Calling and emailing potential customers has long been the status quo. A typical sales cadence includes a series of calls, voicemail, emails, and LinkedIn messages. Now, consumers are looking to talk to companies in a faster, more bite-sized manner — through texting.
Even just a few years ago, texting was widely thought to be intrusive and unprofessional. But with the proliferation of smartphones and an increasingly mobile market, texting has not only become acceptable — it’s preferable for many businesses and their customers.
As phone calls become more undesirable because of robo-scammers poisoning the well and emails go straight to the spam folder, texting simply hits the mark. Contactless ways of communication are the gold standard for fruitful consumer interaction.
Texting is the new calling, but why? Here are five reasons why texting is having its moment — and ways to shift your methods for the better.
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1. Texting saves time and is more efficient for everyone.
Phone calls and emails aren’t perfect — sometimes emails get lost in spam filters or the line breaks up during a call and you miss an important detail. These can result in a lot of unnecessary back-and-forth and repetition of work.
Texting can offer a solution to both of these problems. You don’t miss any details when sending and receiving texts, and a text going to spam is a rare occasion.
For consumers, texting allows them to respond when they have a moment, especially if they’re on-the-go or otherwise occupied. It relieves a lot of the pressure to communicate with you immediately when they aren’t necessarily prepared.
Plus, when 98% of consumers open text messages, it’s hard to argue against texting’s importance. We spoke with one of our customers, Mattamy Homes, on the impact that texting had on their business and the lessons they’ve learned along the way:
“Sometimes I have a hard time understanding someone or I didn’t catch their email. I have to call them back, explain who I am, and try to get their email out of them again, and I might write it down wrong the second time.
"It’s easier to text them and ask them to send their email. They’re always happy to. You don’t have to worry about them getting upset that they never heard from you, and you get the email right the first time.” - Kerry Miller, Mattamy Homes
2. Messaging is more to-the-point with texting.
Content is digested at everyone’s fingertips. Whether someone opened a text or not, a message can be read through preview text and notification banners. The number of characters allowed in previews and banners is small, so your texts have to be short, quick, and to-the-point. You’re forced to eliminate any filler to get your main point across up front.
If you use texting to communicate with consumers for something routine, like scheduling an appointment, using a tool like Lead Center allows you to create quick texts and templates to send with the click of a button at any time, to any lead. Think appointment reminders, requests for feedback, and so on.
If you’re reaching out for the first time, your texts might include options for quick responses, 1 for Yes and 2 for No, for the question you’re asking, making it easier for leads to engage with you. Mattamy Homes uses this method often:
“I give my leads options for quick responses. If they send me a 2 or No back, I stop following up with them and I know they’re not interested. This allows me to use my time with leads who are interested in purchasing a home with us.” - Kerry Miller, Mattamy Homes
3. 89% of consumers prefer to communicate with businesses through texting.
Cellphones are nearly ubiquitous today. 97% of Americans own a cellphone — but 94% of people say they don’t pick up calls from unidentified numbers. That number improves when you use a tool like Lead Center with set tracking numbers; when a customer calls one of your numbers, you’ll automatically use that same number when you call them back.
Texts, on the other hand? Consumers find texting to be a better customer experience overall, and 74% respond to a text from a business within an hour. And if it’s a number they recognize from one of your tracking numbers, they’ll feel even more comfortable responding.
People aren’t only expecting businesses to stop relying on phone calls. A quick and informal text is preferred by many Americans in nearly every context, from contacting a doctor’s office to talking with family and friends. They send and receive five times more texts than phone calls. Contacting a business is no different.
Meet your leads and customers where they are. If you find that the large majority of them prefer to reach out via text, consider adding a tool like Lead Center to your team’s arsenal that gives them robust texting features like sending and receiving both inbound and outbound texts, auto-responses, conversation tagging, and more.
“I’ve found that most people do not want to answer a phone call. Honestly, I would rather someone text me personally than call my cell sometimes as well. It’s just easier! Life gets busy, so it’s nice to be able to send a quick response back with a text.” - Kerry Miller, Mattamy Homes
4. It’s easier for your business to handle multiple text conversations at once instead of multiple calls.
The very nature of texting allows you to be involved in multiple conversations at once. While you’re waiting for one lead to respond, you can start conversations with other leads. That’s something you simply can’t do with phone calls. You only have one phone and one voice!
Plus, texting allows you to tag team with the rest of your coworkers, too. If you need to step away for a moment, another team member can pick up the text conversation right where you left off. In Lead Center, picking that conversation up can happen both in the office on desktop and on-the-go, using the Lead Center mobile app — and better yet, every agent has full visibility into the customer’s past texts and other interactions.
“I love that you can have multiple conversations at the same time. I oversee multiple divisions, so I need to be able to quickly text multiple people at a time. When people respond, I get notified, and I can respond back to them fast.” - Kerry Miller, Mattamy Homes
5. Texting is less confrontational and more casual.
Who answers a phone call from a number they don’t know these days? No one. 87% of consumers tend to ignore phone calls from businesses and unknown numbers.
Calls from unknown numbers are too confrontational for many — and if you miss a call, you might be playing phone tag for a while, causing a lot of wasted time and mental exhaustion.
Phone calls require you (and each lead you communicate with) to think on the fly. You don’t necessarily have time to reflect on your answers, which can cause misinformation and frustration. With texting, everyone involved has less pressure to respond to a question immediately if they need to think about the answer, with the added bonus of not needing to drop everything to focus on the conversation at hand.
“Most people respond to texts rather than any other method of contact to schedule appointments with me. A lot of people like texting because it isn’t confrontational. They’re more likely to text if they’re running late to an appointment with me, too.” - Kerry Miller, Mattamy Homes
Communicate, by all means
Texting has proven itself to be incredibly effective and efficient when it comes to business communication. Not only do your consumers prefer it, but it helps you save time and headache, too.
A healthy reminder, though: While texting is an important pillar of communication, a business is most successful when using multiple forms of outreach to meet consumers wherever they are. Texting may be wildly effective for one group, while emails are still the perfect thing for another, or a mix of different types of communication.
CallRail’s Lead Center is the perfect place to communicate with all of your leads in one, unified inbox — and you can do much more than track and respond to text messages. Create and manage phone calls, live chats, and texts, and respond to leads that submitted one of your forms.
Lead Center lets you respond to anyone, anywhere, at any time, and it works best when you add your entire staff or team. If you’re already a Lead Center customer, we encourage you to add all of your team members as Lead Center agents today. Not yet a Lead Center customer? Sign up for a free trial for 14 days.
