Get a competitive edge with this new technology
Businesses are always looking for a way to have an edge over their competition. Once upon a time this was by having a better yellow pages ad than the next business or by naming their company with a AAA to come up first in directory listings. More recently, everyone focused on online reviews like Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Capterra. So what’s the next step in reaching more customers?
The next big thing in business calling isn’t calling at all – it’s texting.
The average American spends 5.4 hours on their phone per day. And 75% of millennials would prefer to text over talking on the phone. While texting has historically only been used in peer to peer conversations or for marketing messages, more businesses are turning to adding texting to their VoIP plans.
Why texting is better than calling
Texting takes the on-the-spot pressure away from the conversation, giving each party time to think about their questions and responses they want to send before they reply. And texts enable each side to send links, photos, and videos to enrich the conversation.
When a customer texts a business, they can come back to the conversation at any time to pick back up with questions without having to call, get put on hold, or get sent to a voicemail inbox. Texting is also asynchronous – meaning that it doesn’t have to happen at the same time. A customer might think of something in the middle of the night and text it, fully expecting that the answer won’t come until business hours the next day.
Business texting features
One of the main reasons businesses don’t text customers is that they don’t want those conversations to live on an employee’s personal phone – and employees don’t want to use their personal phone for work. If the employee leaves, you lose all history with that customer and you don’t get to see what is being said. That’s where business texting comes in.
With business texting, you use an app instead of your phone’s native texting application to send messages. Or, you can send from a desktop application, removing the need for a mobile phone at all. You can use your business number to send messages, so no one’s personal phone number is revealed.
Where business texting falls short
The main complaint we hear about business texting is that it’s still one-to-one – the customer texts a direct line to an employee. That’s why we build Vonix Flex. With shared inboxes, you can assign multiple team members to message groups so that whoever is available first can answer the texts that come in. And everyone on the team will have full visibility into the conversation history with any customer, so whoever answers has all the context they need.
For managers and owners, we offer advanced analytics into calls and texts for every location and every line. Find out who is answering the most texts, who is spending the most time on the phone, and when you might need more coverage based on when you get the most calls and texts in.
All in all, more people wish they could text their business instead of calling. It lets customers communicate on their own terms and their timeline. It lets you communicate along their buying process instead of just during one phone call. And, it provides a line for people to reach out with questions that may seem too small for a phone call but make a big difference in their decision making.
That’s just the beginning of the ways Flex helps businesses communicate in the modern era. Learn more about how Flex can help your business grow.
