Communication Services

<p style="text-align: justify;">How prepared is your business to continue normal operations when a crisis strikes?</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Here&rsquo;s the thing: Despite your best efforts to keep your business safe, your business will likely experience a couple of crises during its lifetime.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">According to a survey by the ODM group, 59% of business decision-makers reported experiencing a crisis in the current or previous company, and at least 79% of leaders believe they will get a crisis within the next couple of months.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">During this pandemic period, communication for businesses has been a crucial part of their business continuity strategy. Not just communicating but communicating well is just as important. The pandemic forced businesses and government institutions to maintain operations, and that&rsquo;s where business text messaging comes into play.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p><h2 style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">What Makes Business Text Messaging tick?</span></h2><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Accessibility</strong></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Due to the social distancing restrictions across most parts of the world, we now have more people staying and working from home than before the advent of the pandemic.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">With all the challenges people are going through at home, juggling office work and family tasks, it becomes evident that most people will less likely check their phones for emails or answer phone calls. Therefore, text messaging has become the best medium for sending important messages.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Efficiency</strong></p><p style="text-align: justify;">People are quite responsive to text messages. It&rsquo;s been reported that business texts have a response rate of up to 80%, and the average response time for a text is 90 seconds. With such a high response rate from users, it is possible to quickly resolve customer queries, ensuring that your customers are well-catered for.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Personalized</strong></p><p style="text-align: justify;">During a crisis, people craze personal connections, and business SMS solutions make it easy to personalize SMS messages on a large scale. This is how it works: Business SMS solutions can retrieve an individual&rsquo;s data from custom fields such as name, age, and gender and insert that information into an SMs message. This enables your team to provide a highly personalized customer experience.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p><h2 style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Best Practices for Business Text Messaging During a Crisis</span></h2><p style="text-align: justify;">Business text messaging is the ideal solution for texting during a crisis. However, there are several best practices that your business can embrace to make the experience better. For example, you should consider the following:</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Stay Relevant</strong></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Don&rsquo;t divert from the messaging theme your target audience subscribed to by opting in to be receiving your message, or else they will opt out. During a crisis, people are generally scared, nervous, or concerned. Therefore, consider those emotions when sending them your content.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Be Responsive</strong></p><p style="text-align: justify;">During a crisis or pandemic, the business environment changes quickly due to government policy and restrictions; stores can open only for a few hours while others are temporarily closed. Therefore, strive to communicate with your subscribers on time. Use keyword-based auto-replies, which can help you manage incoming queries.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Respond to Queries 24/7</strong></p><p style="text-align: justify;">The beauty of business text messaging solutions is that you can respond after hours when your team is off work by setting up an autoreply to respond after hours. Many businesses use the autoreply feature to provide answers to FAQs. You can set up the autoreply feature to respond based on keywords.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Personalize Content</strong></p><p style="text-align: justify;">During a crisis like the current pandemic, people have temporarily separated from their communities due to the numerous social distancing measures imposed by their respective governments. This results in people craving that personal touch, which you can easily provide by inserting their customer&rsquo;s name and using a natural tone in your SMS messages with them &mdash; a gesture that shows them they are engaging with a human being and not a bot.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Don&rsquo;t Bombard Them with Texts</strong></p><p style="text-align: justify;">As businesses try to navigate and adjust to a new norm during a crisis, they will undoubtedly send many SMS messages to their customers. While keeping your customers updated is important, avoid bombarding them with SMS messages. Please keep it to a minimum.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p><h2 style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Importance of Business Text Messaging During a Crisis</span></h2><p style="text-align: justify;">Business text messaging provides numerous benefits to businesses, especially during a crisis. Here are a couple of ways business text messaging adds value during a crisis:</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Urgent Company Notifications</strong></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Important company announcements must be shared quickly, such as closure notifications and hours of operation adjustments, and business text messaging is your best bet to deliver these messages.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Send Order Notifications</strong></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Home deliveries will naturally increase due to lockdowns. Therefore, many more orders than usual will be coming in, leading to delays. Keep your customers informed about their order status with quick SMS updates.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Answer customer questions</strong></p><p style="text-align: justify;">With so many changes, customers are bound to have many questions about your operations, deliveries, opening hours, etc. Business text messaging gives your business an efficient way to answer questions and resolve customer problems.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Educate Your Customers How Your Product or Service</strong></p><p style="text-align: justify;">If you have a product or service relevant to your customer during the crisis, you may want to let customers know how it can help. Use a business text messaging solution to let your customers know how to use your product or service to make their lives easier.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Message Post Can Help with Your Crisis Management Communication</strong></p><p style="text-align: justify;">No matter your business or industry, MessagePost&rsquo;s easy-to-use SMS messaging platform can help in crisis management communication with timely, branded SMS messages with your company name, logo, tagline, and banner image.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">MessagePost SMS messaging platform automatically formats phone numbers to ensure greater global delivery, and direct-to-carrier routes allow for high delivery and conversion rates.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><em>This article was contributed by our expert <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertmuita/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Robert Muita </a></em></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p><h3 style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Frequently Asked Questions Answered by Robert Muita&nbsp;</span></h3><h3 style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</h3><h2 style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">1. Why are messaging strategies important for issues and or crisis communications?</span></h2><p style="text-align: justify;">Messaging strategies are critical for issues and crisis communications because they provide a clear and consistent message, reassure stakeholders, manage the narrative, and address concerns and questions.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p><h2 style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">2. What are the risks of using instant messaging in a business?</span></h2><p style="text-align: justify;">Instant messaging can be a valuable tool for communication within a business. It is important to consider the potential risks and take steps to mitigate them. These risks include security breaches, compliance issues, decreased productivity, miscommunication, and legal liability.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p><h2 style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">3. What problem does SMS marketing in businesses solve?</span></h2><p style="text-align: justify;">SMS marketing can help businesses solve various problems, including improving customer engagement, increasing brand awareness, providing a cost-effective marketing solution, offering a personalized customer experience, and improving customer communication.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p><h2 style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">4. How do you make effective business text messaging?</span></h2><p style="text-align: justify;">To make effective business text messaging, keep your messages concise, personalize your message, use a clear call-to-action, send messages at the right time, provide value, be clear and professional, and obtain consent.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p>