Messaging Through Your Listing

What it is

A message button on your listing, letting somebody who has found you send a short enquiry directly rather than phoning or filling in a form.

With management moving into Search, messages are becoming more visible to owners rather than living only in a separate application.

For some businesses it produces a useful stream of enquiries from people who would not have phoned.

For others it produces a small number of messages nobody sees for four days, which is worse than having no button at all.

Why an unanswered channel is worse than none

The argument that should decide this before any consideration of the benefits.

Somebody who messages you has chosen a route you advertised, and silence reads as a business that does not respond rather than as a feature nobody monitors.

They do not phone afterwards. They contact the next business.

Response times are also visible in some form, so a business that answers slowly can be shown as such, which affects people who never message at all.

Offering a channel is a commitment, and a small business should treat it that way rather than as a switch to turn on because it exists.

Before enabling it

• Decide who answers and on what device.
• Confirm they get notifications that they will actually see.
• Agree a response time during working hours.
• Decide what happens outside them.
• Write two or three standard replies.
• Set a cover arrangement for holidays.

If you cannot answer the first two, the decision is made and the answer is to leave it off.

Who it suits

The pattern is fairly clear once you look at it.

Businesses where somebody is at a desk or a counter, with a phone to hand, during opening hours.

Businesses whose customers are younger or who prefer not to telephone, which is a larger proportion than most owners assume.

And businesses where the common question is short and factual: do you have it, do you do that, are you open, how much.

Those are answerable in a sentence, which is what the channel is good at.

Who it does not suit

Equally clear, and worth being honest about.

A one-person trade working on site all day, whose phone is in a van and whose hands are occupied.

Any business where enquiries need detail, measurements, or photographs before a useful answer is possible, since a message conversation becomes a slow version of a phone call.

And any business that already struggles to answer the phone, where adding a channel spreads the same attention more thinly.

For those, leaving it off and making the phone number prominent is the better arrangement, and it is not a failure to do so.

A worked example

A shop enabled messaging and forgot about it.

Eleven weeks later somebody noticed nineteen unanswered messages, the oldest from the first fortnight, several asking whether an item was in stock.

They answered the recent ones, apologised, and considered switching it off.

Instead they set it up properly: notifications on the counter tablet, a named person responsible each day, a two-hour response target during opening hours, and an automatic greeting saying when they would reply.

It became a steady source of enquiries, mostly stock questions that turned into visits.

Their conclusion was that the channel had been fine and the setup had been absent, and that eleven weeks of silence had probably cost them more than the channel earned in its first year.

Use the automatic greeting

The single setting that makes this manageable.

An automatic first reply sets expectations immediately: thanks for your message, we reply within about two hours during opening hours, and for anything urgent please call this number.

That converts a silence into a stated wait, which people accept, and gives anybody in a hurry a route that is faster.

Keep it short and specific. A greeting promising a rapid response you will not meet is worse than one stating an honest longer wait.

Update it when you are closed for a period rather than leaving a promise you are not keeping.

What to do with the messages

A small operational point that determines whether the channel is worth anything.

Answer briefly, and move the conversation to whatever is appropriate: a phone call for anything complex, a booking, or a visit.

Record the enquiry wherever you record the others, since messages sitting in an app are invisible to whoever counts enquiries and to anybody covering next week.

Ask how they found you if it is not obvious, which feeds the measurement you should be doing anyway.

And treat the language people use in these messages as free research, because it is the plainest description of what customers want that you will get.

What people actually ask

Worth knowing before enabling it, because it sets expectations about what the channel is for.

The overwhelming majority are short and practical: are you open now, do you have this in stock, do you cover my area, how much is that, can you do it this week.

Very few are complex enquiries, and almost none are the detailed brief a business hopes for.

Which is useful, because it means most messages are answerable in one sentence by whoever is nearest, without needing the owner.

It also means the questions repeat, so three or four saved replies cover most of the volume and reduce the burden to something a busy counter can absorb.

The counter-case

There is a case for enabling it even where the answer above is marginal.

Some customers will not telephone under any circumstances, and for them a message button is the difference between an enquiry and nothing, which is worth something even at a slower response.

A clearly stated slow response time is also defensible: replying within one working day, said plainly in the greeting, is honest and serves people who are not in a hurry.

The failure mode is not slowness. It is silence combined with an implied promise.

Either commit to a response time you can meet and say what it is, or leave the channel off. What does not work is enabling it and hoping.

Deciding

1. Name who answers, before enabling anything.
2. Check notifications reach a device they watch.
3. Set an automatic greeting stating the wait.
4. Give a phone number for anything urgent.
5. Record messages with your other enquiries.
6. Arrange cover for holidays.
7. Switch it off if nobody is answering.

Step seven is a legitimate decision rather than a defeat, and it is better than leaving a channel unanswered.

The features arriving alongside the rename are covered in your listing changed its name this month.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.