Did you know SMS surveys garner 5x the open rate of email?  If you are asking customers for feedback at transaction touchpoints, this survey channel might be right for your business. Here is why.

There’s a distinct advantage to being the first, especially when it comes to customer communication in a new channel. In the world of growth marketing, finding where the “fresh powder” lies becomes a huge engagement advantage.

Take banner ads on websites as an example. When they first started showing up in the 90s, companies were seeing tons of engagement and click-through rates(CTR) were as high as 78%. Now, you’d be lucky to get a 0.05% CTR from a banner ad. People got tired of seeing them and savvy advertisers moved on to new channels like Facebook and Instagram.

CX pros looking to receive valuable customer feedback can learn from growth marketing by capitalizing on the novelty of the SMS channel before it becomes tired. With some folks joking about dressing up as GDPR emails for Halloween this past year, you can be sure that nowadays, it is wise to examine alternatives to email surveys.

Why customers are so responsive to SMS communications…for now

Why is text messaging so much better at engaging customers than email?

To start to answer this question, think about how integral the habit of checking your phone is to your day-to-day. Research shows that 91% of all US mobile users keep their phones within arms reach at all times. In general,  SMS open rates (90%) are almost triple the average email open rates. On top of getting more folks to open messages, the average response time for a legitimate text message is 90 seconds, as opposed to a legitimate email, which is about 90 minutes.

Another reason why SMS is such an effective survey channel is actually very simple.

Customers want you to!

Customers have said that giving product or service feedback is in the top 3 reasons why they want to use SMS messaging to communicate with businesses.

In fact, research has shown that 9/10 respondents would opt in to SMS communication with a business if it were available. With such enthusiasm for this communication channel, you’d be missing out on the fresh powder by waiting to do so. People feel like they can have a productive two-way conversation with a company when they communicate via SMS. The history that comes with a text chain also provides context for all your messaging and a sense of continuity.

Clearly, customer experience surveys and SMS as a channel are ripe for results! Not only do people want to opt-in for text communications, but the reasons they want to hear from you also contribute to this channel’s potential for success. 

So, how do you start gaining insight from SMS?

It is now easy to send customer surveys via SMS

In the past, the task of setting up SMS surveys has often required an in-house developer to work directly with a provider like Twilio. This, understandably, wasn’t appealing to businesses who couldn’t afford the time or engineering resources.

Today, using a customer feedback platform like Wootric makes sending 2-way SMS surveys easy. Your customers write their survey responses in the text message — they don’t have to link off to a web browser to answer questions. That reduced friction is a huge advantage for two-way SMS surveys.

And, if you connect Wootric to your CRM software, like Salesforce, your surveys can be personalized. You can include context like the name of the agent a customer just finished talking to.

It’s time to use our cell phone habit for our customer’s benefit. Ask them for feedback with SMS before the novelty of texting from your vendor wears off.