UPDATED: November 3, 2022 – Lehi, Utah
New research shows that although Unified Communications have dramaticly increased among business organizations since Covid-19, the adoption among users and employees of softphone ‘apps’ on mobile devices still remains incredibly low. It is estimated that 64% of the U.S. workforce spend MORE time on their cell phones since the beginning of the pandemic, mostly because the vast majority of work has moved from the desktop to mobile device.
About 80 percent of people worldwide will be using smartphones by 2023. It’s also estimated that there will be 7.52 billion mobile users by 2026.
Americans check their smartphones an average of 160 times daily. (Small Business Trends, 2020)
Ninety-five percent of text messages tend to be read and responded to within the first three minutes when they’re received. (SMS Comparison, 2021)
Texting is part of the average consumer’s daily life. While your business’s emails might go unread (and probably unanswered) for days, texting usage statistics show that consumers are probably going to read your messages. There’s a good chance they’ll answer them, too.
- Mobile users sent 2.2 trillion SMS or MMS messages in 2020
- 23 billion texts are sent every day
- 98% of text messages are read
- The average response time for a text is 90 seconds
- Texting has up to a 45% response rate
The majority of your customers rarely let their phones leave their sides. They take their phones everywhere, from home to work—which means that your business has constant, direct access to them. They’re constantly checking their phones, too, which means they’ll almost always see your messages.
- 97% of Americans own some type of cell phone
- 85% of Americans own a smartphone specifically
- Americans check their phones 96 times a day, or once every 10 minutes
- People touch their phones an average of 2,617 times daily (that’s almost a million touches per year!)
The digital transformations that started during COVID-19 are only going to continue. Texting still has room to grow in the business world as consumer demand grows. Both customer service texting statistics and SMS marketing statistics show promise for this popular channel.
- 80% of customer service organizations are expected to abandon native mobile apps in favor of messaging by 2025
- Of businesses that texted consumers during the pandemic, 77% say they plan to keep texting in the future
- 76% of brands plan to invest in text marketing in the next year
By 2025, 80% of customer service organizations will have abandoned native mobile apps in favor of messaging for a better customer experience, according to Gartner, Inc.
Digital transformation for service organizations initially focused on websites for desktop users but shifted to enterprise-native mobile app experiences with the proliferation of smartphones and tablets. However, despite significant investment and promotion, most service organizations have failed to gain strong customer adoption of their service apps. As a result, service organizations will increasingly retire native mobile app experiences in favor of messaging.
“Messaging channels such as SMS and third-party messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, WeChat and WhatsApp have been widely embraced in the global market, making them ideal for service organizations,” said Philip Jenkins, senior director analyst in the Gartner Customer Service & Support practice. “By transitioning to messaging platforms, customer service and support leaders will reduce dependency on native mobile app experiences, reduce cost, increase digital and self-service effectiveness, and achieve a persistent experience for customer engagement.”
Other Gartner customer service and support predictions for 2021 and beyond include:
By 2025, 40% of customer service organizations will become profit centers by becoming de facto leaders in digital customer engagement.
Due to the uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic, buyers’ behavior no longer reflects most organizations’ structures. According to Gartner’s Future of Sales report, 33% of all buyers desire a seller-free sales experience — a preference that climbs to 44% for millennials. As a result, customer service will evolve from a cost center into a profit center by having greater responsibility for the customer relationship and journey. In a profitability scenario, the customer service function is likely to drive new business outcomes supported by new objectives, metrics and organizational structures.
By 2025, 10% of customer service organizations will revamp hierarchical staffing models to create huddle groups.
In increasingly complex product and organizational environments, customer service leaders are finding that they need access to a broader set of skills than ever before. Gartner recommends that customer service leaders collaborate with cross-functional leaders to create huddle groups focused on customer groups — for example, by industry, product class or subscription type — as opposed to internal functions.
By 2025, proactive customer engagement interactions will outnumber reactive customer engagement interactions.
Customer engagement is often reactive rather than proactive. This has resulted in high-customer-effort experiences limiting the effectiveness and profitability of self-service. However, the current pandemic and economic crisis has motivated many organizations to more rapidly develop capabilities to personalize proactive conversations.
“An initiative to reach out to customers proactively creates a major opportunity for customer service organizations, said Brian Manusama, senior director analyst in the Gartner Customer Service & Support practice. “Along with the cost optimization benefits of reducing call volumes and increasing engagement with self-service channels, customers feel a greater sense of appreciation toward the provider and its service organization.”
Gartner Customer Service and Support Leaders clients can learn more about these predictions in the report “Predicts 2021: CRM Customer Service and Support”.
- Source: Forrester, Gartner, McKinsey, BusinessWire, HeyMarket 2021 & 2022
