In today’s mobile-first world, customers want fast, convenient, and friendly service. SMS customer support checks all these boxes, offering a personal touch that email and chat often lack. Whether you're a small business or a growing enterprise, implementing SMS customer service can significantly elevate your client experience.
Here’s a quick guide to launching SMS support that builds trust and enhances satisfaction. Plus, learn exactly how Textedly’s platform is helping businesses delight customers through text.
Start With the Right Platform
Before initiating SMS communication, selecting the right tool is crucial. The platform you choose should align with your customer service objectives and integrate smoothly with your existing tools. Ideal platforms offer shared inboxes to keep your team coordinated, canned responses to speed up replies, and CRM or helpdesk integration for full customer context.
In addition to two-way texting capabilities, ensure the service supports features like message tagging, chat history retrieval, and multi-agent access. These are key for managing higher volumes of inquiries without losing quality.
Define Your Customer Support Use Cases
SMS isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. To use it effectively for customer service, identify specific scenarios where it enhances the customer experience. Businesses commonly use SMS to handle product or service questions, send timely updates about orders or appointments, address technical issues, and collect feedback.
Clarifying these use cases from the outset ensures your SMS support channel is purposeful and well-received. It also helps determine whether responses should be handled manually or if some can be automated using AI or pre-written scripts.
Create SMS Guidelines for Your Team
Consistency is key when multiple team members handle customer inquiries. Establish internal guidelines that define your tone of voice, expected response times, and escalation procedures. For example, decide whether your tone should be formal or casual, and establish a standard, such as replying within 10 minutes during operating hours.
Draft reusable message templates for FAQs, appointment confirmations, and resolution follow-ups. These help your team maintain speed without sacrificing quality. Additionally, train staff on how and when to transition from SMS to a phone call or email, especially for complex issues that require more detail.
Enable Opt-In and Privacy Compliance
Compliance with privacy laws is essential. Always obtain explicit consent before texting a customer. This can be achieved through checkboxes on forms, opt-in messages at checkout, or by encouraging customers to text your phone number first.
Clearly communicate what types of messages the customer will receive, such as appointment reminders or support updates. Also, include easy opt-out instructions, like replying "STOP" to unsubscribe. Being transparent not only ensures legal compliance but also fosters customer trust.
Monitor and Improve
After implementation, evaluate how well your SMS service is performing. Monitor key metrics, including response time, resolution rate, and customer satisfaction. These indicators reveal what’s working and what needs refinement.
Collect direct feedback from users periodically to gain a deeper understanding of their experience. Use this data to fine-tune scripts, optimize response timing, or adjust staffing during peak hours. The goal is continuous improvement, ensuring your SMS service remains effective and customer-friendly.
How Textedly’s SMS Platform Improves Customer Service
Textedly’s SMS platform helps brands manage texting communication at scale. This enables companies to set up a customer service texting solution. With Textedly, brands can:
- Give clients a convenient outreach method. Texting is one of the most convenient ways for customers to reach out to brands with questions and to report issues. Textedly enables brands to communicate with customers via text quickly and at scale.
- Integrate SMS with their existing tools. Textedly enables brands to integrate SMS with some of their favorite tools, including social platforms and CRMs like HubSpot.
- Manage SMS, payments, and reviews from one platform. Textedly lets brands manage text communication, customer payments, and online reviews all in one place. Seamlessly collect payments, resolve issues, and collect feedback to improve the customer communication experience.
- Keep clients informed. Textedly offers industry-leading mass texting capabilities, enabling brands to keep their clients informed about important updates, such as business hours, purchases, and orders, with a simple text.
- Resolve issues quickly. Texting is a really fast communication channel, with customers often responding within 90 seconds. Textedly offers a great way to text back and forth to resolve customer issues. Plus, incoming messages from customers are free.
- Automate responses to FAQs. With Textedly, you can set up auto-responders to help automate responses to specific questions. This can save your brand time to focus on the more complex customer service issues.
- Create and store text templates for faster replies. Craft canned responses and store them as templates to help your agents respond quickly.
- Improve responses with AI Composer. Textedly’s AI Composer feature enables brands to improve messaging to sound more friendly, personal, or formal.
- Add an unlimited number of teammates. You can scale your texting outreach with ease. Textedly is ready to grow with your team. Add as many teammates as needed to your account to manage your SMS channel and customer replies.
Conclusion
While automation and templates can boost efficiency, always leave room for a human touch. Customers appreciate quick answers, but they value genuine interaction even more. When possible, give them easy access to a real person who can solve problems empathetically and effectively.
SMS support can be a game-changer when done right. It's quick, personal, and available on the device your customers use most. Set it up with care and intention, and you'll foster loyalty and stronger relationships in no time.
Ready to give Textedly a try to improve your customer service? You can try the platform for free today.
