5 Ways Text Messaging Automates & Improves Customer Experience

Trying to keep up with demand? Customer experience (CX) automation is the only way to meet and exceed expectations as your business grows.

Customers want to know that you hear, understand, and value who they are. Yet it’s almost impossible to do this with employees alone — maybe you don’t have enough staff on hand, and realistically the rising volume of inquiries from customers would overwhelm even the most abundant teams on the front line.

CX automation with business text messaging unlocks a brand-differentiated experience that builds loyalty and lifts the workload from your staff simultaneously.

As a result of improved CX, you’ll notice an increase in both customer satisfaction (CSAT) and revenue. Customers who find interacting with your brand to be near-frictionless due to artificial intelligence (AI) feel happier, and that leads to loyal customers returning for repeat purchases in the future.

If you don’t take CX seriously and alternatively use a fully manual approach, chances are your business’ ability to engage with and serve customers falters under any amount of pressure. It shouldn’t surprise if negative reviews then take hold of your online presence.

How to Automate & Improve Customer Experience with Text Messaging

CX automation does more than just engage and serve customers, though. It allows your business to achieve a level of efficiency that enables a ‘work smarter, not harder’ mindset.

Instead of requiring every inquiry and interaction to be addressed by an employee, relying on AI-powered text messages frees up staff to tackle the most critical tasks while customers still receive real-time, personalized service.

Let’s explore how your business can improve CX with automation-based text messaging to operate both effectively and efficiently.

#1. Use Keyword & Intent Triggers to Auto-Reply

Businesses of any size can’t actually deal with dozens, hundreds, or thousands of inquiries on a daily or weekly basis. Even if they tried their hardest, it would lead to delayed responses and perhaps errors in communication.

Fall behind on these inquiries, and customers will walk away from your brand and may never come back — in the Customer Service Trends for 2022 Report from Medallia Agent Connect, 60% of consumers said they’ll stop buying from a brand after a poor experience.

Auto-reply to inquiries in an instant using keyword-based triggers. It doesn’t require human intervention, leveraging AI to respond to a customer in a second rather than minutes, hours, or days. While AI does this, your staff can turn their attention where it’s needed by the business most.

Keywords, however, aren’t the only area to focus on. Words take on different meanings depending on the content, and that’s why CX automation with text messaging also needs to analyze the intent of what customers say during an interaction. It ensures that your customer received accurate, relevant information and not a generic response that falls short of expectations.

In combining keyword and intent triggers, CX automation with text messaging turns into a high-impact process. Customers feel engaged in the moment by never waiting, and your business can feel confident it provided a satisfactory response every time.

#2. Save Time with Saved Response Templates

Different customers ask the same questions, right? One way to speed up the response process is by having saved response templates.

Templates allow your business and staff — whether on a customer service team or not — to quickly reply to a customer’s text message with a saved response in seconds. It can be delivered with AI through keyword and intent triggers, or staff can choose it in a drop-down menu if they’re readily available.

Now you’ll cut down on all the time wasted answering the same questions again, again, and again.

#3. Gather Customer Feedback Seamlessly

Get inside the minds of customers. While it may sound like a difficult thing to do, conquering this challenge is imperative to improving CX. It just takes some extra effort on your end to reduce the level of effort from customers to provide feedback.

Feedback and satisfaction surveys should be introduced to a conversation thread throughout the customer journey. Whether pre-purchase, post-purchase, or even in the middle of a buying decision, engage with customers by offering them the opportunity to share how their experiences are going.

Once you receive customer feedback, you’ll realize what your business does right and where it can make adjustments. And these adjustments benefit your business just as much as your customers. In meeting their expectations, metrics such as first call resolution (FCR) and customer effort score (CES) shift favorably.

Two-way, real-time communication with customers matters. While they will come to you, your business should also go to them and especially to capture feedback to drive decision-making.

#4. Personalize Communications Using a CRM Integration

Know your customers? OK, so speak directly to each customer uniquely! Integration between your business texting software and CRM database enables the business to personalize communications easily.

CRM databases will do several things — identify customer inactivity, notify you of low NPS, and pull up a customer profile to tailor a conversation. In turn, your business can personalize communications for each and every customer rather than send one-size-fits-all text messages that lack empathy.

#5. Streamline Processes Everywhere

The longer it takes to respond to a customer and resolve their inquiry, the less likely they are to return to your brand. It doesn’t matter how you view the inquiry itself — to the customer, it’s the most important thing on their agenda.

In the hospitality industry, think about this example: a guest would like more coffee. Traditionally, they’ll call the front desk or visit the lobby. Well, what if the hotel’s staff is busy with other tasks? Retrieving more coffee doesn’t appear like a high-priority task to the staff, but not retrieving it in a timely manner frustrates the guest.

When the same hotel in this example uses a business texting service, the guest can send a text message to request more coffee. It’s a request that can be automatically shared via the property management system (PMS) with the room service department, which will then fulfill the request without the staff at the front desk in the lobby needing to manually route it.

You can apply the same approach to other processes in various industries including healthcare, retail, and dining. When inquiries come in, route them to the appropriate department and let the customer know action is underway.

Use Text Messaging to Automate Customer Experience

Medallia Concierge is an in-app messaging solution that personalizes and heightens customer and employee experience and builds loyalty. Create opportunities for your brand to engage in a two-way dialogue and uncover deep insights into how people interact with your brand in real-time, allowing for swift service recovery and building “wow” moments that delight.