You can’t argue with the numbers: A recent Harris Poll shows that some 77 percent of consumers (between the ages of 18 and 34) with texting capabilities are likely to have a “positive perception” of a company that offers text capability. Further, Forrester (News - Alert) noted that the “pervasiveness and familiarity of text messaging make it an ideal channel to win, serve, and retain customers who require assistance from a contact center agent.” That’s a pretty good case for adding texting capabilities for your customers.
Now it seems the folks at Zendesk -- a company focused on providing a customer-service platform designed to bring organizations and their customers closer together -- has gotten the message.
At the “Relate Live” Conference being held in San Francisco, Zendesk announced a new native SMS support channel, enabling businesses globally to receive and respond to texts from their customers within Zendesk.
“Leading beauty and grooming retailer Birchbox, on-demand delivery service Favor, and global retail analytics leader Retail Solutions Inc.(RSi), are already using SMS to quickly and efficiently respond to their customers,” Zendesk noted in a statement.
Favor noted that it has added SMS as an option within their app for customers seeking help. Now, customers can choose to call, email or text as their preferred channel to reach an agent. Once a customer texts Favor, a ticket will be issued in Zendesk.
“SMS isn’t new, but the rise of on-demand services and an increasingly mobile customer base makes this channel important for businesses,” said Ryan Nichols, GM of Zendesk Voice, in commenting on the announcement. “SMS lets businesses connect with their customers wherever they are in an extremely personal way.”
User support was equally effusive.
“Our customers and Runners prefer to interact via SMS, making it a key part of our customer support strategy,” said Evan Aldrich, head of customer support at Favor, the fast-growing on-demand delivery business based out of Austin, Texas. “Using Zendesk to provide SMS support is easy to set up and fits perfectly into our existing workflows.”
Zendesk is offering SMS support to any size business to deploy right out of the box. Businesses simply provision a phone number through Zendesk and publish that number within their app or on their website. When texts come through, the agent views the conversation in Zendesk, just as they would an email ticket. With Zendesk, all conversations with customers are centralized in one place.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi