How Yesterday’s Books uses SimpleTexting to accept orders and drive more sales
Instead of building an expensive online store, Yesterday’s Books text-enabled its landline number. Now it uses SMS to help manage customer orders.
Instead of building an expensive online store, Yesterday’s Books text-enabled its landline number. Now it uses SMS to help manage customer orders.
Yesterday’s Books is the largest used bookstore in Central Valley, California. It boasts an inventory of over 100,000 used, new, rare, and out-of-print books.
The owner and manager, Paula Kiss, needed a way to continue operating, despite closing its doors for nearly two months.
Yesterday’s Books uses texting to manage customers’ orders efficiently and cost-effectively without needing to build an online store.
When we asked Paula Kiss, owner of Yesterday’s Books, how she reacted to California’s shelter-in-place order back in March, she told us, “she felt a little panic.”
But then, like many small business owners, she got to work.
Yesterday’s Books is an institution in Modesto, California. When the governor made his announcement, it was the second time the store closed its doors in 40 years. (The first was due to a fire.)
Paula knew she needed to make loyal customers aware the store was still available for all of their reading needs.
It wasn’t realistic to build an online store with the 100,000+ items in stock at Yesterday’s Books. Instead, Paula added a form to the store’s website where people can put in a book request.
At first, Paula followed up with these requests via email, but there were several problems with this approach:
She knew that these issues were not going away anytime soon and decided to research different communication channels.
Paula chose SMS as the solution because the average response time for a text message is 60X faster than email. She believed that texting would help minimize the back-and-forth with customers, meaning orders could be processed and completed much quicker.
Text enabling Yesterday’s Books existing landline was a priority for Paula.
When you text-enable a landline, the number still receives calls as usual, but texts can be sent and received from SimpleTexting.
Paula’s interactions with our customer service team reassured her that she’d made the right decision.
“You guys were super fast at answering my questions. Knowing that I was going to get excellent customer service made it an easier decision.”
As we mentioned above, customers fill out a form on Yesterday’s Book’s website. Once Paula receives the request, she follows up by text message to let the customer know if the book is available or not.
She then manages all of the conversations using our SMS inbox’s features. For example, she marks a conversation “closed” once it’s complete and uses our notes features to leave reminders of the book a customer requested.
Finally, she’s a fan of the fact she can manage the text messages from our mobile app, her iPad, or the store’s desktop.
Paula tells us that the most significant difference between taking orders by email and by text is the speed of response.
Beyond the benefits to Yesterday’s Books order volume, she’s also found that customers appreciate text messages’ convenience.
Even though the bookstore is starting to reopen, she plans to continue managing orders with text messages.
If you’re a retailer that wants to stop taking orders by email and use SMS instead, we encourage you to sign up for a 14-day free trial.
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