Since every time of the day represents an opportunity for businesses to turn first-time customers into loyal brand proponents, TopSavings.Net Telecommunications has decided to offer its customers a number that they can text in the event that a customer sales inquiry comes up in the middle of the day.
“When the idea came to me, I felt like kicking myself really to be honest,” Aaron Siegel, CEO and owner of TopSavings.Net Telecommunications, said in a recent article. “I mean, we deal in telecommunications all day everyday seven days a week, how could I have not thought of adding this as a viable contact method for sales for all these years? You would have thought this would have been a contact number option as soon as texting came into the telecom market. I’m really even more surprised other companies online aren’t using one.”
TopSavings.Net, founded by Siegel in 2001, was established as a way to offer telecommunications shopping to consumers, businesses, enterprises, and government agencies online. Its latest decision to offer a text number to address additional sales inquiries demonstrated its commitment to customer engagement strategies and to maintaining its competitive edge.
Now, after 10 years of providing phone service and Internet access, TopSavings.Net is becoming one of the first e-commerce websites on the Web to offer a text contact number in addition to its toll free number for consumers, businesses, and government clients.
The text number, which is not toll free, does not accept images or files, and texts and typical character limits will still apply, depending on the mobile phone service the customer is using. Visitors who have customer sales questions can now use this option as another way to reach the company and document prices.
In other industry news, ACCENT – a performance marketing company for brands that are passionate about keeping and growing customers – recently sat down with TMCnet to explore what customer engagement is and how important it has become.
“We try to follow Forrester’s (News - Alert) definition because we think it levels the playing field,” Tim Searcy, chief executive officer of ACCENT Marketing Services, told TMCnet in a recent podcast. “We see engagement as the level of involvement, interaction, intimacy and influence an individual has with a brand over time.”
“That’s what it is but what we are about and how you go about doing it are a little bit different,” he added. “We have to be seeking an ideal outcome in which that engagement, that intimacy, that involvement, that interaction is positive for the customer and that it doesn’t vary by touch point or by channel.”
Carrie Schmelkin is a Web Editor for TMCnet. Previously, she worked as Assistant Editor at the New Canaan Advertiser, a 102-year-old weekly newspaper, covering news and enhancing the publication's social media initiatives. Carrie holds a bachelor's degree in journalism and a bachelor's degree in English from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Rich Steeves