quick, Easy Problem Resolution to Your Customer Service Team

You, too, can bring results like this to your customer service department by using automated text messaging. It’s a win-win for you and your customers.

Customers say they’d like to communicate with customer service using text and prefer texting to other methods of contact. Using text messaging, your customer service team can automate routine interactions, saving human interactions for more complicated issues. Your team won’t have to send repetitive responses to your customers, both saving time and making their jobs more interesting.

It will take some thought to set up your automated text sequences, but once it’s designed and tested, you’ll save your team hours on the phone or email.

Let SMS-Magic Help You

We think SMS-Magic can help you reach your customers with less time and effort than you’re spending on emails and phone calls. We offer automated text messaging, so your customers get the attention they need, but not at the expense of your customer service team.

Our system, working with your CRM, can keep track of all your customer interactions in one place. It can also keep track of messages sent from a variety of platforms like Messenger, WhatsApp, SnapChat and native phone texts, so you don’t sacrifice anything to help your best customers when they have problems.

We’d love to help you handle repetitive customer service requests, just contact us to set up a demo or to start your free trial. Let us show you how SMS-Magic can help you easily respond to routine requests while freeing up your reps to handle more complicated issues.

As we listened to her story, we thought she had done everything right because she worked with a reputable company. We thought they really did want to provide great service, but the sales staff left out a critical part of the installation process – the installer wouldn’t haul away stained carpet. The customer service staff wanted to help, but our colleague couldn’t reach them on installation day because she got caught in endless voicemail loops. When she finally reached them, customer service couldn’t get in touch with the installer quickly enough to resolve the issue. Our colleague faced a huge expense to find and hire someone else to dispose of the old carpet.

The End of the Story & Critical Solutions

The installers eventually gave in and finished the job, but they trashed the old carpet in a dumpster the homeowners’ association had supplied for a different project. Our colleague faced fines from the HOA for improper use of the dumpster. It’s easy to see why she won’t use this supplier again. But it all could have been avoided.

How? By using text messaging to standardize scheduling, deliver consistent installation tips, and connect customers with customer service and installers quickly. We think text messaging can help you turn a disgruntled customer into a delighted customer. Remember: you can’t help a customer that you can’t reach.

How Can Text Messaging Help You Schedule Installation?

If you sell products or services that need installation, text messages can help you reach your customer wherever they are. Your customers actually prefer texts to emails or phone calls. Consider this:

• Nathan Eddy writes in eWeek, “Over half of [survey] respondents (52 percent) said they would be likely to text with a customer support agent. Similarly, 52 percent would prefer texting customer support more than their current preferred method of communication.”
• Globally, we send more than five billion texts a day – not counting other types of messages – and we open 98 percent of them. Conversely, we only open emails 22 percent of the time, according to Gigaom. Research from Asurion shows that we look at our phones 96 times a day or once every 10 minutes.

Clearly, we like to text and find it helpful in personal interactions. We think the next big business opportunity is to make messaging a regular part of customer support.

Text messages, either SMS or MMS, are versatile. They are immediate because your message goes directly to your customer’s phone. Text messages are brief but they can link to much more information like calendars, web pages, PDFs, videos or podcasts. You can deliver the same critical information about the installation to every customer, every time.

And during the sale, your customer can opt into receiving text messages. You can include it as part of the sales process.

When you set up a new messaging campaign, we recommend that you plan the flow of text messages using both templates and automated delivery. You decide what information your customer needs and in what order – the next text message in the sequence is triggered by the customer’s response to the last text. If you don’t receive a response within a certain time, your system sends a reminder text. If you don’t receive a response or your customer indicates a problem, the issue can be referred to a live customer service rep automatically.

If our colleague’s carpet company had used this type of system, they could have given her options for carpet removal and disposal long before the day of installation. They might have been able to keep a customer.

Let SMS-Magic Help You

We think SMS-Magic can help you eliminate nightmares when you’re scheduling installation for your products. SMS-Magic can help provide a great experience for your customers, too. We offer conversational messaging so that your customers can respond to your texts. If you want to tie into your CRM, we work particularly well with Salesforce and Zoho, but we can help you with many others, and we work with all the messaging apps like Messenger and WhatsApp, so you don’t sacrifice anything to reach your best customers wherever they are!

Contact us to set up a demo or to start your free trial. Let us show you how SMS-Magic can help you end the nightmare of scheduling installations!

According to the report, the most important aspects of a good customer service experience are getting the issue resolved in a single interaction and knowledgeable agents. It follows that the most frustrating aspect of a poor customer service experience are agents who lack knowledge and the ability to resolve the issue along with the customer being asked to repeat information multiple times.

Customer experience is gaining in prominence over both product and price in terms of customer satisfaction and loyalty. However, Dimension Data reports that nearly 80% of contact centers say their current customer service systems won’t meet their future needs.

As customer preferences change and reliance on mobile devices grows, incorporating text messaging for customer service can help you gain the “big-picture view” of your customer’s history with your company enabling better, faster service. Since Forrester Research finds that 77% of people say that valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide them with good service, messaging should be on your short list to reduce customer effort.

7 Reasons a SMS Tool For Call Centers Improves CX

Speed to Resolution
A SMS tool for call centers is designed to allow agents to engage in messaging conversations with more than one customer at a time. Traditional phone call resolution requires agents to work on one customer call at a time.

Reduce Costs
An SMS text message can be up to 600% less expensive than a phone call and the ability to handle more customer conversations simultaneously boosts agent productivity to handle a higher volume of service requests with the same headcount.

Increase Responsiveness
Customers say waiting on the phone for an agent is one of the most frustrating parts of the customer service experience. Intelligent text messaging can combine automated and 1:1 messages to instantly respond to your customers—removing that frustration.

Knowledgeable Agents
Customers are also frustrated by having to repeat information to agents. An intelligent text messaging platform records the entire conversation of what’s said by both parties. Because text messaging conversations are asynchronous, if the conversation takes longer and a new agent must respond, all the information about the customer’s history is on the screen providing the big-picture view that enables them to respond in context, on the spot, and within that single conversation.

Incorporate Voice of Customer
Nearly 90% of consumers have a more favorable view of brands that give them the opportunity to provide feedback. However, 37% of customers say they’re only asked occasionally for their thoughts. Text messaging for customer service gives you the opportunity to solicit feedback during or after every service conversation. This can be as simple as an NPS survey or as comprehensive as asking open-ended questions to understand their feedback in context—whether automated or exchanged 1:1 between the agent and customer.

Easily Promote Self-Service
Many contact centers are reducing call volume by providing self-service options via a website or portal to help customers resolve their issues themselves. However, sometimes this can be frustrating to customers who must sift through a lot of information to find the answer to their question. An agent in a texting conversation can send the customer a link directing them to just the information they need, instantly, reducing their effort.

Provide Proactive Service
The automated workflows provided by an intelligent text messaging platform can also allow your contact center to provide proactive outreach based on triggered alerts. These could be set to notify customers of product or policy updates, upcoming renewals, newly available products that complement products they already own, and more.

The Bottom Line

Reducing customer effort is paramount for improving customer experience. While this means doing so across the customer lifecycle, a reduction in effort to obtain customer service is a great focus that will payoff for your company.

Customer experience is becoming table stakes for every company. And today that means instant and on-demand. Text messaging for customer service and using a SMS tool for call centers delivers that in a convenient and low-friction manner that will delight your customers and show them how much you value their satisfaction and loyalty.