Customer Service is a dynamic field. There are always new methods to serve the customer that keep coming up and existing methods need to keep evolving. Within this evolution, we’ve seen the birth of shared inbox. But what is this shared inbox? Why is it important for text marketing? These are a few questions, among others, that we shall be exploring.
What is an SMS Shared Inbox?
A Shared SMS inbox is a centralized system that receives texts from multiple people and platforms. All the data is stored and managed in these systems. The system allows multiple people to view messages and respond to them anywhere, anytime, and on any device.
A shared inbox makes it easier to assign queries or texts to the right customer service executive. This makes it a better method for customer service.
Benefits of a Shared SMS Inbox for Businesses
01. Improved communication and collaboration
Customer communication can come in through various channels, and having one centralized space for all the communications to come through makes it easier for employees to go through them.
With a shared SMS inbox, there is a higher chance of employees collaborating and providing the best solution for the customer. This improves customer service by improving the communications sent to them.
Collaboration also becomes easier as the history of communication is accessible to the collaborators. This increases the chances of customer service executives to answer any queries with high accuracy.
02. Delegation of work
With the ability to assign work to employees, a shared SMS inbox ensures that the right customer service executive is assigned to work on a specific customer. This makes delegation of work easier as this process could be automated by assigning specific keywords for a query to be assigned to an individual.
Delegation of work could also be done by programming the system with the round-robin method, ensuring every customer service executive gets a fair chance to interact with a customer.
03. Visibility of performance and work
With the delegation of work being done by the system, there is a record of who worked on what and with whom. This makes it easier for your work to be visible to your superiors. Thus, there is no discrimination in the distribution of rewards.
It also builds a sense of responsibility in the employees to put themselves to do better as the performance and work is visible to everybody. Healthy competition is promoted which ends up serving the company and its customers.
04. Increased efficiency
With delegation and collaboration, the efficiency of answering the customer accurately is increased. The response time is decreased, and the tickets are assigned to an individual who is available based on an algorithm.
Having the right person behind the system answering a customer’s query is important. With the product’s delegation capabilities, there is an increase in relevance between the experience of the customer service executive and the customers they tend to. This improves the efficiency of handling queries.
05. Improved transparency
The access given to all employees means there is more transparency on who worked on what. There is also visibility of how they solved the issue, so there is more accountability at work.
Best Practices for Using a Shared SMS Inbox
Any product, when used right, produces results. It is a similar situation for a “Shared SMS Inbox” as well. Unless the product is utilized well, it will not provide any results. So here are a few best practices to be followed while using a shared SMS inbox:
Assign any query or text based on the skill or expertise of an employee. Unless the response is going to be of quality to the end customer, there is no real value addition from the response. Thus, having the right person behind the response is the way to go.
Organization of the shared inbox is important for efficient use of the resource. Thus, using tags or labels for the organization and management of the shared SMS inbox is very helpful.
For efficient use of time, the business can set up automated workflows for common tasks. This way, the customer service executive is available to answer other queries.
Finally, the product is going to be successful in the operations of the business when the people using it are efficient in using it. Thus, it is important to provide the right training to the right team members for the effective use of the shared SMS inbox.
How to Choose a Shared SMS Inbox?
Getting the right product for your business is paramount to the organization's success. There are a plethora of products out there giving you various features. Here are a few things to keep in mind while choosing your Shared SMS Inbox platform.
A product must be simple from the get-go. Thus, ease of setup is important when choosing the right shared SMS inbox. The UI must be easy to understand and adapt to from the beginning.
Making sure that routine questions can be automated easily is important as well. This helps serve the customer better even when the Customer Service Executive.
There are many channels through which the business can receive a text. While choosing a product, the business must ensure that the product supports the channels the business is currently using to converse with customers.
The product must be able to manage personal and shared text messages. It should be able to manage user access and views of shared text messages.
The product must be able to provide insights on the usage to monitor various teams’ activities and their performance. This will be helpful in giving information on how the activities of the business are affecting the customer.
As the business grows and the number of employees and clients grows, the product must be able to scale and adapt to the needs of the business. This means that the product must include flexible proving options to benefit the business.
5 Best shared SMS Inbox products
Here are a few product options that
1. Falkon SMS
With Falkon SMS shared inbox you can collaborate on SMS conversations. We can allow multiple users to work together on a conversation in a single inbox. Additionally, you can identify who oversees the conversation by name next to the texts. You can create customized message formats and share them with your colleagues. With Falkon SMS credit system, you have never expiring add-on credits that can be transferred to your team members. Additional information regarding Falkon SMS features can be found here.
Starting Price - $24.99/month
Free Trial – 14 Days
2. Hiver
The multi-channel helpdesk in Hiver helps bring in messages, emails and other communication mediums under one platform for the ease of the business to monitor and respond to customer queries. Hiver also provides email templates, shared drafts and conversation history.
Starting Price - $15/month per user
Free Trial – 7 Days
3. HubSpot service hub
HubSpot Service Hub provides an omnichannel solution for all the data to be routed to a centralized system. It seamlessly integrates with any system. It allows the user to switch between various channels and answer queries efficiently. HubSpot provides the priority and category for queries which establishes context for the teams dealing with the query. This ensures teams are able to respond to queries a certain way and maintain their efficiency.
Starting Price - $15/per month per user
Free Trial – 14 Days
4. GrooveHQ
GrooveHQ promises to seamlessly setup its software within 2 minutes. It provides services at scale. The product has features like collision detection that ensures the business doesn’t double reply to a customer. In addition to that, the product enables a customer service executive to add private notes while interacting with a customer for better service in the future.
Starting Price - $16/month per user
Free Trial – 30 Days
5. Front
Front just like the others brings numerous communication channels under one roof. The application helps customer service executives collaborate, plan and build automated workflows, and monitor performance.
Starting Price - $19/month per user
Free Trial – 7 Days
Conclusion
Shared SMS Inbox is a gamechanger in the world of Customer Service. It is an approach that brings in communication channels under one roof for the business to strategically assign, track, and respond to customers. The Shared SMS Inbox improves customer satisfaction, customer service executive performance and overall quality of responses and their response time.
There are various benefits to having a Shared SMS Inbox and so the business must strategically select a service provider that caters to their requirements. Choosing the right service provider is paramount for the success of the product.
To get the most out of the application, best practices have been provided which include assigning of work based on skill, training of employees, and regular reviews to optimize the inbox among others. With the right service provider, the right employees, the right training and the right strategy, Shared SMS Inbox will truly change the way a business operates.
Moving forward, the Shared SMS Inbox will provide a competitive advantage to businesses in building long-lasting relationships with their customers.
Very well written. Falkon SMS can be the game changer