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Text messaging, once the exclusive pur-view of teens to express themselves in a few characters, is growing up fast. The proof of this movement? Older adults (Boomers) now make up the fastest-growing segment of text users, accord-ing to the Pew Internet & Life Project survey.

Texting: the Fastest Growing Compo-nent of the Unified Communications Stack

Texting has gradually been moving to-wards acceptance as a business com-munications tool but saw a much more rapid acceleration in 2014. With the in-crease in BYOD and BYOA (Bring Your Own Device / App) redefining office en-vironments, texting has become a staple of day-to-day communication between colleagues and, now, customers.

Auto Dealer Texting Platform Con-firms the Trend

Progressive automobile dealers that have integrated a texting app into their DMS have seen immediate results. Those results are most evident from their customer’s reactions and direct positive comments back to the dealer. “We’re receiving immediate positive feedback from customers,” states Jesse Westlake, Service Manager for Platinum Chevrolet in Santa Rosa, California

TexTinG is now An everyone Tool

T h e A d o p T i o n o f B u s i n e s s T e x T M e s s A g i n g e M e r g e s i n 2 0 1 5

B y T h o m A s J u n G

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“These comments are of thanks for providing them the option to receive updates from text and not be worried about having to field a call from us dur-ing their busy day,” further states Jesse. Platinum Chevrolet has seen a much more efficient communication with their Service customers that gets quick de-cisions on additional repairs and re-placement parts. This has dramatically reduced pressure on their Service Ad-visors and removes the need to place multiple calls to get time-sensitive de-cisions from their customers. “This has been one of those classic situations of not knowing what we were missing,” ex-plains Stacey Tominaga, a Service Advi-sor with Platinum. “This is an essential business tool for us and we will never go back to the phone only,” concludes Stacey.

Live Text Exchange Between a Cus-tomer and a Service Technician

Service Person 11/19/2014 Eric@ Fu-ture Ford here. Got your message, put the car in line and should be out in an hour and a half or so. I’ll text you when ready. Thanks -- Brian

Customer 11/19/2014 Cool. The wheel lock is in the center console. Kinda hid-den.

Service Person 11/19/2014 Gotcha. Thanks

Service Person 11/19/2014 Blue Fu-sion is ready for pick up. Inspection is all green -- good to go. Thanks -- Brian

Customer 11/19/2014 Awesomeness.

As you can see, there was never a tele-phone conversation involved in the ser-vice of the customer’s car. Texting al-lows a new kind of rapport between the parties involved that may not occur in a telephone call between the same par-ties. In most cases, no matter whether the customer is in meetings or just busy, texting allows the option to the cus-tomer for immediate status updates and

the ability to provide the Service Advisor with a quick decision. At Service check-in and with the “opt-in” approval by the customer to receive texts, any chance of offending the customer is removed and both parties now have an efficient and agreed-to method to communicate with each other.

Important Facts of the Trend

The year 2014 was a year of “emer-gence” for businesses regarding mobile text messaging. It was the year when the marketing technology industry acknowl-edged the opportunity for innovative texting platform start-ups to come to market. Texting as a business tool in the enterprise is not an overnight success. This trend and the technology is some-thing that been developing over the past few years. As a result, the adoption by business is happening “now” and rep-resents a substantial opportunity for

adding productive Service communica-tions options to customer-centric com-panies. Management is realizing that employees are communicating with cus-tomers and each other and that text isn’t just for mobile marketing alerts anymore.

Survey Data Supports the Trend

Survey data from a RingCentral survey illustrates the trend: 82% of respon-dents in their survey use texting daily for business. Additionally, 32% said they have used texts to close a busi-ness deal. Other independent surveys support these trends, with 62% of those respondents saying they would prefer to separate their business text messages from their personal text messages. The success of mobile texting platforms con-firms the emerging demand for cloud-based messaging to enable employees to collaborate with colleagues AND cus-tomers, across devices and platforms.

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The survey of workplace professionals also revealed that fully 61% of respon-dents said they wanted to separate their business text messages from their per-sonal text messages, illustrating that en-terprise text messaging is here to stay.

Some Predictions for 2015

The year 2015 will see the continuation of accelerated growth in mobile texting in the enterprise. Here are some predic-tions for the coming year in mobile mes-saging in the enterprise.

- Staggering Number from Flurry Analyt-ics: This from Flurry: “Messaging apps will reach 1.5 billion users next year.”

- Frost and Sullivan: Frost and Sullivan have characterized text messaging as the missing piece of the communica-tions stack:

“Ultimately, AMS (business text messag-ing) addresses a gap in the unified com-munications stack that most of us even didn’t recognize was there.”

- Current Survey Data Tells the Truth: Based on recent survey data, it’s very likely that text messaging apps will con-tinue to disrupt the traditional concepts associated with “unified communica-tions.” This data indicates that these text messaging apps generated over 100M downloads in 2014 with over 30% of these representing business apps.

Redefining the UC Definition

Unified communications will redefine it-self in 2015 to include text messaging and expand the focus on a mobile first, any-screen approach. It will create an upswing in 2015. Companies will expand these initiatives beyond mobile devices. They will include landline, desktop and cloud-based solutions that allow users to choose the platform of their choice to communicate with colleagues both within and beyond their organization’s four walls. “New” UC deployments that embrace text messaging will climb sig-nificantly in 2015, with more than half of Fortune 1000 companies adding them to their customer service arsenal.

Users Will Dictate How Apps Get Ac-cessed

What’s old is new again thanks to BYOD. Businesses will improve simplicity in their enterprise communications. They’ll replace declining communications chan-nels such as Voicemail with services that mobile employees will embrace (on their device). What’s “old” – both SMS and business landline phones— will be-come new again. A recent industry sur-vey found that 62% of respondents said they wished they could send and receive messages from their business number!

Industry Predictions Point to Explo-sive Text Growth in 2015

Industry consensus: texting among business people aged 40-50 will triple in 2015 – mainly because their customers demand it. Businesses will come to real-ize the potential of texting to help solve customer service issues in real-time.

To improve two-way communication, the use of text messaging in business, by business people, will continue to see rapid growth.

Keeping Business Devices Separate from Personal Devices

More BYOD: Driving Users to Separate Business from Personal -- Business apps will continue to evolve and serve the distinct needs of employees (and their organizations) that prefer to sepa-rate business and personal. Employees now demand, rather than prefer, to uti-lize their own mobile and tablet devices for business purposes, and communica-tions / messaging are certainly a priority. The issues with BYOD revolve around an inability for employees to effectively utilize these devices in a fashion that clearly delineates apps and functions as “business” versus “personal.” Text mes-saging offers employees the ability to simplify their business lives by creating

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a single (landline-mobile) phone number with text capabilities for business. And, in doing so, allow them to keep their personal cell number personal.

Growth in MDM and MAM Will Help Drive Separation of Business from Personal Devices

Additionally, the growth in Mobile Device Management (MDM) and Mobile App Management (MAM) will help accelerate this trend. As additional platforms are available that embrace landlines, mobile devices and employee-owned devices, the growth of MDM and MAM will drive adoption of these solutions that sepa-rate business and personal text-based communications.

The Big Message Prediction

Industry data clearly shows that 2015 will be the year that mobile text messag-ing for basic communications and not just one-way mobile marketing is going to kill Voicemail and become the highest growth piece of the UC stack (voice, e-mail, IM and video conferencing). Busi-nesses will need to understand the role that text messaging will be the primary communications channel to solve busi-ness problems and strengthen customer service relationships.

Automobile Dealership Management Will Need to Understand the Resis-tance

The adoption of texting as an enhance-ment to the communication choice be-tween customer and Service will not be without Service Department personal re-sistance. Some veteran Service staff will continue to be phone centric and any change to entrenched routine will be dif-ficult to accomplish. The key to adoption will be from management’s participation to reinforce that texting Service updates will be the priority in the communica-tion process. This will also require the text platform vendor to communicate effectively to dealership management the data that customers are, in fact, de-manding communication options.

Texting is a customer-centric offering

that dramatically improves the efficiency of communication between Service per-sonnel and the customer. Texting is im-mediate and eliminates the frustration of Voicemail tag and allows the customer the option to reply to the text or call knowing what the issues are before call-ing. Ironically, the airline industry offers a great example of how the adoption of service technology can enhance the customer experience. Southwest Air-lines allows you to have your boarding pass texted to your smartphone with no need for access to a printer or having to use a terminal at the airport. Just fly an airline that’s not providing this op-tion and you’ll understand that options are a competitive advantage to those who provide them. The traditional tools of phone and Voicemail are being en-hanced with technology that improves the efficiency of communications be-tween dealerships and their customers.

The Bottom Line for Mobile Text Mes-saging in 2015

There’s no question that 2015 will see the accelerated and the continued

emergence of text messaging as an es-sential communications platform. It will evolve completely from the past use of “text” as a simple one-way broadcast or notification tool. Management will come to understand completely that they need to get a handle on text communi-cation in their enterprise. Based on cur-rent trends, business text messaging is poised to emerge in 2015 as a business-critical tool for connecting all customer service functions and the enterprise with its customers!

Thomas Jung is the CEO and Co-found-er of San Rafael, CA-based ADVantag-eTEC. He has over 20 years executive experience in the technology and soft-ware industry. Prior to ADVantageTEC Thomas was on the executive team at vAuto as Chief Marketing Officer and a standing board member. There he re-branded and repositioned the company from MPowerAuto to vAuto and was in charge of marketing and strategy. Prior to vAuto, Thomas was divisional Presi-dent for Cars.com and VP Product De-velopment & Dealer Services where he grew the business from its inception into a national brand with more than $200,000,000 in retail sales. Thomas holds an MBA from the Harvard Busi-ness School. He owned an independent Porsche dealership after earning an automotive technical degree while em-ployed with Dr. Ing. HcF Porsche AG in Zuffenhausen, Germany.

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