The text messages you send and receive from customers don’t occur in a vacuum. Each message is one small component of the larger relationship they have with your brand. On the business side, if the systems you use to communicate with customers in different channels are disconnected, you risk failing to see the larger picture. You need a way to create cohesive, connected conversations across all your channels. Effective integration is the answer.
For businesses using Salesforce, integrating your SMS (Short Message Service) platform with the Customer Relationship Management Software (CRM) is an important step in keeping your conversations connected. When your SMS integrates with your CRM, your teams can manage text conversations alongside CRM records — easily seeing important customer details and message history, so they can provide more relevant, personalized responses. You can also use the platform’s features to automate routine communications customized to the customer’s specific products and interests. And if you use TrueDialog, you can be confident that all new texts will be added to each person’s conversation history in the main platforms your teams use every day.
The benefits of integrating text messaging into Salesforce span customer service, sales, marketing, and operations and can both improve your internal processes and the external customer experience (CX).
How Salesforce SMS Integration Works
To enjoy the benefits of Salesforce SMS, you need to bring text messaging functionality into the platform. You have a few different options for doing that. You can connect an SMS platform to Salesforce using an API (Application Programming Interface), you can use third-party software like Zapier to set up the integration, or you can use a native application designed specifically to work with Salesforce.
If you choose a mass text messaging software that offers a native integration with Salesforce, like TrueDialog, you’ll have an easier time realizing Salesforce SMS benefits. You can find your SMS software on the AppExchange, install it quickly (potentially within minutes), and start managing SMS marketing and sales conversations directly within the Salesforce interface.
Key Benefits of Integrating Text Messaging Into Salesforce
Your teams probably spend a lot of time in Salesforce right now. The benefits of integrating text messaging into Salesforce — the platform they spend their days in already — can be significant across multiple departments. Here are a few of the main reasons an SMS integration can improve Salesforce communication for your business.
Faster Sales Follow-Up
When a prospect is evaluating your product against your competitors, fast response times can make a difference. You don’t want to lose an opportunity because another salesperson got an answer out faster.
Being able to send text messages from within Salesforce makes it easier for sales representatives to see and react to new messages from prospects immediately. They can respond to leads right away, send automated reminders about sales meetings or webinars, and get messages with next suggested steps out right after a call — all without leaving Salesforce. That improves their efficiency, while also showing prospects how responsive your brand can be to their needs.
Centralized Conversation History
When SMS is integrated with Salesforce, your teams can write and manage text messages in the same view where all your customer data lives. They won’t just be responding to the most recent text message, they can easily review and consider the customer’s entire history with the brand: which products they’ve purchased or trialed, their past sales and support conversations, and any feedback they’ve previously sent. That gives your employees the power to match their messages to what your customers actually want and need.
It also ensures that support staff can see all the relevant details of the current issue, even if past communications came through a different channel like email or over the phone. You can avoid the familiar trap of forcing customers to repeat the same details they’ve already given another representative (something everyone hates), and get straight to helping them.
More Personalized Communication
Having SMS capabilities within Salesforce gives sales and marketing teams the ability to create segmented lists based on specific customer attributes and preferences. That makes it easier to run SMS marketing in Salesforce that people actually care about — there’s less risk of sending texts about a product that’s not relevant to them, an event that’s not in their geographic area, or re-sending the same information you already sent in another channel. Improving relevance can not only boost engagement and conversions, it can also help you reduce opt-outs.
Automated Customer Communication
With the right SMS platform connected, you can start setting up automated SMS flows within Salesforce triggered by specific actions or scheduled to go out at set intervals. Automation can simplify sending out messages that are important, but potentially easy to let slip through the cracks if handled manually, such as:
- Appointment reminders
- Event reminders
- Follow-ups to sales and support conversations
- Order confirmations
- Shipping updates
- Return receipt confirmations
- Renewal reminders
- Account alerts, such as when a customer’s balance goes below a certain threshold
Some messages, like customer support responses, require a more personal touch. But a lot of the messages you send are relaying straightforward information that can be automated. For the messages that fall into this category, using an SMS integration to set up automated flows in Salesforce can save your teams work, while providing customers with a better experience at the same time.
Better Team Efficiency
Have you ever gone to pull up a new tab or platform, only to forget what you were working on in the process? The more employees have to switch between different products and tasks, the more likely they are to deal with distractions and interruptions that impact their work. Recent research demonstrates that these kinds of interruptions throughout the day can negatively influence both work performance and employee well-being.
By bringing SMS functionality into Salesforce, you reduce how often employees have to perform platform switching to do their jobs. They can start and finish conversations all in one interface, helping them maintain focus and improve productivity in the process.
Plus, keeping everything in one place can boost response speeds — employees don’t have to do as much work chasing down customer or ticket details. That matters. According to a recent survey, consumers are 2.6 times more likely to purchase from a brand and three times more likely to recommend them if they consider wait times “satisfactory.”
Improved Customer Engagement
One of the most important Salesforce SMS benefits is how it can improve your relationship with customers. Customers increasingly expect to be able to communicate with brands on their own terms, in the channels they like. For many, that now includes SMS. Nearly one third (30%) of consumers in North America say SMS is their preferred channel for communicating with businesses. By making it easier for all your customer-facing teams to text with customers, integrating text messaging into Salesforce helps you meet people where they are and create better customer experiences.
The difference shows in the results: 72% of people have made a purchase after getting a text from a brand, and 86% have made two or more purchases from SMS messages. Adding text messaging to your communications mix — not as a replacement for email, phone, or other channels, but alongside them — can improve customer engagement, increase conversions, and help you boost long-term loyalty.
Examples of Salesforce SMS Use Cases
The benefits of Salesforce SMS span multiple departments. For sales teams, it makes staying on top of communications with prospects easier, especially for the leads that show a preference for using text messages. For marketing teams, SMS marketing in Salesforce makes it easier to reach consumers on a channel many consumers prefer for receiving promotions, deals, and event reminders. Support staff can more easily respond to customer issues effectively when they have all the customer’s data accessible in the same view. And the operations team can use it to keep customers apprised of important updates like order confirmations, delivery alerts, and tracking information.
In short, adding SMS functionality to Salesforce can be a game changer for teams across your organization.
Bring SMS Conversations Into Salesforce With TrueDialog
The benefits of Salesforce SMS do at least partially depend on which SMS platform you choose to integrate with Salesforce. TrueDialog offers native Salesforce integration that makes the process of adding the platform’s functionality to your CRM fast and easy.
Once TrueDialog is connected to Salesforce, your teams can send and receive text messages from within the CRM, while seeing all the relevant customer data and conversation history in the same view. You can take advantage of automation features to get important text updates out more consistently with less work. And with TrueDialog’s TrueConnect® feature, you can see a record of all SMS communications — sent and received — within Salesforce across other CRMs, like HubSpot or Dynamics, updated in real time. That ensures all of your teams have the most up-to-date information on customer and prospect conversations, even if you use multiple CRMs.
To get started with TrueDialog, request a demo. Or if you already use TrueDialog, get started setting up your SMS integration with Salesforce.
FAQs
What are the benefits of integrating SMS With Salesforce?
The benefits of integrating text messaging into Salesforce include improving the sales process, creating a centralized conversation history with customers and prospects, being able to provide more personalization in your messages, gaining automation features, boosting efficiency across different departments, and enabling a better customer experience.
Can Salesforce SMS messages be automated?
Yes, one of the benefits of Salesforce SMS integration is the ability to bring automation features for text messaging into Salesforce. You can automate text messages for things like order updates, appointment reminders, sales follow-ups, and more.
Are text message replies stored in Salesforce?
If you use TrueDialog for Salesforce SMS, the TrueConnect® feature will ensure all SMS messages that your team sends, as well as those received from customers, will be stored in Salesforce.
How does Salesforce SMS improve sales follow-up?
When sales representatives can see and respond to all text messages within the same platform they use throughout the day, replying promptly becomes easier. Also, having all of a prospect’s data and history viewable alongside their messages helps representatives ensure their responses are as relevant and helpful as possible.
We use Salesforce alongside other CRMs. How does TrueDialog keep SMS visible across all of them?
TrueConnect makes every inbound and outbound text show up on the matching record in each connected system — across Salesforce, HubSpot, and Dynamics — matched by phone number.
