With the rise of both omni-channel communication and business texting, there’s no shortage of customer communication platforms in today’s market. So how do you choose the one that is right for you?
The best texting platform for any given business will depend on your industry, business size, business model, and more. And while we can’t speak to every industry, we can tell you what to look for if you’re in the home services or home improvement space.
Read on to learn the 11 most important features contractors should look for in a texting platform.
For each feature, we’ll provide data-backed reasons for why it’s important as well as examples from our own texting platform.
Communication platforms have a wide array of specialties and sales funnel coverage. Some are largely focused on post-sale interactions (like appointment reminders, payments, coupons, and reviews), while others are better suited to provide pre-sale capabilities (like lead outreach, quotes, and booking estimates).
The problem is that consistent, quality communication can only be so if it’s present throughout every stage of the customer journey, so a communication tool that focuses on just one part of the journey defeats the purpose of having one at all.
Make sure your texting platform supports your communication use-cases throughout all stages of your funnel so you can provide personalized, in-context messaging throughout the entire customer journey and therefore maximize your ROI.
Not every texting platform offers the same kinds of automation. In fact, many platforms only offer one-time automated messages based on a trigger or condition.
The problem with this is, in today’s world, it takes an average of 8 touches to get a homeowner to respond and 5-12 follow-ups to close a deal. This is why it’s important to make sure your texting provider has not just messaging automation, but sequence automation.
Sequence automation means you can build out a series of multiple texts, emails, and voicemails that reach out and follow up with your contacts over a set schedule.
With Hatch, you can automate multi-channel, multi-touch sequences that ensure higher response rates.
Did you know that 78% of homeowners go with the business that reached out to them first? And that after five minutes, the likelihood of connecting with a new lead decreases by 900%? Needless to say, immediate lead outreach is crucial for home improvement businesses—but with the sheer volume of leads, plus the fact that people rarely answer on the first try—this is just not possible for every lead. Not manually, that is.
But not every texting platform offers truly automated lead outreach. In many cases, the automation doesn’t fire until the lead takes a second action after filling out a form. Essentially, this means the lead has to reach out first.
Hatch, on the other hand, syncs with your CRM and lead sources (Angi, Thumbtack, website forms, etc.) so you can instantly text new leads as soon as they enter your system (with the automated sequences mentioned above).
Head here to see Hatch’s automated lead outreach in action.
Sales follow-up (also known as rehash) is of the utmost importance for home improvement businesses. Why?
And yet, sales follow-up is also the most underrated and neglected task among sales teams. This is because it’s such a hassle that it gets haphazardly done, and the haphazard approach renders it ineffective.
But with a texting platform keeping track of who needs follow-up and when, and then executing it on your behalf, contractors quickly find that follow-up, when done right, is one of their most powerful weapons. In fact, implementing an automated follow-up strategy can increase close rates by 7-10% and revenue by 10-20%. And with 50% of businesses not following up properly, this gives you a massive advantage over your competitors.
Hatch is one such platform that has intelligent rehash/sales follow-up capabilities so you can stay on top of recent quotes, old quotes, canceled appointments, dormant leads, and more. It’s actually one of our most popular offerings.
Head here to see automated sales follow-up in action.
Automation is a must-have in texting platforms, but AI takes things a step further. First, find out what kind of AI offering the platform has, if it has any at all. Most likely, they'll offer generative AI services that provide messaging suggestions or generate conversation transcripts.
For example, Hatch has a generative AI feature, known as Hatch Assistant, but Hatch AI does a bit more than the average content generation. Hatch Assistant provides chatbots that converse directly with customers, prospects, and leads. The bots learn from every interaction and are able to handle multiple conversations at once, taking some of the more tedious workloads off the plates of your reps.
If you're curious about how AI talks to customers, why not take it for a test drive? Try Hatch AI here.
AI features can boost your lead generation, reduce your response time, and more. You just need to know what you want and what to ask your AI vendor.
If you want your messages to actually get responses and yield more sales and revenue, they need to be highly tailored to the individual. But you can’t achieve this level of personalization, and definitely not at scale, without granular audience targeting options.
Some platforms will claim to offer personalization and targeting but are limited to a finite set of contact properties or pre-built audiences. With Hatch, you can target any lead source, CRM property, or value (and any combination thereof) allowing you to create those highly tailored messages you need. Hatch will also automatically enroll (and remove) contacts from lists and campaigns as they meet your requirements for a truly automated approach.
Learn more about the Hatch Audience Builder here.
The term “integration” can mean many different things, so it’s important to make sure your texting provider offers not just “integrations,” but:
Without those qualities, any time saved with your texting platform will be wasted on switching between platforms, creating complicated Zapier workflows, and reconciling data.
Hatch offers 26 home service-specific integrations including ServiceTitan, Angi, EverConnect, Jobber, and more—20 of which are also Hatch partners. Our integrations are bi-directional, available on demand through the app marketplace, and sync all data between platforms. We are also actively expanding our available integrations to meet our customer needs.
Make sure your platform is designed for your business model and processes. For example, Hatch is designed for businesses with a strong inbound lead model, who are communicating individually and personally with several contacts each day.
It is not a good fit for ecommerce businesses primarily looking to run mass marketing text blasts. But it is a good fit for call centers looking to build relationships, improve customer satisfaction, and streamline their sales and service processes.
For example, the Hatch interface includes a column-style conversation tracking board to view your pipeline, and message and campaign templates for different use cases, to help support conversion throughout the funnel.
We also offer tips and templates related to sales, marketing, and customer communication in our Free Resource Library.
When so much automation is used, you need to make sure you can keep up with the increased volume of inbound and outbound messages. A good texting platform will allow you to view all your correspondence with one contact (across all channels) in a single thread. A great texting platform will allow you to organize all of those threads according to your unique pipeline.
With Hatch, every thread is contained in a contact card which you can drag and drop into customized columns according to your pipeline with an interface that is user-friendly and easy to pick up. You can also have different workspaces for different pipelines or departments (sales vs customer service, for example).
These workspaces are shared, so you can hand off conversations, tag reps in as needed, and oversee conversations for training opportunities.
Trello-style conversation tracking keeps you organized and ensures no conversations fall through the cracks.
Although the TCPA has been around since 1991, there has been a new wave of regulations and enforcements in recent years with text messaging specifically. It's important that your texting provider is on top of compliance requirements so they can educate and equip you to keep your campaigns running smoothly.
Check out our TCPA checklist here.
Compliance is crucial for maintaining a positive customer experience, keeping up campaign performance, and avoiding costly penalties. This is a must-have for your texting platform.
Make sure your platform provides all of the information you need in order to make data-driven decisions for your campaigns and your business. Look for a tool that provides:
For example, with the Hatch platform, you can see how many appointments and sales your Hatch campaigns are influencing, as well as what percent of your overall sales is influenced by Hatch.
You can learn more about Hatch reporting here.
With a clear picture of performance, you can refine your campaign and agent training strategies to get the highest returns on Hatch, as well as all of your other sales, marketing, and service investments.
We also have calculators to help you estimate your ROI with Hatch:
A lot of texting platforms focus on quantity, and on the surface, this makes sense. Texting is the preferred communication medium among consumers today, so more texts means more revenue, right?
Not so fast. You have to take into account:
Increased interactions with customers do not necessitate increased engagement, conversion rates, or revenue. High quality interactions, on the other hand, do.
Hatch is focused on such quality. By improving the speed, volume, and messaging of your communications, you achieve higher set, close, upsell, and retention rates, all of which translate into higher revenue.
We lay it all out in our Why Hatch page.
As mentioned above, the right texting platform for you will depend on your industry, business size, sales process, and more. But if you’re a home improvement or home services business, the 11 features outlined in this post are the ones that our customers find to be the most important for maximizing their ROI and ultimately growing their bottom line.
To recap, the 11 features service-based businesses should look for in a texting or communication platform are:
If you found these Hatch features to be a good fit for your business goals, you can book a 15-minute demo here. We’ll give you a tour of the platform and show you how it works to save you time, improve communication, and grow revenue. You can also watch a demo here.
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