SURVEY: Why Do Consumers Want To Text A Business?

We surveyed 2,000 consumers to find out why texting with a business is such a valuable communication channel.

Texting as a business communication channel continues to grow. A past survey found that nearly 78% of consumers would like to communicate with a business via text messaging. SMS is quickly becoming an expected communication channel, not a “just nice to have” service. The advantages of being able to text a business for consumers are numerous, but we want to understand what matters most.

We conducted a survey of 2,000 U.S. consumers to help understand what benefits they value for texting with a business. Participants were able to select multiple answers to our question of “What benefits do you value in texting with a business you are considering working with or are a customer of?”.

Let’s look at what our survey surfaced.

Ease of interaction is why 33% of consumers want to text a business

The easier you make communication for your customers with you, the better. We’ve talked about the benefits of SMS for consumers as it’s an easy, familiar, quick communication tool and offers long term advantages over other channels.

Our survey revealed the most valued benefit in our options was the ease of interaction. 33.2% of the 2,000 respondents included this answer in their selections.

Survey results

This reinforces our view that offering SMS as a lead channel will capture you more leads, it’s just easier for the consumer.

Communicating faster with text messaging

Coming in at the second spot was texting, offering a speedier conversation and quicker replies at 29.9%. This speed benefit likely stems from a number of factors that texting offers. One would be getting push notifications on your messaging app, making consumers aware of new messages instantly as opposed to a new email being buried in their inbox.

Communicating easier and faster with a business because of SMS is not a surprising one-two combo.

Simple questions, simple answers

Answers to general questions was the third highest being selected 28.8% of the time. Texting makes it easy for a customer or prospect to ask simple questions like “are you open?”, “what are your hours today?” or “do you provide X service?”.

Being able to text a quick question to get a quick answer is much more efficient than the effort of a phone call or email.

Appointment reminders, direct communication and written record of the conversation

The last three options still maintained a high percentage of selection, showing that all of our survey options are valuable benefits to consumers.

• Appointment reminders and general reminders: 26.9%
• Direct communication (no small talk): 25.3%
• Written record of conversation: 21.9%

The utility of appointment reminders by text is often cited in other surveys as a desired benefit of text messaging. Getting a quick reminder the day before or hours before an appointment, scheduled service or payment due can be a huge help, especially in industries like automotive, health care or home services.

Respondents already signaled speed as their second highest benefit, but the selection of direct conversation further drives home how valuable time is. An exchange with less small talk and more desired answers and value is what consumers seek.

Having the benefit of a written conversation over a phone call if there are details you need to look back on or future inconsistencies can be very helpful. Communication over text message can alleviate confusion for both the business and the customer thereby supporting a great customer experience.

Women value text reminders much more than men do

In filtering our responses by gender we saw very little difference in selections except for one. Text reminders for appointments, service times or payments are much more valuable to women. While other answers were varied by tenths or barely a full percentage, we saw a 7% difference for reminders sent by text from a business.

30.3% of women selected text reminders as a benefit, while men selected reminders at just 23.3%.

Ease of interaction leads every age group but 55-64

The benefit of ease of interaction garnered the top spot in every age group but one. The highest age group selecting ease of interaction was 18 to 24 year olds. The respondents in that age group selected ease of interaction 38.5% of the time.

The group not putting ease of interaction first was the 55 to 64 age group. At 354 responses, “answers to general questions” took the lead. Selecting it 33% of the time, with ease of interaction next with 28.3%.

Text messaging offers a lot of benefits for consumers

It is worth noting that this survey had the option of “other” for the respondent to select and offer their answer reported in the chart as “none of the above”.  This was selected 3.4% of the time and included answers like “I don’t text” and “prefer phone calls” a handful of times.

(Also of note was one user answering with🍺  beer and another answering 🍕 pizza. 😂 These seem to be universal benefits to anyone.)

This list and the closeness of all of the answers really showcases the multiple points of value that text offers in business to consumer conversations. Being able to interact with a business easily, quickly, to the point and get the benefits of written record and reminders are all straightforward wins for the consumer.

This survey was conducted using Google Surveys with 2,000 U.S. respondents.