Why Call Centers Are Going All-in on Text Messaging
By Brandon Daniell, Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer, Dialog Health
Over the past few years, call centers — like many businesses — have grown more reliant on text messaging for customer communications. And they're finding that they're much better for it.
Let's take a closer look at some of the advantages of texting customers over calling them and then review a few of ways call centers are leveraging text messaging to improve customer engagement, agent productivity, and company performance.
Going Head-to-Head: Calling vs. Texting
For many years, outreach by phone proved to be a highly reliable means for call centers to reach customers. Essentially every call made was either answered or an answering machine message was listened to. Call center leaders and their clients could expect with a fair amount of confidence that agents would speak with the customers they needed to reach on initial or follow-up calls.
But the times have rapidly changed. The number of people answering calls from unknown numbers has steadily declined for years. A Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults found more than eight-in-ten Americans don't generally answer their cellphone when an unknown number calls. You can largely thank robocalls for this diminishing call engagement rate. Voicemails may not be listened to for hours or days. In some instances, they may never be listened to at all.
Phone calling is also very expensive. The cost billed by a carrier to make a call is now typically insignificant. Where costs add up — fast — is agent time, especially when outreach efforts require multiple phone calls. When you combine the time spent on largely unsuccessful outbound calls with rising wages seen throughout the country, it's apparent that making outbound phone calls is not a particularly efficient use of resources.
How does text messaging differ? It helps to understand what has led to the proliferation and embracing of texting as a communication channel. As Pew reports, nearly all Americans own a cell phone, and all phones come with the functionality needed to send and receive texts. As opposed to the earlier days of text messaging, texting is included in most cell service plans. Texting has become easier thanks to smartphones that provide a full keyboard, which is why it's now commonplace to see people of all ages using texting. It's also worth noting that the ability to include hyperlinks has allowed text message senders to direct recipients to information beyond what's included in the text.
Published benchmarks concerning the percentage of texts read vary, but there seems to be consensus that the figure is above 90%. There's also consensus that most texts are read within just minutes of reaching recipients. Considering these engagement figures, it's not surprising a communication channel that was initially used as a way to communicate with friends and family members quickly expanded. Businesses recognized texting as a highly effective way to reach customers, which is why text messaging has become either the default or a supplemental communication mechanism for businesses like financial institutions (e.g., banks, credit card companies), shipping companies, airlines, hotels, e-commerce companies, and healthcare organizations. It's generally understood that if you want to get a message out to someone with a high degree of confidence that the recipient will receive and read it, send that communication as a text.
Adding Text Messaging to a Call Center
The investment required to add text messaging capabilities may be lower than you think. Call centers pay the initial cost for the text messaging solution and its implementation as well as set up of the platform. These expenses are likely to be similar to that of adding and setting up phone service. Other costs associated with a text messaging platform include ongoing maintenance, periodic upgrades, and agent training. Those are the bulk of the expenses.
Once a call center is ready to text, outreach costs are very low. Each text costs pennies, factoring in the time it takes to create and send messages. That's a far lower cost per outreach effort than calls.
While call centers will still need to make outbound calls, particularly to try to reach those individuals who may not want to communicate via text message, the fewer outbound phone calls a center needs to make, the better it is for the bottom line. Call centers that add text messaging functionality can better optimize staffing levels or increase their number of clients without needing to invest in hiring additional staff.
Text Messaging as a Customer Engagement Difference-Maker
How are call centers benefiting from text messaging? Most significantly, they are using texting to better connect with customers by generating inbound phone calls. For an initial communication with a customer, a call center can send a text asking the customer to call a phone number provided/linked to in the text message. It is easier, cheaper, and a much more efficient use of agent time to answer an inbound call than make an outbound call. Like other businesses, call centers will answer inbound calls. When agents call customers, it's a game of "chance" — there's a chance the person answers the call on the first attempt or listens and responds to a voicemail. Unfortunately, this is a game that call centers often lose.
The right text message can spur a patient to call/click a phone number in a text and reach out to the call center. Among the reasons call centers are sending texts:
- Appointment scheduling
- Appointment confirmation and reminders
- Billing/collections
- Product troubleshooting
- Post-appointment engagement (e.g., satisfaction surveys)
A text messaging solution may provide a call center with the capability to create and automate text messaging campaigns that can supplement existing outreach efforts. Such a campaign can provide appointment reminders, share directions to a business, offer product support, and deliver educational resources in advance of or following an appointment/transaction — all of which can make customers feel like they are receiving more personalized services.
With text messaging, call center agents are no longer limited to communicating with a single customer at a time — time that can last for a several minutes for a call. A texting solution can empower agents to simultaneously manage multiple conversations, which will lead to streamlined workflows, improved efficiencies, and likely many more customers engaged in a day. Consider that published average handle time benchmarks cover a significant range, with consensus around 6-7 minutes spent by an agent to help a single customer. Every text message that eliminates the need for an outbound phone call or reduces the time spent on a call translates to improved productivity and reduced outreach per customer cost.
Finally, some texting solutions provide agents with information that help determine the most appropriate next engagement effort. This information can include which customers need to be contacted further (i.e., those who did not successfully receive an initial text message) and how they should be contacted next, whether it be by text if the message was successfully delivered or phone call if the text failed to reach the customer's phone.
Transforming Your Call Center's Operations With Texting
Texting should be an integral component of any call center's communications, if not the backbone of the operations. The unmatched engagement effectiveness, ease of sending texts, and ability to monitor communication success along with low setup and outreach costs makes text messaging the best channel for agents to interact with most customers. While call centers will still need to rely upon calls to communicate with customers who either do not provide a mobile number, provide the wrong mobile number (which can be corrected), prefer not to text, or do not respond to texts, communicating by text as much as possible is in the best interests of a call center, its agents, and customers.
Text messaging is easy, fast, inexpensive, and highly effective. Now that you've finished reading this column, ask yourself: "What channel would I want a call center to use if it was reaching out to me?"
Brandon Daniell is co-founder and chief revenue officer of Dialog Health, provider of a two-way texting platform to organizations which they can leverage as a communication and engagement channel.