Why Business Messaging is Crucial for Your Company
Once seen as a novelty, messaging between family and friends has become so ingrained in our culture that businesses see the writing on the wall, and are moving quickly to integrate messaging technology at all levels of their organization.
When companies use messaging to communicate with customers and employees — like texting, direct messaging, and chatbots — we call it business messaging. Common examples include marketing appeals, shipping notifications, and appointment reminders. While the emphasis on business messaging cuts across all industries, it is particularly prevalent in sectors with a high concentration of millennial customers, such as eTail, retail, and travel and leisure.
The adoption of new technologies happens gradually, and there are still a number of companies on the fence. They need to be convinced that business messaging is worth the investment and is a non-negotiable, not just a nice thing to do. Here are 5 reasons why it’s crucial for companies to embrace business messaging:
1. Optimize customer service
Enhanced communication translates to better customer service and retention. Travel companies, for example, are improving customer satisfaction rates by using business messaging to provide passengers with timely updates and notifications. Proactively sending helpful texts makes customers feel empowered and valued.
Through the power of artificial intelligence, the travel and leisure industry is automating two-way conversations with customers. Business messaging — including the use of chatbot technology — is helping hotels ensure that guests who arrive after-hours receive answers to their basic questions.
Online and brick-and-mortar retailers also use business messaging to expedite and enhance customer service. The technology allows customers to get their post-sale questions answered promptly, which creates trust and increases customer retention. Standard practice for many companies is now to send customers package notifications, which significantly reduce the number of inbound calls following a purchase. It is also increasingly common for companies to encourage customers to text their questions instead of using phone or email.
2. Cut costs
Business messaging reduces operational costs associated with marketing, internal and external communication, and customer service. Companies with international operations can use business messaging to communicate efficiently and effectively with staff, partners, and customers, no matter where they reside, dramatically reducing travel and communication expenditures and increasing their profit margins.
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3. Position your company for the millennial market
Millennials represent 27 percent of the world’s population or about 2 billion people, which is why companies are trying so hard to satisfy their needs.
Consider the travel and leisure sector. Millennials travel more frequently than other age groups, and nearly 70 percent book their trips using a smartphone. If you want to protect your company’s good reputation, don’t annoy millennials or waste their time with low-tech offerings — that’s begging for a bad review. Follow the lead of other savvy marketing leaders and introduce business messaging to reach millennials in their preferred medium. Meet the millennial market where they’re already spending their time — online, via chatbots when they’re surfing your site, or over text or direct messenger — to deliver effective, on-point content they’ll remember.
4. Increase focus and productivity
When employees are in a groove, unnecessary phone calls, emails, and meetings are a big distraction and can undermine their productivity as well as the quality of their work. Multi-tasking, of course, isn’t going away anytime soon, but interruptions can and should be minimized. Automated business messaging allows staff to stay focused without constantly being interrupted.
5. Keep customers informed
Business messaging is the fastest and most effective way for companies to communicate timely information to their customers and employees. Imagine if your server or network were down during an emergency; your business messaging capabilities, like Instant Messenger, could be the only means you have to communicate instructions to a large group of people.
When the travel and leisure industry — airports, hotels, convention centers, and others — need to communicate urgent information to their customers, they are turning, increasingly, to business messaging. For example, during recent hurricanes, hotels used business messaging to update families and guests about road closings, flight delays, and weather reports. It can also be used to communicate non-urgent information like special events, promotions, and announcements.
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Business messaging, it should be pointed out, is not designed to replace your key people. While customers like to receive instant messages on their smartphones, they also crave a human connection. To address this, companies can give their customers the flexibility of starting a conversation with an automated chatbot and then, if more in-depth information is required, going offline to speak with a live employee. The key for companies is to find the right balance between using business messaging for efficiency and strong employees for those customer service moments that require a personal touch.
