Best Practices Series: What to do when a customer is unresponsive

After you’ve reached out to all your assigned customers for the campaign, you will inevitably encounter customers who don’t reply back. To check your messages that haven’t received a reply yet, view the “Open” category. This is where you have sent the last message and are awaiting a response from the customer.

Let’s go through a few tips on what you can do when this happens.

Patience is key

TextKit prevents you from sending too many messages in a row to the customer after you send your initial text by waiting for a certain number of days. The default is set to 3 days and is configurable at an admin level depending on your business’ preference.

If you haven’t received a reply during the waiting period, have patience. When a customer replies, the conversation automatically moves to the “To Answer” category and you’re able to respond back to continue the conversation. However, if you still don’t get a reply after the waiting period, try the next tip.

Follow up, follow up, follow up!

If you follow up, you may think you're annoying the customer. Our data tells us that conversion rates can increase up to 3x if you follow up despite not receiving a response after the initial outreach. 

Make the follow-up message as simple and human as possible. A text such as “Hi again, just following up to see if you got my last text?” will work. One recommended pattern we have seen work is a text-call-text pattern when you don’t hear back. Try other patterns to see what clicks best for your customers!

Switch mediums if you aren’t getting a response

The best follow-up strategy is to switch mediums. We have found that when you do that, the conversion rate is the highest.

The highest converting pattern is going from a text to call, which has a 79% increase from the initial outreach. Meanwhile, the conversion rate that shows the least increase is starting with a call and following up with a call again at only 13%.

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One thing to note is not to worry too much about the do not contact (DNC) rate by following up with a call; it is substantially less than the DNC rate of starting with a call. For you managers reading this, the benefits might be worth it depending on your customers and your sales staff. Likely with training, the DNC rates for follow-up calls can be brought to less than 1%.

No reply ≠ not getting the message

Some customers may not feel the need to respond but may pay a visit to the store and result in a sale because of that outreach. After all, the read rate of SMS messages is 98%.

If you are following up and not getting responses, it’s OK! Don’t get discouraged. By initiating conversations, following up, and logging your activities, you’re doing your job well.

Be there when they need you

Other than being good life advice, it's good practice to end a conversation gracefully. At the end of the campaign period, go through your assigned customers who haven't responded and send one last touch point with the purpose to inform.

An example message could be: "Hey {{customer}}, sorry I wasn't able to reach you! If you need anything at all in the future, I'll be happy to help you at {{location}} - we are open {{store hours}}."

This lets the customer know you are open to being contacted again for any future needs. Remember to close the conversation by changing its status. The more practice you have with situations like this, the better you will be at engaging both responsive and unresponsive customers. Great job!