Study: Mobile communications jump among consumers
The volume of mobile calls and texts made and received by consumers dramatically increased in 2021.
According to a new study from customer engagement solutions provider CSG, the “2022 State of the Customer Journey” report, total mobile phone calls increased in volume by 290% during 2021, with inbound calls accounting for 31% of total calls. Like voice, SMS texting saw a big increase in adoption, with overall message volume more than quadrupling year-over-year (304%).
Customer service organizations appeared to respond to this growth in consumer SMS usage, with smart notifications accounting for more than 50% of customer journey interactions and taking the top spot as the number one customer journey use case in 2021. CSG found that SMS notifications increased by almost 1,000% year over year.
Email interactions also grew steadily year-over-year (+145%). Email was the most popular channel for customer journey interactions for notification, onboarding, digital customer service, and acquisition.
According to CSG, retailers on average use two digital channels to communicate with customers, but are now broadening ways for customers to interact with the brand, such as upsell suggestions during checkout or hybrid commerce options like buy online, pick-up in store (BOPIS). CSG advises that overall, the opportunity to create the best customer journeys in retail will come from increasing everyday value-add and orchestrating transactional messages through the most intelligent journey workflows possible.
The recent 2021 Local Business Messaging Trends study from customer messaging platform Podium indicates incentives like coupons, discounts and promo codes are the number one type of promotional text messages surveyed consumers want to receive from local businesses. Following were loyalty offers and benefits (52%), back-in-stock notifications (35%), and invitations to upcoming events (28%). Over half (55%) of respondents have redeemed an offer or promotional code shared with them via text message.
After opting into their promotional text message list, 62% of respondents to the Podium survey would like to receive them at least once per week, while 16% would like to receive messages at least once per day. However, 75% would unsubscribe from a company's promotional messages if they received too many.
“Winning with customer journeys is quite straightforward: be where your customers are,” said Mark Smith, VP of digital engagement solutions at CSG. “If it’s across six channels, your brand should have a uniquely enticing presence in each, but also ensure you offer consistent value and experience. The goal, especially after the hardships of the pandemic, is to uplift your customer and elevate the experience they have with your brand in the most proactive, predictive and personalized way possible.
“This digital transformation shift is here to stay, and businesses are realizing the benefits of digital communications that are intelligently coordinated, as evidenced by the expanding channel mix and rise in smart notifications,” said Smith.
CSG tracked more than 10 billion customer journey interactions in 2021 through its customer journey orchestration platform. CSG defines a customer journey interaction as an instance where an API triggers an action to be taken on a channel within the customer journey. CSG also supplemented its journey orchestration data with data from voice and messaging channels (U.S. only), also spanning 2021, with 2020 volumes for comparative reference.