The contemporary lifestyle is interwoven with the smartphone.
These tiny—or, in the case of phablets, not-so-little—brainiacs can perform the majority of tasks that a computer can, in contrast to the phones of the past. However, the smartphone has revolutionized the way we connect in the area of communication, which is its main and most essential purpose.
The days when saying “hello” was limited to SMS texting and phone calls are long gone. Once a wild Jetsons-esque dream, video calling has become commonplace. Additionally, there are thousands of apps available on different platforms that serve very specific functions, such as Viber, Instagram, Snapchat, and Whatsapp. In essence, all of these are providing a space for communication, but they do it in somewhat different ways and with slightly different focus.
Even the most reclusive of us may now play the field while lounging on the lavatory or even in our pajamas thanks to dating apps. In the end, the smartphone is a modern human accessory that we depend on just as much as we do on trees.
Therefore, it goes without saying that the smartphone has established a link between companies and customers that is unique to the twenty-first century. Before the invention of the cell phone, companies were unable to establish a close contact with their clients.
The only ways they could contact clients were through landline phone numbers, snail mail letters and coupon booklets sent to customers in-store, and eventually, in the 20th century, email. With the advent of smartphones, businesses now have the luxury of reaching customers at any time and from any location.
Naturally, all of the channels that companies used to communicate with their clients throughout the 20th century are still available today. This simply means that businesses have more options, platforms, and ways to reach their target audiences, and that means there are more factors to take into account when making that decision.Given that modern businesses are enmeshed in a digital sea of communication channels, how can one identify the most efficient, direct, and successful way to reach your target audience?
It’s a difficult topic to answer since, regrettably, no single firm can or should take a one-size-fits-all approach. That being said, let’s examine four contemporary communication techniques that are available to modern businesses and compare how well they work with one another.
78% of customers stated that texting them was the quickest way to interact with them, surpassing even sending an email to their computer or tablet device, sending a push notification, or sending an email to their mobile phone, according to the Transactional Messaging Consumer Report 2016.
The percentage breakdowns of the customers polled and their preferred communication channels are shown below.
SMS
SMS is one of the first and more contemporary digital channels for business-to-consumer (B2C) interactions, and it remains one of the most popular ways that customers want to be connected. According to statistics, SMS is now more popular than ever as a (if not the) preferred method of communication with clients, with 78% of consumers believing that it is the fastest way to reach them. Additionally, 97% of SMS are actually read, and over 90% of those are read within three minutes of being received.
Email on a smartphone
Customers themselves say that emails accessible via mobile devices are the second-fastest method of reaching them, after SMS, with 48% of respondents saying that it is the quickest method.
Push Notifications for Mobile
Push notifications aren’t as useful as you may expect, even while they can seem like the ideal method to connect with your customers—especially if you already have an app that you want to use to its full potential. Push notifications were cited by just 32% of consumers as the quickest method of communication. which makes sense when you consider it.
Push notifications on more recent smartphones are incessant and might be anything from requests to utilize your GPS position to basic app updates. To put it briefly, push alerts can be bothersome. Unfortunately, the white noise of other generic push notifications that we deliberately ignore frequently drowns out critical push messages that genuinely benefit a user.
Emails on a tablet
Despite being theoretically transportable devices, tablets are usually used at home, much like laptops, due to their small size. The smartphone is the only gadget that is actually mobile, both theoretically and practically. As a result, according to a survey of customers, only 27% think that emails accessible from tablets are the most efficient way to contact them.