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SMS texting is one of the most commonly used forms of communication today and it has easily become an essential part of our daily routines. But with instant messaging apps and mobile device oriented tools growing in popularity every day for average consumers, there is still a lot to be said about how businesses utilize SMS texting services in their activity.
A business texting app can help companies monitor their employees work in a faster, cheaper and more efficient manner every day by offering several features that can facilitate vital communications. They can be used as a marketing tool for advertising campaigns but can also become a helpful in-house communication system in order to manage internal operations.
One of the most common uses for business text messages are marketing campaigns. You can get text messages sent out to your customers to let them know about your products, keep them updated on the latest news regarding your business or offer them features that will improve their experience. However text messages have come a long way since the days of discount coupons for your local grocery store.
Many business sectors are now using these services for keeping in touch with their customers on a regular basis. This involves more than just marketing, it allows companies to focus on the customer’s access to services, feedback and specific needs. Text messages can be rapidly sent back and forth to set up and confirm appointments, offer details about products and improve the overall client experience and interaction.
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So if business texts can work so well in company communications with customers, why couldn’t they be used just as efficiently for in-house operations? It’s important, though, that you are able to evaluate the efficiency of such an approach.
“Setting goals and attaching real metrics to them is a great way to track the growth of your business,” Brit Tammeorg from TextMagic says.
Well, they can, and more businesses are taking advantage of them every day in order to set up a more effective and interactive relationship with their employees. There are many aspects of your company’s operations that could be improved by using text messages as opposed to classic emails or phone calls.
- Maintaining good communication with employees
Many of the same reasons why text messages are more accessible when it comes to communicating with clients apply to a company’s communication efforts with its own employees. People generally read text messages faster and access them more easily than they do emails, approximately 95 percent of the text messages sent are read within 3 minutes of having been received. This means of course that people are more likely to respond to them in a timely fashion and that the information you are trying to send will be received more promptly.
While many emails sent to clients don’t even get opened according to statistics, your employees will more than likely read the information that you send them. But using business text messaging services in order to convert that information into an instant text and get it sent out to workers in that format simply means delivering it faster. Of course this doesn’t matter as much when you want to invite your employees to a Christmas party that is months away, but it can make a huge difference when you want to send vital details out fast and make sure people respond to you immediately.
You can also choose to alter the service to fit your needs. You might want to get a text message sent out to a previously established contact list as fast as possible so that your employees can find out details about a new task in real time. But if you don’t want them to all text you back you can make it so that their responses get back to you in the form of emails. You can also use instant SMS chats to have a conversation with them if you need to discuss details.
- Keeping in touch with out-of-the-office staff members
These kinds of text message services can also ensure that you maintain a good communication with employees working away from the office, as they’re more likely to receive, read and respond to a text message a lot quicker than they would to an email. So if the printer breaks down and the only person in the office that can fix it is out on an appointment, you can message him and get the information you need to fix it in a matter of minutes.
So business text message services work like messaging applications that are designed specifically for companies. They offer features that the average Joe might not need but that will make businesses run a lot more smoothly. They can help make your life a lot easier if you’re trying to keep in touch with your staff and manage daily activities and they secure your data so that employees and customers are the only ones that can view what you choose to send them. You can set up distribution lists in order to make this process easier and have your emails sent to previously established lists of addresses in the form of text messages.
- Manage teams remotely
What might also help you to maintain a good communication with your employees, especially when they’re out of the office, is that these services can also provide you with global SMS coverage should you need it. This will help keep your worldwide staff up to date with text messages and instant chat options. If you’re outsourcing part of your company’s activities or you have departments abroad you can make sure that the information reaches these remote offices as easily and as quickly as it does your main office.
And that can go a long way especially since people working in different countries than you are often have access to different mobile networks than you do. Business text message services often take that into account and can establish online text message services on a wide range of networks that are being used in other countries.
It also makes it a lot easier to keep tabs on your employees’ activity and on their communication as you can receive performance reports, delivery rates and you can monitor the data usage on your Admin Panel.
All in all, business text message services are a great way to improve your in-house operations and they seem to be getting harder to ignore in a society where text messaging is one of the most used methods of communication available to date.
Author Bio: Helen Daniels is a passionate freelance writer who loves writing about small business growth and alternative ways of streamlining operations. Whenever she’s not writing her next piece, Helen enjoys a hearty cup of black coffee and a good book.
