Insights
Your guide to conversational messaging
Insights
Connect with customers via the messaging channels they love the most. It’s powerful stuff.
Of all the recent trends we’ve seen, one stands out from the rest: Customers want to get closer to you. They expect to chat one-on-one whenever they reach out, and to have meaningful and genuine conversations. Can you deliver that?
“For small and medium businesses, making beautiful connections with customers instead of just selling to them is the best – and maybe only – way to get ahead of much larger brands. I hope this playbook demonstrates that achieving it is much easier than you think. You’ll get a closer look at the latest data and trends, insights into customer expectations and behavior, and some simple steps you can take to streamline customer engagement and hit your goals.”
While brands are flooding messaging channels with one-way broadcasts, customers are hungry for something more meaningful. Conversational messaging lets them have two-way conversations – initiated by the customer – on messaging channels they already use. Customers get a sense of personal engagement and feel heard and understood. Businesses gather genuine customer insights while transforming and accelerating the path to purchase.
“84% of consumers have opted in to receive texts from businesses, 35% more than this time a few years ago.”
With turbulent economic forecasts, it would be easy to focus on a survival strategy retreat, cut costs, and ride out the storm. But those stormy times also come with the best growth opportunities. As less stable competitors shrink or exit altogether, being nimble and open to change means you can snap up the customers they leave high and dry.
Well, sure. But, where is your audience? Many businesses realize that their audience lives on social media platforms like Instagram or TikTok, and companies post every day as part of their marketing strategy.
That’s smart, but you can be smarter. Social media platforms aren’t just for broadcasting content – they’re also where you can support customers, have conversations and accept and manage new inbound leads.
With more channels available for customers to start a conversation, it means more opportunities for meaningful conversations that convert and a major point of differentiation for brands of all sizes.
More people are using social networks to search for businesses. 90% of consumers rely on social media to keep up with trends and cultural moments, with the average person using six different social networks per month.
Rest assured, traditional search is still a thing. 96% of consumers used the internet to find a local business in 2024, with 34% of people searching daily. That’s up 6% from 2019.
So, if meeting your audience on the channels they love is the goal, how do you make it manageable for busy staff while also satisfying those massive customer expectations? While people want conversational messaging and immediate responses, they don’t necessarily want the whole thing to happen all at once or even on one channel. Crack that, and you’ll have an incredible point of difference. If you, among your competitors, can be available for a two-way conversation on the channels your customers want to chat with you, you’ll show you’re the right choice.
Figure out where prospects are: Which platforms do they use? Where are they most likely to engage with you?
Run some experiments: Run tests and learn from your own experience what works for your customers.
Manage your conversations: Before engaging on multiple platforms, think about how you’ll manage them all, especially if people move from one to another. Find a solution that helps you manage them all in one place.
“Customer lifetime value is substantially higher for loyal customers compared to new ones. Loyal customers are willing to spend 67% more than new shoppers, while acquiring new customers costs 5x to 7x more than retaining existing ones. That means loyal customers both spend more and cost less.”
Growth comes from within – it’s true for self-help, and it’s true for your business. Whatever your industry, engaging with your existing clients to keep them for longer and make more money from them is the smartest, most efficient way to grow. Search around, and you’ll find variations on the following statistics:
A Forrester study commissioned by Google said customers “demand to be delighted … These expectations extend to when and how they connect with brands across communication channels.”
Delivering that delight once meant having a contact form on your site and promising to respond in a day or two. Now, you’ve got to be where customers want to talk – on the same channels they use to chat with friends and family. When researching a brand or product, 59% of consumers prefer to gather information themselves rather than speak to a human, and 1 in 4 consumers prefer social media for product discovery.
All of this is good news – it gives businesses a chance to have more meaningful conversations and make those beautiful connections. Whether it’s through SMS, WhatsApp, or RCS, conversations are (finally) getting personal.
Almost six billion people globally use chat apps, but many small and medium businesses don’t.
While 93% of consumers text every day and 84% of consumers are opted in to receive texts from businesses and rank mobile messaging in their top three ways to communicate, only 66% of businesses are using SMS marketing apps to connect with customers.
So, you have options:
You can guess which option we recommend.
Wondering if you have the time, resources, and people to connect with customers at scale on their preferred channels?
You can stop worrying. New tech makes it easy to engage across multiple platforms from a central location. This lets you track previous conversations across different channels and between team members, massively increasing your potential for cross-selling and up-selling.
Since you’ll be combining these tools with the intimate customer knowledge your larger competitors probably don’t have, this could
give you a huge competitive advantage.
Speak to your customers: Get in touch with your audience to find out how and where they want to communicate with you.
Speak to your team: How easy is it for your people to stay across different conversations, channels, and teams? How is this impacting their ability to convert new
opportunities?
Revisit your tech: A lot has changed over the past few years. Have another look for tools that could help you manage customer communications easily and affordably across multiple channels.
“Texting too often, sending spam-like content, or delivering messages that don’t feel relevant to the customer are the fastest ways to lose SMS subscribers.”
Retain customers and increase brand loyalty – both good goals, but… how?
More and more, that all-important brand loyalty comes from doing two things – personalizing the messaging to the customer and being true to your brand personality. Get it wrong, and you may be in trouble.
Fortunately, with intuitive texting platforms, it’s possible to create on-brand connections when responding to sales inquiries, service requests, or even simple product questions without added time and labor.
Businesses today are using SMS marketing to analyze customer data, personalize messages based on customer behavior, and optimize message timing to improve engagement. Automating text messaging is also on the rise, making SMS marketing more efficient than ever.
Wherever your customer wants to chat, your business needs to sound the same, with a consistent voice and personalized message. It’s an important part of building trust and loyalty while enhancing the customer experience – and, according to Forbes, there’s an 80% increase in revenue for businesses that do that.
Survey your customers: See what they think of your messaging, brand voice and personality. Is it consistent and loyalty-inspiring, or a bit hit-and-miss?
Revisit your business goals and values: To add power to your overarching customer satisfaction strategy, weave conversational messaging into everything you do. You’ll get more cut-through and deliver a better experience.
Give employees standard templates: To keep your messages on brand, give your team scripts and templated replies to common customer queries.
Use emojis: People who use visuals like emojis in their messaging are 1.59 times more
likely to say they have ‘great conversations’ than those who don’t.
Allow for personalized messaging: Make it easy for employees to refer back to a customer’s past conversations and purchases. Give them the context they need to have a really personalized conversation.
“Texting has officially overtaken email and phone calls as the top way consumers want to contact customer service.”
Whether you’re in a service or retail industry, manufacturing or a technical profession, the customer experience can become your core competitive advantage – or weakness.
This is especially important in industries where customers lack the technical knowledge to assess quality, or when they must choose between a range of very similar products. Essentially, when there’s no other way to choose, people will decide based on how a business makes them feel.
So how can you take your customer experience up a level?
The digital world has changed business, and the way customers want to connect with you.
Demographics matter too, with 90% of Gen Z consumers check their texts within five minutes. It all adds up to one fact – consumers are flocking to brands that offer messaging convenience and options.
Communicating with your customers through one channel alone is no longer enough. Small and medium businesses have discovered that multichannel messaging – where customers can engage with brands on the channel of their choice – is perfect for communicating with customers. And the payoff for offering customers multiple messaging
options can be huge. It’s a great way to offer support that meets customer expectations and drives customer satisfaction.
Wherever they are, on whatever channel, customers will no longer settle for slow responses. In fact, 80% of customers say they expect to hear from businesses within 24 hours of signing up to receive text promotions.
Getting things sorted quickly using digital platforms is also good for the business. 31% of consumers prefer to text customer service reps when they have a question, and 71% want the ability to text back.
Social agents can handle four to eight times as many queries per hour as a phone agent, while the per- interaction cost on social is less than $1, as opposed to $6 per phone call and $2.50 to $5 per email. That’s a huge competitive advantage.
Audit query response times across your channels: Measuring response times in days
or hours? Imagine if you could make that minutes or seconds.
Review customer service processes: How many touchpoints are there for customers? Who handles these requests? Who else has access to those interactions?
You’ve got your strategy in place and a head full of ideas. So, what now? Whatever your 2025 goals, they should aim to be on the channels your clients
prefer. Engage on new platforms, ask customers about their communication preferences, and work with your team to improve the customer experience.
If that sounds overwhelming, start small. Take it bit by bit, and look for quick wins with cost-effective, easy-to-implement solutions that will deliver significant impact. The outcome you want? Getting closer to your audience by paving the way toward those beautiful connections.
Whether you want to quickly add text message automation inside your existing CRM, ERP, or marketing automation platform or get expert help, there’s a solution.
Sinch Engage is a global messaging provider helping businesses of all sizes cut through the noise. With over 70,000 customers worldwide and 20+ years in business, you’re in safe hands – we can help you easily and effectively connect with your customers.
Author:
