With a 98% open rate, SMS is increasingly in demand for enterprise communications and is proving to be the missing piece in contact centre as-a-service (CCaaS) solutions. This is because SMS is a familiar, trusted and simple technology that can be readily utilised by enterprises to reduce hold times, save money with fewer support calls and to improve and maintain the customer experience.  

“SMS decreases hold times because you can fire a text message in and you get a reply to it quickly. This means enterprises can not only save money but also improve the experience they give to customers,” says Kieran Dalton, the Cloud Sales Partner Account Manager UK & Ireland at NEC. “While an agent is sending an SMS they can still be handling voice calls and this helps further alleviate the dreaded issue of hold times. A recent study has uncovered that 81% of consumers find it frustrating to be tethered to a computer or a phone while waiting for customer service help.”  

“For the healthcare industry SMS is crucial. Inbound messages can confirm or cancel appointments, and outbound messages can provide appointment reminders. The admin resources saved are substantial.”

The appetite for SMS therefore isn’t one-sided. In fact, 64% of consumers polled in the study said that text messaging was their preferred customer support method. The research also highlighted that 89% of customers would leave a company after a bad experience so SMS can be powerful in heading off trouble before it leads to customers leaving.  

Instant response from customers

Part of the power of SMS is that it stimulates instant responses from recipients. The open rate of SMS messages is an impressive 98% which compares to just 20% with email. In addition to this, SMS in the contact centre can be both inbound and outbound.  

The SMS offering in NEC’s UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE cloud service enables multiple inbound SMS numbers to support SMS back and forth chat or SMS to email. It also presents SMS chats to the ENGAGE Agent as a ‘single pane of glass’ and allows them to reply with automatic messages. Agents can also apply classifications to inbound SMS and obtain full reports and transcriptions of chats.  

On the outbound side, enterprises can create SMS campaigns from a dedicated interface, create multiple messages and monitor the status of all their outbound campaigns and delivery status in real-time. “SMS is growing in use and lots of different verticals are adopting it,” adds Dalton.  

“For the healthcare industry SMS is crucial. Inbound messages can confirm or cancel appointments, and outbound messages can provide appointment reminders. The admin resources saved is substantial! It’s also incredibly simple to deploy and is easy to configure. In addition, it’s tightly integrated with voice and email in ENGAGE so agents get that ‘single pane of glass’ experience. Finally, SMS can help generate new revenues for service providers through serving enterprises with these additional capabilities.” 

 

 



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