Customer experience impacts sales. Buyers with great past experiences spend 140% more compared to those with poor experiences. And in today’s connected world, that experience is directly linked to customer service.

Luckily, there are ways for you to automate touchpoints throughout the customer journey that will streamline a customer’s path-to-purchase. You can enrich your customer service department with SMS and add strategic messaging throughout the journey to reduce the need for support in the first place.

Customer service is a part of the customer journey

Customer service and support have become integral parts of customer journeys and your customers want answers in real-time. 75% of them use a search engine to find answers to service-related questions before calling an agent, and 44% would much rather press a button to initiate an SMS conversation than wait on hold to speak with a customer service agent.

Anything other than real-time customer service puts a strain on your customer: it costs them time and effort. Bad experiences increase the chances of them dropping off forever.

Instead of chasing interactions that are irritating for your customer and expensive for you, you can focus on creating an environment for initiating instant, one-on-one conversations. Since your customer switches channels from SMS to chat to a phone call seamlessly, enabling your contact centers to do the same is a must.

The solution of a streamlined messaging strategy

An important part of creating a better purchasing experience lies in automating a portion of your customer service. So, why not streamline the customer experience before they even have to contact your support teams?

By using both SMS messaging and WhatsApp, you can reduce strain on customer support with strategic messages that guide the customer through the full process.

Curious about use cases that can reduce your high-touch customer support while increasing the value for the customer? Here are some of our favorite ones.

Order and payment confirmation. One of the best ways to reduce the need for support is by sharing real-time order information such as payment and dispatch notifications. Make it a two-way communication channel to give your customers control over their purchases.

Product or service updates. Reach out to your existing customers with relevant product information and updates. This is a great way to increase both their spend and brand loyalty!

ETA and delivery updates. Logging into a delivery provider’s website to find out the location of a package is a pain. You can make everyone’s life easier by automating the notification process.

Account notifications. “I really like when my account expires or gets hacked,” said no one, ever. Instant messages can help prevent fraud, improve onboarding, and keep logins safe.

Collecting feedback and ratings from customers. Customer feedback is tough to gather because customers are asked to invest their time and get nothing in return. With text messaging, sending feedback becomes a 5-second action for the customer.

Streamline your customer service centers with SMS

By adding cloud communications to the customer journey, you can significantly improve your customer’s experience through their entire journey.

You will save your customers time and effort to get the products they want the most while reinforcing brand loyalty through an open communication channel — and it will make key interactions with your customer service team smooth and pleasant for both sides.

Your customers won’t be frustrated with their orders and if they are, they won’t have to wait on hold forever, enabling your support agents to deal with a spike in traffic. Everybody wins.

Sign up to try MessageBird and see how it transforms your customer journey and support process!