At a time when organisations and enterprises are being more cautious with their budgets to ensure that they don’t fall foul of the economic slump, you would assume that the uptake of SMS text messaging would be diminishing.
However, this clearly isn’t the case as demand for SMS seems to be more popular than ever. In fact, it’s more likely to be used by businesses to help cut costs and save money. Enterprises of all shapes and sizes across all sectors are beginning to realise the potential and benefits that SMS can bring to their businesses as an efficient, targeted and relatively low-cost form of communication.
Sectors including many financial, retail, telecoms, construction, media, education and security sectors are realising the value of SMS, particularly in terms of the cost savings that text can provide.
Business SMS for education, for example, allows schools and universities to keep parents and students informed and up to date with cost-effective text messaging. Business SMS for hair and beauty, on the other hand, allows beauticians to increase bookings and improve client satisfaction.
The number of small businesses that phone Textlocal stating that they would like to start using SMS to help cut costs such as phone bills or postage is growing every day. For example, a garage may need to inform customers that their car is ready for pick up after it’s MOT and rather than a busy receptionist making a phone call, text is proving the preferred choice.
Other examples include a call centre which may need to contact customers with updates on the status of an insurance claim or application. Text provides a quicker and easier way to relay information.
IT departments are integrating text into their operations to alert programmers of network problems or downtime. Notifying IT staff at the time of the problem helps fix the problem sooner ensuring less disruption and money lost from operations.
Dentists and hair and beauty salons are prime examples of businesses that have problems with “no shows” and for the more efficient businesses within this sector, text is proving a vital tool. There is no sense in phoning customers to remind them of their appointment when a simple group text can reach the entire day’s appointments in a couple of minutes. A 1 hour job by a busy receptionist is radically reduced to 2 minutes! Plus there is much less likelihood of missed appointments, which in itself reduces lost revenue as more people turn up for their appointments. Nick Hayward of Beautology is delighted with text for reminder purposes “Sending a text is so much more convenient than making a phone call, as it can reach anyone, anywhere. It’s also much cheaper & quicker than making a phone call!”
Phone calls are time-consuming and expensive and emails don’t have the immediate impact of text in reaching an audience. Time can often mean money and email just doesn’t have the instant impact of SMS.
As awareness of business SMS grows, more and more organisations will start to integrate text into their general communication operations and at Textlocal we believe it will save them money in the process.
