SMS customer service is fast, accessible, and trusted by users everywhere. In this guide, we explore how to make it work for your team - and your customers.
In this Telerivet article, we’ll cover:
- What is SMS customer service?
- What customer support activities can you do through SMS?
- What are the benefits of doing customer service through SMS?
- What SMS regulations should I be aware of?
- Can my SMS customer service be multi-channel?
What is SMS customer service?
SMS customer service is simply using Short Message Service (SMS) - text messages through a mobile phone - as a channel through which customer service reps can reach and interact with customers.
The most common line of communication for customer service reps is typically email or voice calling.
In a tech company, a customer service rep might be someone sending emails from saved replies using a platform like Intercom.
In a more traditional company, the customer service rep might be outsourced to a call center, where a person sits with a headset on and helps customers navigate through problems.
Adding SMS to the customer support arsenal is a simple way to expand that reach - and it’s not surprising that SMS customer support is rapidly becoming popular.
SMS customer service is a very easy way to get ahead of your competition and keep your customers happy.
In this article, we’ll explain what SMS customer service consists of, how you can do it, and other things to be aware of when trying to execute any kind of SMS business strategy.
What customer support activities can you do through SMS?
Customer support is a very broad category and involves many different ways of interacting with customers.
Customer support is typically leveraged by an organization when a customer or other stakeholder approaches the organization for help.
This is different from customer success, as it might operate in a SaaS company, where customer success takes on the responsibility of going out to the customer and being proactive in outreach.
Within this section, we're going to look primarily at customer support, but we may touch on some outreach and more active elements - as SMS contains a wealth of opportunity for reaching out to your customers and starting new conversations, rather than just being reactive and responsive.
The most basic activities of SMS customer service will be answering questions.
This typically happens in the first few days or week of a new user or customer - sometime in the initial period, when they're still discovering your product or service and want to ask a few simple questions.
This is the type of activity that has, in part, been subject to some elements of automation within the world of online chatbots.
But the personal touch of a customer support rep is still a very popular option.
Beyond answering basic questions for the users - which might be considered Level 1 customer support - SMS customer service might involve resolving issues and actively guiding customers through activities or processes.
This might be considered Level 2 customer support, where you’ve identified what the problem is, and you’re now in a solutions-oriented mindset to try to help and fix.
This is where there’s extra benefit in having a human, rather than an AI, attempting to assist the person.
Customers can often get frustrated, and it can feel annoying to be frustrated at an AI that won’t really listen to your problems - particularly if the AI is failing to understand you.
A human can do a better job of placating a customer, in order to get back to how help can be delivered best.
In terms of more active outreach to customers, SMS customer service can be used to provide updates to core products or services and keep customers in the loop in terms of knowledge and information.
Or to send special offers - like discounts, promotions, or perhaps a voucher.
This is a type of customer success activity that one can easily perform through SMS customer service.
What are the benefits of doing customer service through SMS?
There are countless benefits to doing customer service through SMS.
The first big benefit is the universality of the protocol.
Everyone, everywhere, who has access to a mobile phone has SMS - even if that mobile phone is 20 years old.
This is the most inclusive and universal communications technology we have access to.
And it isn’t just widely available, but it is also widely used.
The 98% open rates of SMS are unmatched by any other technology.
The only way you could get higher rates is by picking technologies with very low usage and reach.
SMS, therefore, is the most wide-reaching and universal technology we can use for customer support.
This feeds into added accessibility benefits, where any customer with a mobile phone can contact support without any obstacles in their way.
This also makes it easier for speakers of languages outside of the ones you typically operate in - as messages can be copied into translate apps, and it can be easier than a synchronous conversation over the phone.
This asynchronicity is also beneficial - in that customers can send you a message whenever is right for them.
They could message you at night, and you answer in the morning.
They don’t have to try and call you during the exact hours they’re at work - which never made much sense to me.
SMS customer service is also super efficient.
You can handle huge numbers of enquiries all at once.
You can have certain automated responses lined up, saved replies to lean on.
Each inquiry is quick and easy to read, and quick and easy to respond to.
This can all increase response times - and then, in turn, resolution times.
On top of all this, SMS means natural logs, records, and catalogs - meaning that all conversations are saved and can be referred to later, if needed - for example, as part of a dispute.
Beyond this, SMS customer service can easily integrate into your other tools and platforms, so that records of SMS conversations can be visible or accessible from within or through your CRM.
And it can be very easy to centralize all of this knowledge.
What SMS regulations should I be aware of?
Speaking of CRM - you are required to have one, a Contact Data Platform (like Telerivet), or some other formal contacts record.
What a lot of people who start in SMS communications don’t realize is that this is a well-regulated space.
If you want to do sales, marketing, automated calling, or text messaging, you need to be in compliance with the TCPA.
The specifications are, for the most part, simple and ethical practices - that I would hope you had been trying to adhere to anyway.
The restrictions include, but are not limited to:
- Making sure you have active opt-in consent for your outreach
- Ensuring that people who receive an SMS from you have agreed to do so
- Not contacting people outside of acceptable hours
In the United States, that means: do not contact people before 9 a.m. or after 9 p.m.
Those are considered unsociable hours, and you can be fined for violating the TCPA by doing so.
Additionally, there’s the record keeping. You need to:
- Keep a record of your contacts
- Track their consent status
- Maintain logs of any communications you’ve sent them
This communication is regulated, therefore, if anyone raises a dispute with you in the future, you need to keep the logs to demonstrate that you acted within the law.
Now, the TCPA is obviously specific to the United States, but you’ll find similar legislation in many countries across the world - particularly countries where consumer spend is highest.
So it’s wise to make sure you are in compliance with the TCPA, and to check the relevant legislation in other countries in which you operate, to ensure you are compliant with their specific regulations also.
Can my SMS customer service be multi-channel?
An easy way to make your SMS customer service multi-channel is to use a provider like Telerivet.
Here at Telerivet, we provide connectivity completeness. This means we act as a central command and control center into which you can plug all of your channels and providers.
This lets you manage your communications from one central location - and deploy the same campaigns across channels.
For example, you might want to reach customers in Brazil on WhatsApp.
Using Telerivet, you can take the same campaigns you’ve constructed for SMS and send them out via WhatsApp.
If someone’s not a WhatsApp user - because WhatsApp uses the mobile phone number as the key identifier - those messages will fall back to SMS by default if they can’t reach the customer on WhatsApp.
This is a useful avenue to take because WhatsApp effectively owns the messaging market in Brazil - so your customers are going to appreciate receiving their message on WhatsApp, the platform they use the most, day in and day out.
Equally, by using a platform like WhatsApp, you’d be sending from your Meta account, which would be verified and linked to your other Meta accounts across other platforms.
In doing this, you can massively increase the trust that your users have in you - and make them more comfortable to reply or to click links to promotions that you might send them.
Reaching your customers where they like to spend their time is only going to be beneficial for you as a company.
Using Telerivet, you have a straight-out-of-the-box multi-channel strategy at your disposal.
Telerivet: Messaging when it matters
Trusted by Fortune 500 companies, NGOs, governments, cutting-edge tech firms, and universities in 150+ countries, Telerivet's cloud-based platform makes it reliable, resilient, and flexible to communicate at scale via text and voice.
Engage your audience anywhere
Ensure complete global service reach that supports large-scale communication via SMS, voice, chat, WhatsApp, RCS, MMS, and micropayments.
Trust our tech when you need it
High reliability for essential communication needs. A CPaaS built to thrive in challenging use cases.
Tailored solutions for your needs
Create engagements and workflows that fit your needs and networks with our solutioning engine, APIs and campaign builder.
“Our lives are a million times easier because of Telerivet. We're growing exponentially, doubling our reach every year... and it's Telerivet's technology that makes this all possible.” - MyAgro
"The user interface is very intuitive and detailed, making it easy to set up. The few times we have required technical support, or had a query about a needed feature, the response has always been quick" - Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders)
"One of the most important aspects of a tool like Telerivet is the user interface. We have hundreds of people across the region relying on Telerivet for their daily tasks, and we need to provide them with the most efficient way of accomplishing that." - Grab
Sign up now or contact us to chat about how we can help you implement reliable, resilient, and flexible communications.