What is business SMS?

Business SMS is text-message-based communication that businesses use to engage with their customers.

This approach allows for two-way conversations between businesses and their customers, where customers can respond to questions, promotions, and transactional messages via text message.

Often, businesses will have an SMS platform that lets brand representatives interact with customers from a centralized system. This way, SMS becomes part of the omnichannel customer experience, and reps can easily see how the brand has communicated with the customer in the past.

Ways businesses use SMS

Using SMS to communicate with customers is not a new phenomenon, and over time it has been leveraged in a variety of ways. Some examples include:

• SMS text message marketing: Brands use SMS as a channel for sharing promotions and other relevant information to both prospects and customers. For example, text messages are a great way to provide coupons and discount codes, as they can easily drive people to the brand website.
• Customer service SMS: Text messages are also used for customer service interactions. Not every customer is comfortable with a phone call, so offering a text messaging service makes it easier for them to articulate their issue and get a streamlined and easily understandable response in return. Customer support reps can also use SMS to remind people of appointments and events, send important alerts and gather customer feedback via easy-to-fill polls or surveys.
• Transactional messages: This type of SMS message is used by the likes of ecommerce brands and postal services to confirm deliveries. You might also see restaurants use transactional messages to have people confirm their reservation.
• SMS for sales: Sales representatives can use SMS as a quick and easy way to follow up on leads that aren’t active on email or share important links and resources. If a prospect is looking up your business on the go, sending a timely text message could go a long way.

Why should businesses adopt a SMS strategy?

When it comes to business SMS, there are a number of benefits for both businesses and customers.

For starters, business SMS provides an additional channel through which companies can reach their customers – one that tends to see higher engagement rates than email. This can be particularly useful in times that they want to elicit a specific action from their customers, like shopping during a promotion or following up on a customer service request.

With business SMS communications, brand representatives can also reach people where they are, on their mobile devices. Most people have a cell phone, and therefore can be reached almost immediately by SMS. This allows for real-time conversations, which is near impossible in most other communication channels.

Lastly, business SMS gives brands the opportunity to have a more conversational relationship with their customers. In a time where customers expect tailored and personalized experiences, 1:1 interactions through business SMS can help brands meet these expectations.

Whether it’s being used for marketing, ecommerce or customer support, business SMS can be a valuable tool that enhances customer engagement.