Business Messaging

Business Messaging

A common interest across all business types whether small, big, start-up, ultra-lean or enterprise is to strategize better customer engagement solutions.

Every business uses multiple ways to reach their customers and keep them engaged during their buying journey. Not only during the sales journey but even after the purchase, they stay connected and provide the best of customer service by resolving queries and addressing issues promptly. However, despite the incredible marketing, support, and engagement strategies there may remain a slight gap in meeting customer expectations that every business would want to mitigate.

Your goals may include providing to-the-point information to the customers, aspiring to reduce their response time from days to minutes, resolving issues quickly and providing prompt communication. These efforts are important as they sum up to a satisfied customer base that keeps returning to business and also brings in new customers through recommendation. Business messaging tools help you reach this goal as they provide a platform to engage with one customer base quickly through text messaging services that is suitable for all types of businesses.

How business messaging can help companies engage better? 

Texting is the most efficient way to give customers the attention they need. It is the most reliable and quick way to get in touch with interested customers. There is no to-fro email communication, no worrying about whether the email is read, zero waiting period for call; all of which makes it a quicker and convenient way of communication. 

Some advantages of using text messaging services are:

  • Less spread out communication as customers ' queries will be answered from one platform, that is CRM rather than spread across emails, phone calls, and meetings.

  • Better success rate of getting the messages read because you are directly exchanging information with your customer which brings more reliability.

  • Enhanced customer satisfaction as you respond promptly and provide quick solutions to their problems.

Customers get to be the decision makers on whether they want to strike a conversation or not which makes it a non-intrusive and popular way of communication. 
Importance of integrating business messaging tools with CRM  

The CRM system holds all the information about your business. Right from customer details, products that are purchased, services you offer, emails exchanged, number of meetings and calls made by the sales people, support queries raised by the customer, etc.

With your business messaging tool serving as an additional means of communication, it is essential to route the information via CRM so that you have a common repository for all communications that takes place with your customers.  

Zoho CRM provides integration with WhatsApp allowing businesses to respond to their customers right away via text messaging. Since both the systems work together it plays an important role in driving employee productivity while giving customers a first-rate experience. It allows to maintain the conversation details inside CRM for complete accessibility. 

The integration has multiple benefits such as:

  • Add new leads or contacts - You can add new customers who send a text message to your brand as leads or contacts and engage them in marketing activities.

  • A common place for customer interactions - Along with emails, notes, and attachments, the text messages exchanged will be stored and associated with the customer record for reference.

  • Permission based access - Users in the same role as the record owner, and higher roles, can access the WhatsApp conversations - given that they have the permissions to view the record.

  • Quick way to share docs - You can share transactional information such as quotes, invoices, etc. directly with the customer over text message.  

  • New customer assignment - Every time a query is received you need not manually assign them to your staff. Instead, you can set the user or role who should respond to the customer's query. They will also get notified whenever a customer drops a message. 

  Messages Module and its components   
Once WhatsApp is successfully integrated with Zoho CRM, a new module called  Messages  will be added. This module will keep a record of the conversations 
and attachments that are exchanged, timeline of activities, basic information of the prospect like email, phone number etc., social media conversations, emails that have been sent and more.


 

In the Messages module, a user can view:

  • the list of conversations with the leads or contacts

  • a snapshot of the message that is sent or received. On hovering the replied icon the CRM users name will be displayed.

  • time and date of the last conversation

  • option to filter the records 

Upon clicking a message, the conversation view page opens that is divided into three sections to provide clarity and easy navigation to the users. 

The left panel will list out text messages from all customers. By clicking on the arrow near All records Messages you will be redirected to the messages list view.

The centre panel  is the main area where the CRM user will enter the message to respond to the customer. This area is divided into Messages and Attachments. The text area will  appear at the bottom where the user can type their response or attach a file.

This section also provides an option to set and manage predefined texts which can be used as canned messages for quick responses to common queries.

The attachments tab will store all the files that have been sent or received during the conversation for record keeping. This tab will be displayed only if attachments are sent or received.

The  right panel  consists of Info, Timeline and Conversation.

Info: 

This section will display:

  1. Basic details of the sender such as phone number, email address, account etc. will be displayed.

  2. The deal summary will display the deals that have been created or a new deal can be created from here.

  3. List of open activities will be displayed. The user can also add activities. For example, create a call for the next day or task to drop an email.

  4. Notes that were added previously will be displayed. Users can filter to view the recent notes first or last.

Timeline:
This section will display the actions that have been performed on the record in the chronological order. Users can check when the lead was converted and by whom, when a quote was sent, who updated the address etc. 

Conversation: 

This section will display:

  1. Social media interactions with the customer on Facebook or Twitter.

  2. List of emails that have been sent from CRM.

  3. List of open cases.

  4. WhatsApp messages that was recently exchanged.  

Messages related list

The messages received from the customers will be found either in leads or contacts modules depending on the account preference set during configuration. Once a message is received, it will automatically be associated to the lead or contact and can be accessed from the Messages related list.
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