Why Should I Care About Two-Way Texting with Customers?
You should care because many customers now find their preferred businesses using their phones:
-
98 percent of adults aged 18–29 own a device capable of texting.
-
90 percent of business leads would rather receive (and are more likely to respond) to a text than a phone call (FranchiseHelp.com).
-
64 percent of consumers are likely to perceive a company that embraces mobile messaging in a positive light (Harris Interactive).
In addition, the next wave of millennial consumers represents the largest spending power by a group who happen to love their phones and prefer texting as the primary medium of communication.
- Over 57 percent of Gen Z uses messaging apps at least half the time they're on their phones (BrainBoxol), and
- According to Business Insider, 84 percent of over 1,000 millennial and Gen Zers surveyed would rather eliminate phone calls all together if they had unlimited data to text and interact with friends, family, and preferred brands and business.
All this data points to one simple truth: businesses that embrace mobile technology and texting will garner more revenue from the demographic groups who already prefer making their mobile phones an integral part of their lives.
How Can Texting Benefit My Shop?
“We have increasing usage of our shop management software’s texting capability as shops look to meet customers in their preferred channels and as they look to get ahead of their competitors,” says Ashot Iskandarian, founder and CEO of Shopmonkey.io.
The benefits of two-way texting are clear:
-
Reduced Wait Times - customers can go about their day while texting. The average consumer responds to a text within 90 seconds, which also better informs the shop.
-
Speedy Approvals - customers don’t need to be at the shop or reached on the phone to move their repair forward.
-
Increased Efficiency - a single advisor or manager can carry on with 20+ customers at once instead of being tied up on the phone or email.
-
Augmented Customer Experience - two-way texting increases clarity for the customer and the shop and integrates with CRM software for instant documentation and work approvals.
-
Focus on Relationships - most importantly, two-way texting fosters non-invasive informal appointments, follow-ups and reviews.
Taken together, these five benefits yield a seamless and nearly instant reduction of traditional shop bottlenecks in scheduling and follow-up, as well as a crystal-clear digital footprint for all communication and transactions from technician to service advisor, service advisor to customer, and customer back to business.
Furthermore, shops that keep regular communication with their customers enjoy much higher net promoter scores (NPS) than those that don’t offer texting solutions.
Informed customers are engaged customers, and engaged customers leave 5-star reviews on Yelp, Google and often the shop website itself, and are more likely to recommend the shop to a friend than not.
What System Should I Use for Texting?
Jeff Smith is the owner of Good Vibes Garage (Laramie, Wyo.). Though he was skeptical about texting customers, he soon realized how much simpler and convenient it was for his clientele to interact with the shop when he started using fully native texting with Shopmonkey.io.
“Good Vibes is fully transparent with everything, and Shopmonkey’s texting solutions helps build trust with our customers,” Smith says.
“People are busy, right? They don’t want to pick up the phone! They want to be texted. They want the quote and they can instantly approve it. Customers like texting because it respects their time and enables transparency and documentation on their end.
“Over 90 percent of our customers use the messaging platform because it’s inherently easy. I would recommend Shopmonkey to any shop that wants to improve transparency, streamline the repair process and build trust with customers.”
Shopmonkey offers much more than just mobile solutions—the Shopmonkey platform is a fully integrated and native data and communication tool to improve customer relationships and bolster shop revenue. To learn more about Shopmonkey and discover how texting can help foster your business, check out Shopmonkey.io.
