One of the benefits of texting your customers is that you’re able to approach them as a trusted friend instead of a corporate entity. You can send reminders, make appointments, ask questions or just check in with them. And your customers are likely to love the help… until your text messages start sounding like a badly-programmed AI bot wrote them.
It doesn’t have to be that way!
We’d be willing to bet that your customer relationship management system (CRM) contains an incredible amount of information about your customers, even first names. By using a name in your emails and texting campaigns, you personalize the communications right from the start. But that’s just one way for your CRM to help connect you to your customers.
Try a Conversational Messaging Hub
If your customers contact you more than once, they may not always reach the same person on your team. For example, a law firm may have a team managing the case load – attorneys, paralegals, intake specialists or other administrative staff members. When clients reach out, their lawyers may not be immediately available, but the clients still need updates. The team member who responds needs information quickly to serve the client.
If your CRM and your texting system work together, it would give you a single record that shows your staff all the interactions with the client, no matter what channel the client uses – text, email, phone or mail. When a text comes in, your staff members would be able to continue the conversation because they have the history at their fingertips.
If you have a customer service team, they will find this capability very useful, as well. One of the most often cited customer complaints is being bounced from person to person trying to solve a problem. If the customer must repeat the problem over and over, frustration can build quickly.
A conversational messaging hub stores all contacts for an individual into a single record. If a customer service rep must transfer a call, the next rep has all the information in front of them. It saves time, aggravation, and maybe, a customer relationship.
Compliance Laws are Getting Tougher. Are You Ready?
The European Union has recently adopted new privacy regulations, and we expect other countries to follow suit. Can your system handle customer requests?
You can send texts only to customers who have given you express written consent. In other words, customers who have opted into your communications. They can also opt out by asking you stop sending texts to them. If regulators ask to see your records, you must be able to prove you are following your customers’ requests.
Opting in and out of texts, however, are not the only customer requests you might be asked to verify if regulators come calling. A customer can ask that you “forget” them entirely – that all mention of them in your system is erased.
If your CRM works well with your texting capabilities, you won’t ever have to worry about compliance with GDPR or other rules and regulations.
Security is Everyone’s Concern
Even the smallest databases can contain enormous amounts of personal information that thieves want. In the past several years, criminals have hacked into the data of some of the largest and most successful companies in the world, and it isn’t pretty.
Keeping your CRM and texting capabilities secure is a shared responsibility, but your texting partner should be able to assure you that they have strong security policies in place. Their policies should be designed to keep all aspects of the system – technological, physical and administrative – secure.
What’s Your Next Step?
Knowing the vital role your CRM plays in your quest for more customers and higher revenues, what should you do next? Of course do your homework, but we would like to suggest that SMS-Magic is the best solution in the marketplace.
Why? Here are just a few reasons:
SMS-Magic works with your favorite CRM. We work and play well with others. We are a preferred provider for Salesforce and Zoho, and we integrate easily with Litify. Contact us to see what we can do with your existing architecture.
SMS-Magic helps you automate texts while keeping it personal. SMS-Magic is perfect for sending automated messages to your customers and prospects. We provide templates for your use and have lots of information about creating effective messages and campaigns. You can switch from automated to live in an instant so your customers know they’re talking to a person – not a bot.
SMS-Magic’s Conversational Messaging Hub Gathers Contacts into One Record Working with your CRM, SMS-Magic consolidates all contacts from a customer into one record, including phone calls, emails and messages. Our conversational messaging hub is the first of its kind and is designed specifically to meet your needs. Never again will your customers be forced to restate the problem – making them and your service reps happier.
SMS-Magic helps you stay compliant. We can help you keep up with the details like customer permissions as they opt-in (and perhaps opt-out) of your messaging campaigns. Our back-end systems are structured so that we can display individual requests, and we can prove you’ve complied with customer requests. You won’t have to worry about regulators asking to see your records. We use on-going processes to collect and store information about distribution and can share it with regulators, if necessary.
SMS-Magic provides technical, physical and administrative safeguards. Our technical safeguards include use of access controls, integrity controls, audit controls, identity authentication, and transmission security to avoid unauthorized access. We take extra precautions to ensure the physical security of our servers and systems. Our administrative measures include administrative actions, as well as policies and procedures, to manage the selection, development, implementation, and maintenance of security measures to protect electronic information.
We have experts ready to help you take SMS-Magic for a spin for FREE!
