5 Ways Businesses Can Use SMS to Navigate the Supply Chain Crisis

With the holiday season just around the corner, the ongoing supply chain crisis is presenting businesses with a panoply of logistical nightmares. In this article, we outline five ways SMS can help organizations fight back.

2021 has been one of the most challenging years of the modern era. The COVID-19 pandemic brought with it a barrage of ‘New Normals’ like restricted international travel, closed borders, remote work, contractions in labor participation, corresponding labor shortages, and more.

For businesses, the logistical nightmares of the ongoing supply chain crisis have loomed particularly large — especially as they prepare for the holiday season. Indeed, with major sales events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the offing, logjams at ports and borders have resulted in production and delivery interruptions that have shoppers and retailers girding themselves for product shortages, delayed deliveries, and other inconveniences.

Fortunately, SMS can help. In this article, we go over five ways businesses can use SMS to optimize everything from delivery efficiency to online sales.

We cover the following:

• Customer Care
• Real-time Delivery Tracking
• Promotional Marketing and Engagement
• Abandoned Cart Reminders
• Cyber Security

To learn more about the Pareteum SMS offering, check out our website or set up a meeting with one of our team members.

5 Ways SMS Can Help Businesses Navigate the Supply Chain Crisis

1. Customer Care

As with any relationship, communication is critical for establishing trust between businesses and consumers. If a customer order is out for delivery, businesses can alert them via SMS before it arrives. If there’s a failed delivery, businesses can notify customers immediately and offer them the ability to schedule another delivery time. Indeed, considering the uncertainty ushered in by the supply chain crisis, over-communication is better than under-communication.

2. Real-time Delivery Tracking

Along the same lines, SMS messaging facilitates proactive order, shipment, and delivery updates. For instance, related to the supply chain crisis, businesses can use SMS to stay on top of any expected delays. If a customer order misses a checkpoint, an automatic SMS alert can be sent to the recipient, maximizing customer satisfaction in an otherwise unsatisfactory situation.

3. Promotional Marketing and Engagement

SMS is a great engagement tool that can be used to promote sales events, early bird specials, limited time offers, loyalty vouchers / coupons, and more. What’s more, due to the flexibility of SMS, businesses can reach out to their customers via differentiated strategies designed to catch the attention of specific demographics or customer profiles.

Immediacy is another strength of SMS. Consider this: while it takes an average of 90 minutes for people to respond to an email, it takes just 90 seconds for text messages. This means SMS is perfect for prompting customers to take specific, time-sensitive actions, like verifying their identities, confirming their delivery addresses, filling out surveys, etc.

4. Abandoned Cart Reminders

Abandoned carts are a huge issue for e-commerce businesses, mobile commerce apps, and other online retailers. However, while most e-businesses send abandoned cart reminders via email, SMS is actually a much better option. Indeed, while email marketing open rates tend to be in the 15-25% range, SMS open rates tend to be closer to 98%.

5. Cybersecurity

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) refer to digital authentication practices that grant users access to sensitive information or systems only after they provide multiple pieces of identificatory evidence. More succinctly, MFA requires users to confirm their identity in two or more ways (via passwords, SMS verifications, biometrics, etc.) before granting them access to sensitive information.

From an e-tailer’s perspective, SMS can be deployed as an extra security layer in 2FA and MFA environments to optimize digital safety for online shoppers. And because SMS is independent from the internet, it’s perfect for preventing hacking incidents, reducing cases of identity theft, limiting unwanted purchases, etc.

Get Started with Pareteum Messaging!

Pareteum Messaging, which you can read about here, is a programmable, multi-channel, two-way application-to-person (A2P) messaging offering. This means it enables organizations and businesses to communicate with their clients, consumers, and employees via SMS and Voice messaging.

In addition, the Pareteum Messaging solution comes complete with an SMS campaign tool. As such, businesses can upload their contact lists directly and immediately launch SMS marketing campaigns — no technical set up necessary!

Of course, we’ve written about our SMS solution rather extensively. So, we highly recommend that you check out some of our older blog posts:

• Top SMS Use Cases for Retail and E-Commerce in 2021
• Business in the Time of Covid: SMS for Customer Engagement
• Eight Ways SMS Messaging Can Improve Your Business

Otherwise, feel free to schedule a call with our messaging experts by emailing messaging@pareteum.com.

About Pareteum

Pareteum is an experienced provider of Communications Platform-as-a-Service solutions. We empower enterprises, communications service providers, internet service providers, mobile operators, full MVNOs, light MVNOs, early-stage innovators, developers, IoT (Internet of Things), and telecommunications infrastructure providers with the freedom and control to create, deliver, and scale innovative communications experiences.

The Pareteum platform connects people and devices around the world using the secure, ubiquitous, and highly scalable solution to deliver data, voice, video, SMS/text messaging, media, and content enablement.

For more information on Pareteum Experience Cloud, set up a meeting!