What I learned from sending 2 Million SMS?
Sending SMS at scale while delivering value to the customers
There's no typo in the title; you've read it correctly: 2 million SMS. And no, of course, I didn't send them manually from my phone. Instead, we used a mixture of techniques and approaches to connect with our customers and keep them informed. Today I want to share my findings, including some tips on the system design, processes, and mistakes we made to make it all work.
How we use it
Sales
Each sales representative makes on average about 100 calls a day. We don't do cold calling, and all the leads come from a 3rd party lead generation company, Google ads, or directly via our website.
The sales process is simple: the sales reps attempt to contact the lead a few times over two weeks, after which the lead is considered dead, and we may only use it in the future for training purposes or whenever the new leads dry out.
The sales team's problem is that even though people voluntarily leave their contact details on our website, they tend to forget it very quickly. Also, they wouldn't know what number we'll call them from, so on their end, it's just an unknown number.
To address this issue, we added an intro SMS to the sales process, which means that as soon as someone signs up on our website, they would get an SMS from us explaining that they can expect a call from us and the phone number we'll use to call them.
We also use SMS when someone fails to answer the phone: as soon as the sales rep hangs the phone and starts logging the call, the system sends the message to the lead explain that we tried to contact them and ask to respond with a suitable time to get them again.
Operations
The operations teams are responsible for managing service delivery. The nature of the service requires multiple touchpoints( contacts ) with the customer via email or phone. When I joined the company and started working on a complete redesign of the CRM system, one of the critical aspects we had to address was the low response rate on email communication.
Bear in mind; these are not marketing emails with some product brochures but confirmations with dates, locations, instructions, etc. It was vital to avoid finger-pointing exercises and customer service disputes (more on this in the future articles) when customers claimed they didn't receive the email or went to the junk folder.
We decided to add SMS functionality to the CRM system to mitigate email deliverability risks. The solution allowed us to send both manual and automated SMS to customers. The success rate was phenomenal: we went from below 50% open rate with emails to 90-98% with SMS.
Marketing
Occasionally, the marketing sends promotional SMS to the older leads or, the more recent ones; the sales reps couldn't close. Most of the time, these SMS contain promotions ( Boxing day, Easter, etc.) or information about newly added service offerings. The campaigns are usually successful and result in increased calls from the leads with decent conversion rates.
Now that you know a little bit more about how we use SMS, it's time for you to see if that's something you could be using and how to do it as pain-free as possible
Is it suitable for my business/sector?
Here's a task for you: imagine your average customer and think of the situations they interact with you. Now think of a few different scenarios you could be contacting them. Here are a few examples to kickstart your thinking:
1) "Hi Jane, Your flowers will be ready to collect at 13:30. Good luck at the party! Corner Flowers"
2) "Hello Kevin, Your spicy burgers will be with you in 15min. Enjoy it! Flying Burger"
3) "Dear David, Your Ferrari is ready. Visit us any time to collect it. Red Italian Motors Inc"
4) "Hi Derek, Your adult toy 3000 will be with you tomorrow. Enjoy the vibrations! Smiling Toys Corp"
As you can see, some of these are fine, and nobody will likely complain about receiving messages about their flower order or burger delivery. However, if you are in fine motors, it's much better to call the customer and make an announcement with all the fanfares, as they do expect top services because they buy a luxury product. It's also not a great idea to send anything that could embarrass the customer or even get them into trouble.
Most businesses know their customers and have a good feeling about what they may or may not like. Use that feeling when deciding if SMS is the right tool for you.
Where to use it?
Service updates, general notifications
This is, by far, the most specific category with plenty of use cases:
1) Delivery status update ( burger on the way, taxi is around the corner, an engineer will visit tomorrow)
2) Product/Service stage update ( Furniture is being packed, Your car is leaving the garage)
3) Result updates ( you passed your exam, you joined the club, your subscription is cancelled
In most cases, these are easy to digest, small information bites, where the customer is not required to respond.
Simple input requests
This one is similar to service updates, but the customer also needs to provide additional information by responding to the message:
1) Reply Red/Blue/Green to pick your shirt colour.
2) We will be delivering your sofa tonight. Reply NOT IN if you can't pick it up.
3) Hi Derek, Please send us your address so our team can post your item.
Even though these texts look easy, they can potentially cause some unexpected problems if automation is used. Read more about it in Creating the text section.
Conversations
While I wouldn't advise on starting fully-fledged conversations with customers using SMS, for certain types of businesses, a limited approach can work really. Well. For instance, if you know that you can get/provide all the necessary information in 2-4 SMS, that's a pretty good use case.
Clinic: Hi, Jess, We are ready to book your massage session. Reply with the massage type you'd like.
Customer: Hi, I prefer traditional massage.
Clinic: how many minutes?
Customer: 45, please.
Clinic: Your session is booked for tomorrow morning, at 10 am. See you soon!
Customer: Thanks, I'll see you there!
As you can see, the customer had to go through a few simple steps to order a massage session. The customer is well aware of the services the clinic can offer and is unlikely. A well-defined yet straightforward structure of the conversation ensures it won't deviate to random questions or comments, as it's sticking to the point. There's a clear exit path from the conversation: request, response, clarification, confirmation, and acknowledgement.
If you know that both sides are likely to stay within the topic's boundaries, this could be a quick and easy method to complete an order or another stage of the sales process.
Available solutions
While there are hundreds of different solutions out there, most of them fall under these categories:
1) Dumb, mass SMS tools
Such services are usually pretty cheap( depending on SMS pricing in your country) and only offer one functionality: the ability to send SMS to a provided list of numbers. You can send 10, 500, 4000, or even a million SMS, and that's about it. They will be likely to show the deliverability, have some necessary reports on usage, etc. They rarely offer any additional functionalities
2) Platform as service providers
These tend to be much more sophisticated. Platforms are likely to offer full programmatic access to their service using APIs, additional abstraction layers that allow greater control over sending, receiving, or managing SMS. The cost is usually slightly higher compared to those belonging to the dumb category.
You will most likely need a developer or tech-savvy person to set it up and administer it.
3) Integrated solutions
An integrated solution is a category where solutions piggyback to other platforms. For instance, we use Salesforce CRM, and their app store offers several solutions catering to various business needs. This type of solution usually relies heavily on the host platform's automation tools and integrates seamlessly with native functionality. The pricing usually is very similar to the platform as service providers. They are also easier to set up. However, some knowledge of the host platform will be needed for more complex use cases.
How to create the text?
Writing short texts is much harder than long ones. Writing short texts that make sense is even more challenging.
Here are a few things to consider when creating a text for SMS:
1) Style ( casual, official)
2) Tone( funny, serious, relaxed, desperate, implying)
3) Abbreviations ( Only use if you are 100% specific customers will know what it means
4) Assumptions ( can you safely assume, or is it better to avoid? It's tricky to get it right, so better prevent any assumptions altogether
5) Length ( nowadays, an SMS can belong, and your device will just put them all into one. Don't abuse it, as each of them will cost money+ it needs to be short to succeed)
6) Details(it's not a novel, leave all the fluff out)
The biggest mistakes we made creating templates for automated SMS were too many assumptions.
1) We assumed people would respond the way we want
"Please respond YES/NO to confirm". The responses can be: "Yes", "Yes/No", "No", "Nope"," Nein", "Nope I don't want", "Hi, is that you?", etc.
If you are creating automation based on the responses, it's good to have a manual check for the failed ones. People may not know they respond to the software, so they go free with whatever options seem to be good at that moment. You'll probably get 80-90% answering the way you wanted, but the rest will have to be checked and acted upon by a human.
If getting someone to check manually isn't an option, avoid asking for replies. Provide short links to a website, where they would be forced to enter the information the way you want ( e.g. lead capture form with email format validation, checkboxes, etc.)
2) Not all our customer knew enough about the service.
We were giving/asking for information at various stages of the service provision. Most customers had it for the first time; therefore, they weren't fully aware of what happens at each location, why they need x,y,z, etc. We had to be super clear on each stage of the process and ended up rewriting/combining text for some parts so it would make more sense to the customer
3) Not everyone wants texts
The demographics we service are busy people and can't afford to sift through emails for half an hour. But they can quickly glance at the text and drop a two-word response. However, despite the majority of the clients liking it, some aren't entirely supportive. They want phone calls and more personalised service(e.g. our operations team spending an hour on the phone explaining all the nuances of the one-page sheet they have to fill in). It's a subtle balancing act and requires constant monitoring. The service feedback mechanism can help to identify some gaps or issues in this area.
4) Business clients don't like it as much as private customers
Some companies don't want their employees to communicate via SMS and even deliberately don't provide their phone numbers. The reasons vary from personal information safety to centralised management structure, which means we have to run by a specific decision-making group in the business ( e.g. HR, Managers, etc.) instead of contacting individuals directly. My advice is to have an option to switch on/off, depending on the client's preferences.
Monitoring
As in the famous saying "garbage in garbage out", it is vital to have good data hygiene. If you are sending SMS to your existing customers, make sure their numbers are up to date, they know they will receive your texts and have a way to stop it whenever the customer asks.
As I already mentioned, you are likely to need some manual monitoring, especially if your SMS is not just 1-way information packages.
If you have people to monitor/respond to the messages, have well-established procedures on how to act on responses, distribute workload, escalate more complex cases, and provide navigation space for the agents when received messages fall outside the defined criteria.
It is also a good practice to define KPIs for response times, completion of actions related to SMS, or satisfaction rate if the feedback mechanism is incorporated into the SMS functionality.
Combining with other channels
Don't be afraid to experiment and try to combine SMS with other channels. Email and SMS is a powerful combo. You reveal a glimpse of the SMS information and tell the customer to check the rest in the email. By now, they are hooked and want to find out what's in there. This way, you retain text simplicity in the SMS and can add full content in the email.
Don't overuse it either. If the customer can expect lots of emails from you, don't spend lots of SMS. Try to make some gaps instead, for instance, two emails+1 SMS or 1 SMS in every 5th email. SMS is a very open channel, but, at the same time, it needs to be used subtly.
Recap
SMS can be a great addition to your current business workflow without adding expensive overheads. It's a simple yet reliable, widely used technology. People in all age groups know it very well too. I also strongly suggest looking at the whole offering instead of focusing on the pricing only: this is a low margin industry, where higher margins can only be achieved by offering additional layers of functionality and those addition 10% or 20% in pricing can add substantial value to your business