Back to blog
What does good customer service entail? Being accessible for your customers? Resolving queries quickly? Sharing vital information at the right time? Personalising conversations? Or perhaps it is all of the above?
Offering good customer service means offering a good customer experience. Regardless of the reason your customers reach out for support, the experience they have with your business should be frictionless, fast, effective and personal. Deploy the right tools to reduce handling times and be accessible to your customers on their preferred channels.
Why SMS?
SMS is one of the oldest text messaging services. It launched in the 1990s and it's still going strong today. As of 2023, there were almost 8.9 billion mobile phone subscriptions worldwide and 111.8 million mobile subscriptions in the UK. This is because a growing number of people currently have more than one subscription, often for various reasons. For example, a work versus a private phone subscription. This creates a huge opportunity for SMS messaging, which relies solely on a mobile service connection to send its messages. On top of that, most - if not all - mobile phones have a native SMS app built in, which gives SMS an extensive global reach and makes it one of the most reliable messaging channels.
Though the newer social messaging apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram Messaging are incredibly popular, SMS is still a strong contender. Why?
It's reliable: With approximately 93% of the land area in the UK covered by outdoor 4G and 85% covered by outdoor 5G signal, SMS connects to nearly all premises.
It's impactful: Click-through rates (CTRs) for SMS are 9.18% higher than other digital channels and customers are thirty-five times more inclined to read SMS messages compared to emails.
It's non-intrusive: In contrast to potentially disruptive and intrusive phone calls, SMS offers convenience to customers. They can easily reach out in the evening, offering flexibility for those busy at work during the day.
Even if it may not be the favourite or preferred channel of your target audience, SMS is a great fallback channel to make sure your customer service is accessible to the vast majority of your audience, even the ones without reliable internet access.
When providing customer support, it's important to be where your customers are. That means, being accessible on the messaging channels your customers are already using and are familiar with.
Why use SMS for customer service?
Now, you may be thinking 'Customer support via SMS. How does that even work? Isn't SMS a one-way channel?' SMS is often employed as a one-way or broadcasting channel, but it also allows two-way communication and support in the same way the other messaging apps do. For customer support, SMS can add value both as a one-way, and a two-way channel.
SMS support notifications
The most popular use case for SMS one-way communication is notifications. Sending announcements, alerts and account updates is a valuable addition to any support strategy. Let your customers know when something changes in their account and alert them of new launches, security threats, outages - anything that may be relevant for your customers. This way, SMS can inform customers at scale, putting them at ease and relieving some pressure on your other customer support channels.
Live chat via SMS
Direct live customer support via SMS is accessible and quick. But how do you manage this with SMS? Two-way SMS support is often done via an SMS and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) integration, like our Mobile Service Cloud solution. By integrating SMS as a channel into an existing platform, managing the different chats becomes easy.
Live chat via SMS will give customers the experience of an informal and personal conversation. Make sure you offer your customers a personalised connection with your customer service representatives to fully enhance the customer experience.
Feedback via SMS
Do you want to improve the services you offer your customers to boost those customer satisfaction rates? Then you need to learn from their feedback. Send SMS surveys to customers and gather valuable insights into how they perceive your business and your services.
What makes SMS the perfect channel for this? As mentioned earlier, SMS boasts open rates as high as 98% compared to email, which means your surveys not only reach the phones of your audience, they also are being read. As many as 45% of people admit they will engage with branded text messages or surveys they receive.
With our SMS solution, you can create feedback pages and share the link via SMS. The input received will be added to your Customer Data Platform directly, so you'll have everything in one overview.
Enhance your customer service with SMS
Is SMS still a widely used and popular channel amongst your target audience? Do you want to offer personal support in a conversational-style setting? Is the internet an unreliable factor for (parts of) your target audience? Do you want to gather insights into the opinions and experiences of your customers? Do you want to make sure your services are accessible?
Did you answer 'yes' to one or more of the questions above? Then consider SMS as part of your communication and customer service strategy. Feel free to reach out to one of our experts to discuss the possibilities for your business.
+44 20 3868 7140
