Choosing a Business Communication Medium – Texts, Calls, or Voicemails?

Effective business communication channels help businesses to interact impactfully, intrigue audiences, and drive more conversions. How well your business performs and what your prospects feel about your brand are deeply impacted by how you interact with them. Thus, there’s always a need for selecting an appropriate communication channel to connect with audiences considering all the facts.

There are various communication mediums to count on like texts, calls, and voicemails, but the most challenging part is to choose the best one for scalable, quick, and convenient interactions.

To answer this question, let’s have a comparative analysis to understand the potential of each medium on the grounds of:

Response Rate 

Response rate plays a crucial role in the success of any organization. The more people respond and engage with your brand, the more it helps to understand customers and drive conversions.

Messages

We all are familiar with the fact that text messages have a 98% response rate which is the highest among all other channels. Responding to text messages is one of the easiest methods for users as SMS notifications are right next to their thumb on their mobile phone.

More importantly, mobile phones are ubiquitous, and audiences can respond to texts anywhere, anytime.

Calls 

Customers are more likely to avoid calls from unknown numbers. Thus, when organizations try to reach out to audiences over phone calls, the chances are high that customers don’t respond. Thus, customers are less likely to respond to phone calls than text messages.

Voicemails

The average response rate of voicemails is just 4.8%. The reason might be that not everyone is technically advanced and trained to use voicemails. Also, as voicemails are stored in the voicemail inbox, and users need to go through an extra step to listen to voice messages compared to SMS, which is just one click away, it affects the voicemail response rate.

Deliverability

Messages

Text messages have the best deliverability, as you can deliver messages right on the prospect’s ubiquitous device, i.e., mobile phone.

Besides, you can send messages on the most popular OTT messaging platforms like FB messenger and WhatsApp. WhatsApp has a user base of around 2 billion, and with texts, it becomes easier to connect with mass audiences through messaging.

Calls 

When it comes to establishing a connection over calls, you have to depend on other end recipients to receive calls. This affects call deliverability. More importantly, in the case of automated marketing calls, prospects don’t have the feasibility to call back, which impacts call response rate.

Voicemails

Not every individual is from a technical background and uses a smartphone. This affects voicemail’s deliverability. You can send text messages even to feature phones, but voicemails aren’t accessible on basic handsets.

Reliability

Messages 

Text messages are a reliable form of communication as users can track delivery through delivery reports and get read receipts for WhatsApp messages.

Calls & Voicemails

Calls & Voicemails are a reliable means if one wants to add a human element to the conversation. The reliability of these channels is a bit skeptical. It’s because sometimes you may be able to reach audiences through calls and sometimes not when a person is engaged on another call or busy with some important work.

Also, you can’t ensure sure-shot delivery while using Voicemails if a recipient has not set up a voicemail inbox.

Fidelity

SMSes can also be broken up depending upon the segments. Besides, when an agent connects with a prospect over call, there can be miscommunication if a single word is misunderstood by the prospect.

Further, audio messages can also get corrupt as they reach customers, which affects the fidelity of voicemails.

Reach

Text messages have extensive and quicker reach than any other communication medium. With texts, you can target audiences of any age group and reach international audiences cost-effectively through WhatsApp.

Besides, the use of calls and voicemails can be a less economical option to reach customers. Not many people use voicemails, and there can be language barriers that limit the reach of messages conveyed through calls or voicemails.

Recipients might also put a pin to voice messages and prefer checking them later due to which messages lose their impact when checked after so many days.

Use Communication Mediums in Combination & Drive Conversions

Every mode of communication has its own pros and cons. So, rather than using them individually, communication modes in combinations can add more value to your communication practices.

For instance, one can use automated texts to qualify leads and use CTI to convert prospects with high buying intent further. 

360 SMS is a Salesforce-native solution that gets you all three communication modes. This includes text messages, calls, and voicemails. Users can use them to interact with audiences innovatively and effectively, depending on the use-cases.

To know more about 360 SMS potential for text, call, and  voicemail operations, reach out to us at  info@360smsapp.com or contact us here.