Promote customer trust via Verified SMS in partnership with Google

67% of consumers prefer texting with a business than email or phone call (Source: Zipwhip)

Sam manages his own insurance company named Umbrella Insurance. A few days back, he noticed that a smaller player in the market was trying to impersonate them and send spam SMS to their customers. 

He decided to tackle this head-on and implement an anti-spam campaign that would educate their enterprise customers to not share sensitive information over SMS. 

A few questions that may be coming across your mind could be… 

• What made customers believe it was Umbrella Insurance sending these SMSes?
• How did he assure customers of his authenticity? 
• How did he curate this campaign and send it across scale so quickly? 
• Sam used Verified SMS to achieve this. Read on to find more. 

What is Verified SMS? 

Every day, customers get bombarded with SMSes from various businesses – it becomes a difficult issue for them to remember them, let alone verify their authenticity. Senders are sometimes random numbers, and customers feel hesitant to trust unbranded sender IDs, especially from banks, fintech, and eCommerce companies. 

Google’s Verified SMS adds authenticity to your messages by including essential information about your business like a business logo, description and a verification badge. This helps distinguish legitimate business messages from spam. It also gives customers a chance to preview any links you may have added. 

Verified SMS is available to people using Google’s native messages app. 

Attract + Engage customers via trusted, branded messages 

Verified SMS works by verifying the content sent by your business on a per message basis. Once the content is verified, the users can see the business name, logo and verification badge in the message thread. 

Enable trusted, branded messages

Gift customers the assurance that your brand is authentic and secure 

Boosted SMS Engagement 

Visually engaging SMS campaigns 

Build Brand Awareness 

Showcase your brand, build equity with trustworthy interactions 

Before Verified SMS

1. No branding

People don’t know whether you’re legitimate and can’t trust you

2. No verification

Questions raised about being a registered business 

3. Limited safety

SMS coming in from random numbers looks spammy 

4. Lack of interaction

Customers are hesitant to respond 

After Verified SMS 

Business name + logo

A proper name and a logo establishes legitimacy 

Verified tick

Ensures that you are a proper business 

Enhanced engagement

Customers are confident to interact 

Increased brand awareness

Potential customers get to know about your business

What can I expect from Verified Messages? 

Using Google’s Verified SMS, your business is bound to experience a significant uplift in terms of customer engagement. 

Use Cases for Google’s Verified SMS 

Many businesses use Verified SMS to improve customer relationships and fetch better engagement. 

Here are some ways in which businesses can use Verified SMS to boost engagement: 

1. Customer account verifications

While your customer performs 2FA (Two factor authentication), your business can send out a Verified SMS to give it recognisable business branding, and further assure customers of account security.

2. Fraud alerts 

Phishing scams are aplenty, which is why 57% of businesses who communicate with businesses are concerned about fraud. (Source: Google)

To the untrained eye, this could seem like a legit text and it may lead them to a dangerous website. With Verified SMS, you can ensure your customers that they are left in no doubt that any fraud alerts sent by your business are 100% genuine. 

3. Order confirmations 

Follow up with a Verified SMS once you have received a customer’s order and let them know that you have received their payment and order is processing. Seeing the logo they just saw online while browsing pop-up on their mobile screen builds the element of instant trust. 

4. Marketing campaigns 

The added branding in Verified SMS helps promote trust and increase conversions across your SMS marketing campaigns around flash sales, customers, right through product review requests and abandoned cart alerts. 

5. Billing statements and payment reminders

Banks and fintech Businesses can see an uptick in their activity for online payments and debt collection if they use Verified SMS for online payment reminders. Such texts get increased visibility and are harder to ignore with Verified SMS. 

Previously good customer service, quick response time and communication were the key things that helped build and maintain trust with customers. With digitization, there has been a rise in fraudulent texts and phishing scams, which puts the whole communication segment in a tough spot. 

Enterprises, especially in sectors like banking, finance, BFSI and retail who deal with sensitive customer data need to reinstate trust among their customers. A verified process makes this process simpler via its secure communication and branding. 

Looking for more help? Drop a mail to support@exotel.in or check out our page on Verified SMS.

Get started sending trustworthy business text messages with Verified SMS today. Get in touch or create a free account with Exotel.