Engaging your customer in the text-is-the-new-talk-world
With text
becoming the talk of the town and taking over voice interaction, customers are
choosing to rather communicate with contact centres via messaging apps than
making a call.
A quick
swipe through most smartphones reveals a myriad of apps. The majority of these
are seldom, if ever, used, says to Ebrahim Dinat, COO at South African contact
centre solutions provider, Ocular Technologies, the ones that are most
frequently made use of are communication apps.
He points
out that even more than 20 years on the SMS continues to be a viable
communication tool and that it remains of great value to the contact centre. Yet, an SMS can't do what native apps can, states Dinat.
That is, an
SMS neither allows for the display of rich media nor secure data entry. Tobias
Goebel, director of emerging technologies at Ocular Technologies partner
company, Aspect, points out: What can be done then to engage app-weary people
on their communication channel of choice? When rich media is needed, such as
displaying images, video, or offering forms for complex data entry, or the data
entry needs to happen over a secure channel, say for credit card data entry,
companies should consider branching out to a disposable app. The disposable app
can either be sent proactively (through the vehicle of a short URL embedded in
an SMS or chat message say over Messenger), or requested by the customer
through a quick message.
Using
Natural Language Understanding and other AI techniques, users can now simply
text what theyd like to achieve to the business and the automated system will
respond accordingly. For example, need to pay my bill. In this case, a
message could be returned with the option to pay the outstanding bill with the
card on file, which is something the customer can complete on SMS, or they be
sent a link to a disposable app to pay their bill with a different payment
method securely.
Through the
deployment of a disposable app, an SMS offers a richer and more engaging
communication platform than the one-way channel it has generally provided. SMS
thus leaps from simple to multifaceted. Added to this, it frees up both the
user from downloading yet another app and the users phone from the numerous
unused icons, which literally just take up space on a device, adds Dinat.
Creating an
interactive text response (ITR) app is one thing, but how do you ensure it is
well used? Abhay Prasad, senior product executive at Aspect, offers the
following six ways to ensure a costs
effective widespread awareness of your ITR apps. In summary, Prasad notes:
1. Have the
IVR, spread the word: When they call into to your IVR or are on hold for a live
agent, suggest text service as an option.
2. Social
media: Introduce your ITR apps on your Facebook page and on Twitter and watch
the like count build, and shares and retweets go through the roof. Research
shows that repetition is effective and it is easy to do on social media.
3. An option
on your Contact Us page: Customers may turn to your Contact Us page on your
website for quick reference. Offer the option for ITR on this page. Display the
SMS-enabled toll-free number prominently on your website this is a great
space to highlight the specific tasks users can accomplish on the ITR app.
4. Use snail
mail to speed up awareness: Prominently announce the new ITR channels on any
piece of snail mail you send to your customers: monthly utility or credit card
bills, healthcare statements, retail invoices, and so on.
5. An
e-mail: For the 10 percent of customers who have signed up for receiving
invoices and monthly statements electronically, and actually open the e-mails,
including the information about the ITR app can be a cheap and effective way of
driving awareness.
6. Pilot
everything: Before you introduce ITR to the masses, invite a small, logical subset
of your customer base to try it out (such as consumers living in a particular
set of postal codes for a utility company).
ITR apps
are undergoing an exciting evolution. In this world of infinite competitive
apps on a mobile platform, the rule remains, adapt or become obsolete. The one
certainty is: customer service via text-messaging is here to stay, concludes
Dinat.
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