One of the many benefits SMS offers to businesses is its ability to create two-way customer conversations in real-time.
Text messaging can be an interactive channel that connects brands with their audience through personalised, contextual conversations rather than one-way simple sends.
Textlocal’s SMS solution makes it easy to respond to inbound enquiries and enables businesses to include additional content such as attachments, links and vouchers to create more engaging experiences for your users.
Our Messenger platform provides several ways to manage and achieve the process of replying to customers.
Automated SMS responses
Businesses can choose to apply automatic responses to keywords or inbound messages to point customers in the direction of self-service options where applicable, share links to helpful information or simply thank them for getting in touch. The content of your responses can be personalised further using built-in merge fields to deliver value as well as encouraging customer retention.
Automated SMS responses can also include PDFs, links and other attachments to support the sharing of everything from menus to price lists and important documents.
Forwarding inbound replies
To help ensure no customer enquiry is missed, you can choose to forward any inbound responses to an email address, mobile number or contact group. This way, your team are alerted to incoming messages which can be picked up and dealt with as needed, delivering a higher level of customer service.
What’s more, your team don’t need to be logged into the platform to monitor these messages, meaning you’re aware of issues, questions or feedback wherever you are, making it the ideal solution for flexible working environments.
For businesses opting to forward responses to an email address, our Email to SMS Gateway can help keep the conversation without the need to log back into the platform. Once the integration is set up, you can respond to inbound messages from your email account and your sends will be converted in SMS.
Simple reply service
If when sending a message, businesses decide they would like their customers to be able to respond to their send, all they need to do is select the Simple Reply Service as their sender name within Messenger when constructing the text.
Messenger allocates an available inbound number that will enable replies, all inbound responses will then be stored in the simple reply service inbox within your account.
As an alternative to the Simple Reply Service, Messenger users can purchase a Dedicated Inbound Number (DIN) which looks like a mobile number and replies are routed directly to your Messenger inbox. In the same way, this option would just need to be selected when setting up your send.
The opportunities of SMS go far beyond single send communications, providing businesses like yours with the ability to have content-rich conversations that add real value to the experience of your users.
Ready to take your SMS campaigns to the next level? Visit our extensive knowledge base for more information on setting up and managing inbound responses. Don’t forget our support team are always on hand to help guide you through the key steps of SMS success.
