Why text messaging is going to kill Callcenters?

If you’re reading this chances are you’re on a mission to find the best possible mix of business to consumer communications. Whether you’re a startup or a massive enterprise, corporate communications infrastructure is always a point of struggle – constant tradeoffs, architecture nuances, various vendors and bills that never stop piling. Chances are you are using various vendors for various channels. If that’s so, then you’re probably aware of the pain it involves to sync across various solutions.

Modern business communications are by default omnichannel – email, phonecalls, messangers. Whenever a lead gets in the CRM best practice is to have a well-designed customer journey and a seamless flow, complete with a Sales Rep conducting a call to identify customer pains and how business can best solve them. But that’s about to change. During the next couple of minutes we will talk about phonecalls, callcenters, messaging and how it affects sales numbers.

Brief History of the telephone.

March 10th , 1876 – Alexander Graham Bell made the first phonecall in history. The first words were “Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you.” The telephone was actually discovered by Bell accidentally in his attempts to improve the telegraph. The telegraph was a highly successful system with its dot-and-dash Morse code, but it was basically limited to receiving and sending one message at a time. Bell’s extensive knowledge of the nature of sound and his understanding of music enabled him to conjecture the possibility of transmitting multiple messages over the same wire at the same time. Although the idea of a multiple telegraph had been in existence for some time, Bell offered his own harmonic approach as a possible practical solution. His “harmonic telegraph” was based on the principle that several notes could be sent simultaneously along the same wire if the notes or signals differed in pitch. Since then – radio, television, videotelephony, satellite and finally internet.

Technology Adoption

As you can see from this simple chart, telephone tech has been around for quite a while, however modern inventions have a much shorter time to market, therefore disrupt the very nature of our lives with a much greater intensity. What used to take years now takes months. Now consider the following:

That’s WhatsApp only – Telegram, Messanger, Line, Viber – all of these are rapidly disrupting the industry as well. We’re not talking some short-term wave, which will eventually fade away. This is where the world is headed.

Findings reveal millennials have an overwhelming affinity for texting. In fact, when given the choice between only being able to text or call on their mobile phones, a surprising 75 percent of millennials would rather lose the ability to talk versus text.

Survey respondents say texts are “more convenient” and on their own schedule (76 percent), texts are “less disruptive than a voice call” (63 percent), they “prefer to text vs. call” in general (53 percent) and because they “never check voicemails” (19 percent).

Reasons

Before delving into some of the ways you could adapt your marketing strategies to respond to the general popularity of texting, take a look at some of the reasons why people have fallen in love with SMS.

You’ll want to understand the logic behind this preference so you’ll be better able to target the right audience with the most effective marketing strategies.

Convenience and Ease of Use

Millennials are all about simplicity and ease of use. This generation has grown up with more technology than all the previous ones combined. They’re conditioned to think in terms of which technology affords the most conveniences, and the simple answer is SMS. It’s not so much that millennials feel an intense antipathy toward talking on the phone. They still spend time talking, but they’d prefer to do it with parents and close friends. It’s not a mode of communication they positively associate with brand interaction. Instead, they view unsolicited business calls to be nothing more than pestering from telemarketers.

Easy to Remember

Phone conversations can be difficult to recall. “What time did they say we were supposed to meet?” “How much did she tell me the tickets cost?” “Was the address 113 or 131?” Hours after a phone conversation, details like these tend to slip away. But with SMS, everyone has a readily retrievable transcript of the conversation. An individual can go back and see that the meeting was set for 5:30, the tickets cost $25, or the address is 113. There’s less pressure on the recipient to remember everything.

Less Stressful

Text messages are less stressful than phone calls. The latter may require the person to come up with answers on the spot — or remember specific questions he or she wanted to ask. By contrast, a text message gives the recipient time to think and respond on his or her own time. It’s a more organized experience that involves less overall pressure.

Trumps Voice Mail

Because most people prefer not to answer phone calls from numbers they don’t recognize, most calls from businesses go unanswered. As a result, companies sometimes leave a voice mail. And most of us hate voice mail.

Voice mails take too long to retrieve and understand; they’re impersonal, intrusive, and sometimes confusing. Worse, if there’s information the recipient needs in the voicemail — such as an address, callback number, etc. — the person has to write the information down on a piece of paper.

With a text message, the crucial data is already written out for the recipient to see and use. So that’s why SMS trumps voice mail for most.

Future

Looking ahead it’s hard to imagine a world, where people are not leveraging obviously benefitial technologies. All of us are always looking for ways to make our lives simpler, searching for shortcuts. And while phonecalls are gradually becoming an intimate communication channel for the chosen ones, messangers are for the larget circles of friends and colleagues, SMS is becoming the number one Business to Consumer channel. And it’s just the beginning.