The advantages of SMS for contact centers

When most of us think of contact centers we imagine people at desks with headsets answering phone calls and handling the needs of customers, with everything from account payments to complaints being on the table. We think of that because, for a lot of years, that’s exactly what a contact center has been.

It doesn’t have to be, though.

Getting stuck on the phone

Your Agents are pretty amazing. They do, however, have limitations — they can only carry on one conversation at a time. While that seems reasonable (I know that’s about as many as I can carry on at once), it’s a problem when there’s a lot of customers that need help.

This problem is doubled when those same customers that need help, have simple, even transactional needs; the sort of thing that only takes a few minutes, but still monopolizes an Agent’s time that could be better spent on customers with more complex issues.

So what’s a contact center to do? How do you alleviate the traffic and let your Agents be the rock stars you know they are?

With SMS.

Let’s text it out

By implementing SMS texting into their operations, contact centers can streamline operations and help to create “Super Agents” that can handle multiple different issues AND avoid burnout, thanks to a diversity of tasks taken on in a given day.

Need more reasons to add SMS to your contact center? You want numbers? I got numbers.

• 90% of SMS messages are read within 3 minutes of receipt
• SMS has a 45% response rate; email has a 6% response rate
• Agents using SMS are 2.2 times more effective than Voice Agents, managing upwards of 10 SMS conversations
• Messaging conversations leads to higher CSAT scores (92%+)
• You can lower operating costs in the contact center deflecting costly voice and email interactions to SMS through self-service channels

That’s not enough? You want more? Ok, how about this — implementing SMS into your contact center allows for more efficiencies for your agents and your overall organization (Agents are the largest expense for a contact center, so making them more efficient reduces organizational costs), allows for better customer support and a superior customer experience, and happier Agents. If that’s not enough reasons to make the, then what is?

Questions?

Need to know more? Have questions about A2P messaging and how you can implement SMS into your contact center? Talk to one of our experts today to learn more.