4 Must-Have SMS Templates for Customer Service Gladly Team 4 minute read #Best Practices Your customers communicate over text messages, so why wouldn’t your ecommerce brand? According to Gladly’s 2022 Customer Expectations Report, 42% of customers ranked reaching agents on their preferred channel as the most important part of their experiences, and among those favorite channels is SMS. As your ecommerce brand invests in this area, you’ll need the right SMS templates for customer service agents to use when communicating with shoppers. The SMS templates you use should feel organic to the platform. That means making them concise, casual, and more immediate than the language used in an email. Let’s look at some SMS templates you can use in your own support center, and the technology that powers the most effective customer service systems. PRODUCT Meet your customers on-the-go with Gladly's SMS text support Learn more SMS Templates for Customer Service Your customers are communicating over text messages every day, making it an easy place for your brand to reach them organically. But, there is a line between providing personalized, welcomed support and coming across as invasive or annoying. Here are a handful of appropriate reasons to reach out to customers over SMS and a few free SMS templates that your support team can customize depending on the individual situation. 1. SMS template: order confirmations You can send a text message to let customers know their purchase has been completed so they feel confident that your brand is attentive and responsive. Here’s a template you can use: “Hey [customer name], thanks for shopping at [brand]. Your order of [product] has been confirmed. We’ll follow up with shipping alerts. Reply STOP to unsubscribe from SMS notifications.” How Birdies Shoes Leveled Up With SMS 🛑 Shoe brand Birdies used Gladly to add SMS and an improved self-service option, both of which were able to switch seamlessly to other existing channels. For their small service team, these new functions dramatically cut wait times and workloads while maintaining their commitment to exceeding customer expectations. 2. SMS template: status alerts Keeping customers in the loop on the packaging and shipping statuses of their order builds their trust in your brand, which can ultimately lead to more purchases down the line. Try the following SMS script for a fulfillment status alert. “Hi [customer name], your order [order #] has shipped and should arrive by [time of fulfillment]. We’ll keep you posted as your delivery date gets close. Reply STOP to unsubscribe from SMS notifications.” 3. SMS template: shopping reminders SMS plays an essential role in preventing cart abandonment and ensuring shoppers complete their purchases. Here’s a template to get a customer to come back and finish checking out: “Hey [customer name], ready to complete your purchase of [items in cart]? Click this link [link to cart] to finish checking out, or feel free to message us back if you have any other questions. You can reply STOP to unsubscribe from SMS notifications.” 4. SMS template: conversation follow-ups If you’re using a customer support platform like Gladly, your conversations with customers should easily transfer across channels without any friction so you can follow up to an email or chat box over SMS. Use this template to check in with a shopper after a conversation: “Hey [customer name], this is [name of agent] from [brand]. I hope I answered all your questions. Is there anything else I can help you with?” Improving SMS Support SMS is the support channel of the future, epitomizing the need for easy engagement. After all, 90% of text messages are read within three minutes with an average open rate of 98%, compared to just 22% for email. But brands need to make sure the technology they use is capable of understanding the new and preferred ways of communicating with customers. Gladly’s SMS Support Features With Gladly, multichannel support becomes a natural part of your support center’s capabilities, with powerful features that make you effective across channels, including SMS. At the top of this list, our proactive SMS support can effectively deliver any of the above scripts in a timely, intelligent way to get the conversation going on this popular channel. In addition, features like our streamlined conversation timeline keep agents fully aware of customers’ needs and questions over time. Plus, an intelligent knowledge base gives your team the ability to answer any and all customer questions on your brand’s products with confidence and speed. SMS Templates for Customer Service These SMS templates for customer service are a jumping-off point, but it’s also important for agents to not feel dependent on or tied down by these scripts. Each customer interaction is different, so keeping conversations fluid helps create a more personal connection with the shopper. DEMO Experience the first all-in-one customer service platform Sign up Share
