SMS Central is perfect for quick communication with your customers over SMS texts. Unlike email, SMS messages have an extremely high open rate (usually greater than 99%) and 90% are read within 3 minutes of delivery. This makes SMS ideal for delivering important information from business applications to your customers. Your customers can also text information back which can then be recorded in your business systems.
SMS Central can send notifications to your customer
- Notify customers of pending field service visit or changes in date/time
- Notify customers of product shipment
- Notify customers of tracking information or delivery
- Schedule automatic follow up messages to customers after a service call or support incident is closed
- Send images to field staff so they can see what the customer has reported needs work
- Send images to customers showing damages found, repairs needed, proposed work site
- Get customer approval on completed work displayed in images sent to their phones
Appointment Reminders and Confirmations
- Send customers messages when a service call is scheduled
- Send an automatic service call appointment reminders prior to scheduled visit
- Have customers confirm they can be available for a service call (if required)
- Have customers confirm site will be ready for the service call
- Send customers notices when service calls need to be delayed or changed
- Have customers confirm service call date/time changes
Photos
- Get photos from customers of damages, repair sites, or other useful images
- Get GPS coordinates of mobile images for proof of location, tracking movement
- Get before/after service photos as proof of work
- Read barcodes using only a mobile phone camera and record results in business application (GPS coordinates are also available on barcode images)
- Send images to customers showing damages found, repairs needed, proposed work site
- Get customer approval on completed work displayed in images sent to their phones
There are many times where someone out in the field doesn’t have access to a field service app. Or doesn’t need one. SMS is one of the easiest ways for relaying information.
Catalina Technology’s SMS Central now automates communication between systems like help desks, dispatch, CRM, service, and others by giving two-way communication between the technician or sales guy, in the field, and your back-office system.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZpH4pifoCE]
This means that you can send dispatch SMS notifications and the person receiving those SMS messages can then respond to them by simply replying to the text message. SMS Central will update the back-office system based on the mobile user’s SMS reply. All without any special app.
1. Create a service call in your dispatch or other system
- Create a service call, sales opportunity, customer service case, etc. in your back-office system system like you always do.
- Assign it to one or more people.
- SMS Central will automatically pick this up, from your system, and send as an SMS Text Message to the assigned people.
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2. SMS Central then automatically sends an SMS message, from your back-office system, to the assigned person
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- Send to any phone with SMS (even including old flip phones).
- Can be done hands free with Siri, Cortana, or Google Assistant to do voice response of texts!
- Customize the messages that are sent out.
- Your field personnel can actually respond to the SMS message with customizable acceptable responses like “Yes”, “No”, “In route”, “can’t make it”, or any other response you want.
- If the person doesn’t respond to the message, SMS central has routing and escalation capability to send to others.
- Responses can even include pictures, files, video, GPS coordinates, or other attachments. SMS Central will save this for you.
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3. SMS Replies are automatically routed back to your system!
- Your system is automatically updated based on the response that was sent back.
- Any additional replies to this SMS text thread will be logged as notes or history in your system.
- Attachments such as pictures, files, video, voice, and GPS coordinates will be stored and tied to the service call.
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