The customer relationship world is in a profound (r)evolution.
New digital tools arise every day. From a leading trio of voice calls, SMS & e-mail we are moving to an endless scope of solutions: live chat, video calls, messenger, whatsapp, or even chatbots. All these new channels are now completing the previous ones.
Nonetheless, don’t think that Voice & SMS are kept away from this innovation wave. Many software driven solutions are finding clever ways to create amazing CRM scenarios with phone calls and SMS. Here are 5 examples of techniques that could enrich your customer relationship management.
First, what are programmable Voice and programmable SMS?
Programmable Voice refers to the ability to make, receive, control, and monitor calls via a software. More broadly it refers to all solutions enabling customer service scenarios involving voice.
Similarly, programmable SMS refers to all software-based messages scenarios. It namely involves A2P SMS scenarios (for Application to Person) and P2P SMS (person to person).
#Technique1
Two-way SMS
The two-way SMS systems enable your customers to answer back to your company SMS. Send through shortcodes or long phone numbers, they enable a “chat-like” experience. Therefore, through this kind of solutions, you can manage both inbound and outbound SMS (mobile terminated and mobile generated SMS). It can be a good way to enrich your communication. Companies like Twilio or Infobip offer very powerful two-way SMS.
#Technique2
REAL-TIME SPEECH RECOGNITION
Nowadays, the softwares transcribing voice into text are getting more and more accurate. Some start-ups find real-life uses of speech-to-text techniques, where an app captures your speech and returns it into text. A very relevant example is the start-up “Roger Voice” which enables deaf people to speak with call centers via an app. Roger Voice’s app captures the agent’s words and transcribes it into text. The user then types a response that is orally transmitted to the agent.
You can learn more by reading our article on Roger Voice.
#Technique3
EMERGENCY CALLS/SMS INCLUDING LOCATION DATA
Did you know that you could automatically send geo-location data through voice or SMS?
This solution existed for a while but was greatly improved by Google with its Advanced Mobile Location (AML). Pushing a certain button on an app can send an SMS or generate an automated call including location data. This call/SMS can actually be triggered by any specific action through an API. Thanks to this technology, emergency calls in the UK automatically generate an SMS with the geolocation of the caller. In the past, people in emergency situations were not always able to give their localization to the police or the hospital. Now the call center instantly receives the data, no matter what happens.
#Technique4
HOSTED TELEPHONY
Hosted telephony describes all the telephony intelligence enabled by a cloud PBX: forwarding a call, making group calls, enabling a group of phones to ring simultaneously… It generally applies to a set of phones within a company.
Hosted Telephony allows an impressive amount of techniques to make your working environment more intelligent. With “sequences” for instance, a customer will always have an answer: if employee A is not available, employee B will receive the call.
Learn more about the potential of Hosted Telephony
#Technique5
AUDIO PLAYBACK
Let’s finish with an obvious but crucial one. This might not be your favorite one. However, this programmable voice scheme plays a major role in today’s customer services. We are obviously talking about the voice messages that are pushed to you when you are calling a customer service. Audio Playbacks are recorded messages organized in a precise scheme. They can radically change a company’s call volumes and its efficiency. Most companies can take advantage of this technique to better filter inbound demands, but only the biggest one tend to do it. Have you considered it for your company?
And there is plenty more!
As you see programmable SMS or voice brings a layer of intelligence to your telecom services. If you have a project involving complex telecom scenarios, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We have more than ten years of experience in creating innovative telecom services.