I never thought I’d say this, but the Internet has turned me into a chatterbox!
An online chatting fanatic, that is (although some of my friends will say I’ve always talked my behind off in the real world). What I mean is that I use online chatting a lot, and not just one platform. In addition to SMS text messages, I use no less than three other platforms regularly: Google Hangouts, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. How did this happen? How did I ever think I could manage communications on four different platforms (on top of email, mind you?). I never set out to do this, but as a true marketeer, my customers and business drove me to it.
By now, my dear readers, you all know I’m no bystander when it comes to tech — no sir, I’m no toe-dipper, so I dove headfirst into all four text platforms. Chatting online is way more immediate than email; nothing beats it for a quick question. The unspoken protocol of chat is that you use it for quick requests, but expect a quick response in return. It’s also a great tool to keep in touch with customers and colleagues over great distances while creating a sense of intimacy.
Our own company is spread out over the Southeast with 40 locations. I get to visit our HQ less that four times a year, but I engage our stakeholders daily via Google Hangouts. Most of us have our chat always on when sitting in front of our PCs, and it has become our company’s go-to tool for a quick question to accounting about a payment, or to purchasing about being out of stock on a part (hypothetically speaking that is…).
We also use Google Hangouts to schedule phone calls, rather than cold-calling a colleague. It’s great to check in on chat first and set up the call after; both parties are ready, and more efficient calls ensue. In sales, you have to go where customers are, and nowadays customers are using chat apps to engage their suppliers; sales and social media often intertwine online. I have several customers who are doing a bang-up job on Facebook, generating leads and engaging their customers via social interactions.
Because they spend lots of time on Facebook, they tend to use their chatting platform more often. It’s not uncommon for me to log in to Facebook at night and find a couple offline messages from customers inquiring about a part. Facebook Messenger also is a great tool for sharing Facebook content privately. Many of our customers and collaborators often share a post from a competitor via this channel, and we love to stay up-to-speed using it.
Customers have become highly connected, and they expect us to be there with them. By far, the app most are gravitating to nowadays is WhatsApp (especially when abroad). The app is available on all platforms, and more than half a billion smartphone owners around the world have downloaded the app and become active users, sending more than 50 billion messages a day! That’s more than double the number of traditional SMS messages sent globally daily.
WhatsApp is a cross-platform messaging service that uses the Internet, instead of traditional phone networks, to allow users to send SMS messages without the traditional SMS fees.
It works with virtually all smartphones, and they can all communicate with one another. The app is free to download and only charges a 99 cents per year as a subscription fee that keeps the app ad-free. For 99 cents a year, you get unlimited texting, media sharing, voicemails and more with zero long-distance charges or SMS fees across the planet; truly a disruptor for traditional phone companies.
The app is so hugely popular that the folks at Facebook figured they might as well buy the whole thing and paid $19 billion for it earlier this year, making it one of the biggest tech acquisitions ever. Our customers, not unlike Facebook, realized the app is easy to use, works flawlessly and more and more it has become their app du jour for chatting.
By far the biggest joy for me while using the app is when a low-tech customer uses it to place an order. Some of our lesser tech-savvy customers (you know, the ones who won’t log into your online eCommerce platform even if you gave them the parts for free) have downloaded the app and are using a low-tech way of communicating an order. These are the guys who have handwritten their orders for millennia and will not use a computer, but they still buy a lot of parts. Instead of faxing that piece of paper, many are taking a picture of it with their smartphone and using chatting platforms to “text you the order” (gotta love that term). On the other side of the chat, we still have to key punch that order; but, the interactions we get via chatting, and the immediacy of it, beats the fax all day long. So, dear customers, we are here for you any way you like —let’s chat some more.
