SMSs have consistently proven to be the most powerful tool for companies to get their prospects’ attention.
But once the message is opened, the senders, typically stock brokers, wealth managers, bank relationship managers, advertisers from various industries, etc., hit a roadblock—the prospect doesn’t respond. Usually, the one-way messages’ response rate hinges on customers’ willingness to open an attached link or reach out to the mentioned phone number/ email, which adds unnecessary friction to the process of engaging the target audience.
However, with the inception of two-way messaging or conversational SMS, companies found a way to have meaningful engagement with prospects directly on their app of choice, leading to speedier and increased conversions.
Why conversational SMS is gaining traction
One of the biggest challenges with one-way SMS was that companies couldn’t figure out exactly why the prospects didn’t respond to their communication.
There was no telling whether it was:
- A mismatch of the message and prospect/ lack of personalization
- Customers’ reluctance to take extra steps, including opening links, emailing, or calling the number provided in the SMS
- Customers’ wariness when it comes to clicking random links received via SMS
- Customers’ perceiving the one-way messages to be spam
However, with conversational messaging, companies could potentially engage the target audience far better owing to:
- The increased responsiveness of the company
Companies can directly respond to their prospects and customers right on their instant messenger, including SMS apps, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, or WeChat. Consumers being able to interact with the company on a single platform just like they would with an acquaintance without waiting for emails or calls can go a long way in fostering trust and increased engagement with the brand.
- The ability to personalize messages
With two-way messages, companies can employ personalization and strategies, like addressing the prospect or customer by name, providing relevant and customized offers and services based on previous conversations, etc.
They can even tailor responses based on customer queries and react with emojis and multimedia, leading to higher levels of engagement. While the former makes sense while reacting to a happy customer or similar cases, the ability to share images or files with customers or prospects whenever relevant can have use cases, including the confirmation of payments, appointments, etc.
- The ability to automate simple conversational flows
There are numerous ways to automate simple conversations happening via two-way SMS. Case in point, a stockbroker may send out a personalized message asking a customer if they want to proceed with a security purchase, with a simple automation in place to send a message saying “Thank you for your confirmation” if the customer responds with a Yes. Given the versatile nature of conversational SMS, the broker can send custom follow-ups to the prospect if they are unsure about a decision till they are convinced.
While these reasons are compelling enough for many companies to try conversational SMS to bolster their prospecting, customer service, and sales operations, it is also worth mentioning that there are serious compliance considerations to be made before investing in two-way SMS, especially for businesses operating in highly regulated industries.
Compliance hurdles for conversational SMS
Having a direct line of contact with customers has caused several regulated firms to make major compliance blunders that have cost them billions. The infamous WhatsApp fines that the SEC and FINRA imposed on major Wall Street firms for their executives engaging in business-related conversations through unapproved channels is a classic example of what happens with executives misusing a means to unrestricted and possibly unsupervised communication with customers.
Consequently, conversational SMS comes with communication compliance risks, including:
- Unsupervised conversations happening via the SMS app that may contain business-related information that regulators have made mandatory to track
- Messages recorded for compliance purposes getting altered or deleted by either the customer or the company executive, given that new-age messaging apps have this feature
- Conversations happening that are explicitly illegal, including insider trading, revealing trade secrets, compromising the personal information of customers in regulated industries, including investors, hospital patients, etc.
- Messages, like emojis with ambiguous context being sent that could lead to legal challenges, as a FINRA executive warned about their potential for giving rise to customer complaints
- The potential for violating regulations, such as GDPR when companies record sensitive customer information without consent even if the person sent it to them voluntarily as part of conversational SMS
- The potential for spam or harassment of customers or prospects through relentless messages even though the recipient tried to opt-out
Undoubtedly, compliance teams that aren’t aware of these risks are leaving their company and its employees vulnerable to hefty fines from regulators, government bodies, like the EU, etc., suspensions, lawsuits, and even criminal cases.
Fortifying conversational SMS compliance with an archiving solution
While many compliance teams at regulated entities get the basics right and have in place a mechanism to obtain recipient consent before initiating SMSs and provide an Opt-out option every step of the way, they still fall behind when it comes to real-time monitoring and analyzing the messages for compliance.
This is where a text message archiver proves invaluable. Using the solution, regulated firms can empower their executives to have regulator-approved conversational SMS campaigns. Notably, the archiver can:
- Capture all messages via the mobile network in real-time
- Maintain all conversations with the right context, such as sender info, receiver info, and time, along with MMS, emojis, files, etc., for complete transparency and accountability
- Safeguard the retained communication in a tamper-proof manner as a digital copy to mitigate issues, like the deletion of conversations by executives
- Provide secure access controls and an audit trail to demonstrate who has access to the text message archive
- Ensure that the two-way conversations are retained for the regulator-mandated retention periodof the business text messages
- Filter out conversations based on factors, including the time and keyword for audits, internal investigations, or e-discovery
- Have inappropriate conversations auto-flagged based on the usage of certain keywords
To get a demo of how a mobile archiver, like TeleMessage, can bolster your conversational SMS compliance without compromising its engagement, don’t hesitate to contact us.
About TeleMessage
TeleMessage captures and retains mobile content, including mobile SMS messages, voice calls WhatsApp, and WeChat conversations from corporate or BYOD mobile phones to ensure compliance with various data protection regulations. The messages are securely and reliably retained within TeleMessage servers or forwarded to your choice of archiving data storage vendor.
Our mobile archiving products securely record content from mobile carriers and mobile devices for various ownership models (BYOD, CYOD, and employer-issued). With our multiple archiving solutions, you can always find the right tools or blend for your requirements:
