5 Ways Banks & Financial Institutions Can Leverage SMS To Boost Their Services

Gone are the days when one used to stand in long queues waiting to process their bank transactions. Today, things have changed a lot and banking and financial sectors have started adopting newer customer friendly technology that benefits most of their banking clients.

Most banks are ushering in to the new age of mobile technology and are adopting SMS messaging services of which both have helped increase customer satisfaction. Mobile has become one of the most personal communication channels and more and more companies are implementing two-way messaging to improve customer interaction and internal communication gaining a competitive advantage in an over-saturated market.

SMS messages are an excellent way to reach out to customer to let them know about your products and services. Below are some key reasons why SMS messaging is so important for the banking and financial industry.

Key Benefits of SMS Services for Banks and Financial Institutions

1. Cost Effective: SMS helps to provide value added services at a marginal cost. With the increasing number of mobile phone users, SMS has become the most popular low cost messaging channel. Its direct and non-intrusive feature provides you with higher open and response rates than any other available channels at a very less possible cost.
2. Reduced Workload: Larger call centers or help desks are no longer needed because most financial issues can be resolved via SMS messages. This also help minimize human error and workload on staff.
3. Easy Tracking of Account Activity: For customers, SMS banking represents a convenient way to track account activity in real-time. Once a customer opts in to your service, you can send text alerts or useful information.
4. Generate New Contacts (and customers). Your bank’s dedicated mobile number can be printed on various public materials and displayed in the branch. This will encourage new people to subscribe to your SMS subscriber list.
5. Automated Alerts: Critical information can be relayed automatically even in the case of network issues. You can automatically notify customers of possible bank login, fraud, or account verification problems with the bulk texting feature. This solution is faster than calling clients manually.
6. Improved customer loyalty: SMS is simple, easy to use and accessible from anywhere. It’s instant and impersonal nature makes your users feel that you care for them which in turn triggers responses easily. A friendly thank you message or follow-up after an agreement will help you improve customer relations.
7. Amplify the effectiveness of email campaigns. If you are also using email campaigns to attract new customers, you will be happy to know that you can combine it with SMS functionality. This will reduce the number of unread emails and help you reach a larger audience.

SMS messages play a vital role in helping banks and financial institutions gain a competitive advantage in the market. The channel has proven to be one of the best and simple communication tool which allows to make fast information exchanges and SMS authentication makes online banking safer and secure. Below are the various ways in which banks can use bulk SMS services to boost their financial businesses.

Ways Banks and Financial Industries Can Use SMS Messaging

Automatic text alerts for transactions – Banks can use SMS messaging services to notify customers of financial transactions, ATM withdrawals, balance changes and deposit status. However, for this to happen the customer must first enroll for a mobile banking service. The bank’s database must be connected to the SMS software API to provide automatic alerts for activities, such as large transactions, low balances, overdue payments, bank statements, etc.

SMS confirmations of transactions – If the customer wants to conduct an online transaction, he/she can start by using the auto-generated security code received via text. Most online banking services require two-step verification via SMS for logins and transactions.

Convenient SMS banking – In any business, the customer is always the king. There’s no better way to appeal to customers than by providing exceptional customer service. SMS increases the speed of communications and provides huge convenience for banks since many aspects of their operations can be automated. SMS provides banks a great deal of convenience by automation of many operations like reminders, alerts, and updates. It also helps reduce human error and enhances the precision of many activities.

Extended customer support – Customers don’t always have to wait for a customer representative to take their call. SMS messaging provides a convenient alternative whereby the process can be automated by creating auto-responses for certain key words like change password, current balance, next payment and more.

Send texts with useful information – Customers frequently request account or exchange rate information. You can send this type of information via bank SMS. You can also send shortened URLs to clients who want to read bank statements, contracts, and additional resources. Communication about major changes in policy affecting customers, events like branch opening can also be sent via SMS.

If you would like to get started with SMS today we are just one call away. Feel free to try out our services and we promise to get the best results with SMS. Its is also very easy to connect to our API and automate your operations For more information on our SMS service visit our Beem platform www.beem.africa