Global media company TMC just named Zentrunk, Plivo’s cloud-based SIP trunking solution, a 2023 Communications Solutions Product of the Year. It’s a threepeat for us — in 2021 and 2022 we won for our SMS API.

Zentrunk has evolved in the last year, capped by announcements of our new Trunk Properties API and Call Object API. A recent blog post shows you how easy it is to manage Zentrunk from the Plivo console.

In its blog post announcing the award, TMC says, “Winners represent prominent players in the market who consistently demonstrate the advancement of technologies. Each recipient is a verifiable leader in the marketplace.”

“This list encompasses the true leaders within their market segments,” says Rich Tehrani, CEO, TMC. “Honorees truly represent the best-of-the-best communications products and solutions available today.” He called Zentrunk “truly an innovative product and is amongst the best communications products and services available on the market today.”

To see for yourself what the excitement is about, sign up today for a free trial.

If you’re planning a high-volume marketing campaign, you can save money by ensuring that the numbers you’re trying to reach are active and able to receive text messages. Number lookup can uncover deactivated numbers, landline numbers, and mobile numbers that can’t receive SMS.

Plivo introduced the Lookup API in 2020 to allow customers to programmatically determine information for any phone number worldwide. The Lookup API can also properly format numbers for use with our other APIs; improperly formatted numbers can cause calls and messages to fail. Number lookups also make economic sense in many regions, where the cost of a number lookup is less than the cost of sending a text.

What is number lookup?

You might be familiar with number lookup in the context of a reverse directory lookup, where, instead of finding a phone number for a name, you use the phone number to find out details about the person or business using it.

In the context of Plivo APIs, the Lookup API returns the phone number country, the number format, its carrier, and its type: fixed (landline), mobile, VoIP, or toll-free. Type is especially useful, as most landline numbers and many VoIP and toll-free numbers can’t accept SMS messages.  CPaaS platforms charge a fraction of a cent for every message sent, whether a number can accept SMS or not, so it’s worthwhile to eliminate invalid numbers from your target list.

For mobile numbers, the Lookup API relies on the Home Location Register, a global database that contains information about authorized subscribers to GSM (Global System for Mobile communication) networks. Fields returned include the mobile country code (MCC), mobile network code (MNC), and carrier name. These values map to fields of a unique ID for all mobiles phones — an International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI), which is associated with the SIM in the phone. The first three digits of the IMSI represent the MCC. The next two or three numbers represent the MNC. The remaining digits represent the Mobile Subscription Identification Number (MSIN) within the mobile operator’s customer base, a unique number that the carrier uses to identify a user’s mobile phone number.

Though it sounds as if the MSIN should be a subscriber’s mobile phone number, it’s not necessarily. When a subscriber changes their phone number, for example, they keep their original MSIN.

Lookup use cases

Number lookup can keep your business from wasting time and money sending text messages or making voice calls to invalid numbers or ones that have no value for your organization.

• Marketing — By looking up numbers and purging invalid ones from your database, you can save money by not contacting invalid numbers, and get higher response rates by eliminating the bad numbers before you reach out.
• Shipping and delivery — Number lookups confirm the validity of a customer’s contact phone, and while it can’t confirm a delivery address, it can serve as a first line of defense against fraud.
• Security — Many organizations use SMS to send one-time passwords to improve login security through two-factor authentication (2FA). It’s prudent to make sure that the numbers customers provide for this critical step are both valid and reachable. A similar argument applies to numbers supplied for logins to mobile apps.

Lookup on the Plivo console

While most people access it via code as part of their applications, you can do one-off lookups from the console. In the spirit of the console tours we did for SMS and voice, here’s a similar look at Lookup.

The Lookup Overview page is the fourth icon on the Plivo console menu. It displays a single screen.

A usage summary section tells you how many API requests you made in the last 7, 30, and 90 days.

Under that, another box lets you enter a phone number. Once you click Submit, the API retrieves information about the number, including its country, the number in various formats, and the carrier and number type, and displays it. Each lookup, whether executed in code or submitted via the console, costs 0.4 cents (US).

That’s all there is to it; we try to keep things simple around here.

Get started with Lookup

To get started with Plivo’s Lookup API, check out our documentation or read the FAQ page in our support portal.

To minimize spam texting in India, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) mandates that all entities that want to send SMS messages must register information such as their entity/organization and message templates on distributed ledger technology (DLT) platforms. Read our blog post for complete details.

Part of the registration process requires organizations to register message content templates. A content template includes the actual text of an SMS message to be sent, with space designated for variables where appropriate, such as an account number or balance.

SMS message content falls into four categories, and therefore so do content templates: transactional, service implicit, service explicit, and promotional. This table shows each type of content and shows how they differ from each other.

Finally, certain types of messages are always prohibited: political messaging during elections and gambling- and cryptocurrency-related content.

We’ve included all the information you need to know about registering on DLT platforms into an article in our support portal. It should guide you through registration for whichever content types you plan to use.

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From the day we arrive on the planet
And, blinking, step into the sun
There’s more to see than can ever be seen
More to do than can ever be done
— The Circle of Life

Just as there’s a circle of life that moves us all, so too is there a customer lifecycle for businesses. Marketing teams know that customers have to be acquired, supported, and retained to maximize customer lifetime value.

SMS can be a useful tool for every stage of the customer lifecycle.

Why SMS? Because everyone who owns a cellphone can use text messaging, and that means almost everyone there is. Worldwide, 91% of people have a cellphone; in the US, it’s 97%, and in India 96%. And SMS is most people’s preferred communication channel: According to Bloomreach, 90% of customers prefer text messages over phone calls, and 93% have more trust in text messages than in email. The average open rate for SMS marketing is 98%, and the average click-through rate is 19%. 95% of text messages are read and responded to within three minutes of being received.

How SMS helps at every stage

Once you accept the logic in using SMS for customer outreach, you can start thinking about ways to take advantage of it. We looked at a number of stages of the customer lifecycle and thought about ways SMS can help an organization.

Acquisition

SMS can be a key tool for raising awareness of a company’s offerings. You can use it to promote products or services through targeted SMS campaigns to attract new customers. You can also allow prospects to sign up for newsletters or special discounts by texting a keyword to a short code.

Onboarding

SMS is a vital part of many organizations’ onboarding process. You can send welcome SMS messages to new customers that include information about your products and services, as well as limited-time discounts or promotions to incentivize new customers to make their first purchases.

Engagement

Once you’ve acquired customers, you have to keep them engaged. You can use SMS to send notifications of upcoming sales, product launches, or in-store events, as well as targeted deals or discounts based on customers’ preferences or purchase history. You can also use it for two-way communication in the form of SMS surveys to gain customer feedback to improve products, services, and customer experiences.

Other forms of engagement are just good business practices. For example, you can provide shipping and order status updates as well as delivery notifications.

Some customers also appreciate payment reminders, while your accounts receivable staff would probably appreciate your sending overdue balance notices to customers.

Support

Even engaged customers run into trouble sometimes. SMS can serve as a secondary channel for support questions — probably not your primary, as you’re better off having customers submit support tickets so you can handle them with a defined process — but SMS can be a premium support channel, providing real-time assistance.

Retention

But support isn’t the only time you want to keep in touch with customers. You can foster higher retention rates by identifying and targeting inactive customers with SMS notifications about special promotions or offers to encourage them to re-engage. The same approach works for win-back campaigns, in which you reach out to past customers with incentives or offers.

Advocacy

If you’re very lucky, your customers will become your best salespeople. Use SMS to encourage satisfied customers to share their purchases or experiences on social media, which will raise brand awareness.

Make the most of SMS

SMS can help at every stage of the customer journey. But how do you get the most impact from using SMS campaigns? We’ve written a blog post on best practices for SMS to help you craft, format, and send great messages. It covers:

• the use of different number types (long codes, toll-free, and short codes)
• the importance of opt-in consent
• setting expectations for what customers can expect
• what not to do to avoid triggering a carrier review of your campaigns

You should also pay attention to regulations in the countries where you’re sending messages to. For instance, before you send messages to India, you must register on a DLT platform.

By integrating SMS into the customer lifecycle, businesses can foster stronger relationships with customers, enhance their experiences, and ultimately drive growth and profitability.

We began our tour last time with a look at what you can do on the Plivo console to monitor and manage our SMS API. The series continues here with a similar survey for our Voice API.

The Voice menu overview

To get to the Voice menu, visit the Plivo console and click on the second icon.

The console displays the Voice Overview page, which shows some basic usage information.

Advanced Insights

Moving to the next menu item takes you to the Advanced Insights page. It shows information that can help you identify call quality issues so you can fix them quickly.

XML and PHLO applications

The next menu choice brings you to a list of the Plivo XML applications and PHLOs associated with your account.  In Plivo parlance, an application is a set of answer, hangup, and message URLs that you use to control what happens to your incoming calls and messages, while our PHLO visual workflow design tool lets you build applications graphically. Clicking on an application name brings you to a screen of details about the application.

The entries in the Voice section of this page define URLs the application looks at in the event of an incoming call to that number or when the call is hung up. Upon receipt of an incoming call Plivo makes a synchronous HTTP request to your application using the URL specified in the Primary Answer URL field. The API expects an XML document in response. Plivo also sends a few parameters with the HTTP request that your application can act upon before responding.

If there were a URL specified for messaging it would work the same way. You can read more about the process in our documentation.

Endpoints

The next menu choice is Endpoints, which displays a list of SIP endpoints associated with your account. A SIP endpoint can be any IP phone, mobile phone, wireless device, or PC that uses Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) to perform communications operations.

Logs

Click on the Logs submenu to bring up the Voice log: a list of every voice API URL call made, which you can filter a number of ways or export for analysis elsewhere.

When you click on a call entry on the log page, you can see details about the call.

That’s a ton of information about the call itself — and if that doesn’t tell you enough, well, there’s more. A note in the last box on the page directs you to the call debug log entries. The debug log contains details for all callbacks that Plivo sends.

With all the information in the logs you should be able to understand any issues you encounter. (But if you need help, our support team is always here for you.)

In addition to call logs, we give you access to recording and transcription logs.

If you click on an item in the log, you can see details about that item.

Settings

The final group of menu items falls under the category of Settings. The first setting entry determines whether to use Call Insights. Because the feature is still in beta and therefore free to everyone, it’s enabled by default.

The Push Credentials screen lets you store the credentials you need if you’re working with Plivo’s iOS SDK or Android SDK. Once you have credentials issued by Apple and Google you can enter them here.

Geo Permissions can help you protect your account from fraud by restricting the set of countries your account can call. Get more information from our documentation.

Finally, Other Settings lets you enable destination number validation (which can give you better delivery rates and cost savings from not sending messages to numbers that are incapable of accepting them), enable HTTP Basic Auth on all GET recording media requests for enhanced security, and providing consent for Plivo to store and have access to logs and media packet capture files.

All about the console

That’s our quick tour of the Voice menus. To dig deeper, visit your console page and see what your data looks like. Also check out our other console tours of the SMS, Zentrunk, Number Lookup, and Phone Numbers menus. If you have any questions, you can find the answers in our documentation or on our support portal.

Outbound dialing? It’s more than a fancy way of saying making a phone call. Even though phones haven’t used a rotary dial in decades, we still dial in the word to refer to automation software for making calls: outbound dialers (OBD).

OBD software is commonly found in contact centers and sales engagement platforms, where it improves staff efficiency by reducing manual repetitive outbound calling, so that sales agents and customer service representatives can contact more customers within a given period of time.

In addition to serving as a tool for live representatives, outbound dialers can also be fully automated to deliver recorded telemarketing calls. An OBD can deliver a voice message — useful for things like product promotions; announcements, notifications, and alerts; and one-time passwords (OTP) used for two-factor authentication (2FA). A more sophisticated multilevel OBD can accept input from call recipients, like an interactive voice response (IVR) system, and so can be used for things like sending payment reminders with an option to make payments and gathering product or service feedback.

There’s also the hybrid approach, where an OBD makes an automated call, but the call recipient can press a key and be patched over to a live agent.

Why not use text messaging, which is many people’s preferred channel for communication nowadays, instead of dialing up a voice call? Voice messages can convey more information than a single character-limited text message. Depending on where you are and what number type you use, voice can be less expensive too — and making one voice call will almost always be less expensive than sending multiple SMS messages. Voice is also better for certain kinds of calls that demand a personal touch.

OBD use cases

Outbound dialers can save time in a number of use cases.

• Alerts and notifications

When companies need to tell a cohort of customers about a change that people might not be happy about, a voice call can provide more empathy than a text message. An airline might use OBD to send notice of flight delays; a salon might alert customers when a stylist calls in sick.

• Surveys and feedback

Most people don’t have the patience to provide feedback for you if you ask them via email or SMS, but a quick automated call where they can speak answers or press keypad keys is likely to get better engagement. (Quick is key.)

• Financial conversations

Discussions about things such as overdue bills are often better handled by a live agent than an impersonal text or email. OBDs can automatically dial phone numbers from a predefined list, eliminating the need for agents to manually dial.

Dialing modes

Different use cases lend themselves to different OBD modes. Call center managers generally refer to three modes: predictive, preview, and progressive.

1. Predictive

Predictive dialers can make many calls at one time. When someone answers, they’re connected with the next available agent. If no one answers, the software disconnects and moves to the next number in its calling queue. The goal is to maximize the productivity of call center agents by minimizing the time they spend waiting between calls and increasing the likelihood of reaching a live person on the other end of the line.

Predictive dialing is suitable for high-volume use cases with many available agents, in which agent efficiency is a priority, such as customer service follow-up, telemarketing, market research, and outbound sales prospecting.

A possible downside of predictive OBD is the risk of “dead air” for the called party. Predictive OBDs algorithmically determine when they should make a call based on metrics such as average call duration, abandonment rates, and agent skill levels. When they get the timing wrong, a call recipient can end up on the phone before an agent is available; most likely they’ll hang up.

2. Preview

With preview dialing, agents signal when they’re ready for a call. The dialer presents information about the contact being called, such as a customer name, account details, and previous call history. An agent can review the material before initiating a call.

Preview dialing can be advantageous in situations where a personalized approach is needed, such as in sales or collections calls, and when dealing with complex issues that require a full understanding of the contact situation. However, it results in lower call volume and lower efficiency than predictive OBD, as agents spend more time preparing for each call and manually initiating the dialing process.

3. Progressive

Progressive dialing, also known as power dialing, is similar to preview dialing in that agents indicate when they’re ready for the next call. The difference is that the agents receive information about the customer while a call is being made, rather than beforehand. This speeds up the outgoing call process, but gives less time for the agents to prepare.

Progressive dialers help agents maximize their time spent on the phone. This mode strikes a balance between the efficiency of predictive outbound dialing and the control offered by preview outbound dialing. It minimizes the risk of dropped or abandoned calls while still offering a degree of personalization and control for the agents.

Sales teams often use progressive dialing when they’re looking to renew or upsell customers.

OBD advantages

Whichever dialing mode you use, you’re likely to gain several benefits from OBD.

• Efficient call routing

OBDs can intelligently route calls to the appropriate agents based on factors such as skill level, availability, and language preferences. This ensures that customers are connected to the most suitable agent, improving the overall customer experience.

• Scalability

OBD software is designed to scale with a call center’s needs, making it suitable for growing organizations or those whose business cycle is seasonal. As the number of agents or call volume increases, the software can be adjusted to handle the growth.

• Real-time monitoring and reporting

Outbound dialers provide real-time monitoring and reporting tools to track agent performance, call outcomes, and other essential metrics. These insights enable call center managers to make data-driven decisions to optimize their operations.

• Compliance management

OBD software can include built-in compliance features to help call centers adhere to industry regulations and avoid potential legal issues. Compliance requirements may include call recording, call disposition tracking, and adherence to do not call (DNC) lists.

• CRM integration

Outbound dialers can be integrated with customer relationship management (CRM) systems, allowing agents to access customer information and history during calls. This integration helps agents deliver a personalized and efficient service, enhancing the customer experience.

However you use them, outbound dialers can help call centers automate and optimize their outbound calling processes, enabling them to enhance productivity, improve customer satisfaction, and elevate overall business performance.

Plivo’s Voice API is a great tool for writing OBD software — or if you prefer your outbound dialing pre-canned, we offer Contacto, a cloud call center application, and Sellular, a sales engagement platform for prospecting at scale.

The carriers responsible for toll-free text messaging in North America mandate verification of toll-free numbers before you can use a toll-free number to send application-to-person (A2P) messages. This change aligns toll-free messaging with 10DLC and short codes, which already have business verification measures in place. The intent is to ensure that message senders on all services are reviewed and that businesses that send messages are documented and verified.

The verification process involves the carrier responsible for verification reviewing the submitted information and either approving or rejecting the application. The process can take up to two weeks.

Irrespective of the volumes of application-to-peer (a2p) messages you intend to send on toll-free numbers, you must verify each toll-free number.

Plivo recommends that you begin sending messages only after a toll-free number has been verified.

How to get toll-free numbers verified

Verified numbers are subject to the least amount of filtering — but that doesn’t mean customers can use them in unapproved ways. All messaging must still comply with best practices for A2P messaging and must not be used for any use case that is not allowed by carriers in the US or Canada.

Once verified, a number does not need to be re-verified for the same use case in the future. If you want to use any given toll-free number for a different or an additional use case, you should submit a new verification request. Failure to do so can be considered noncompliance by the carriers and may result in your messaging services being suspended.

We’ve written about the FCC’s mandate for US telecom service providers (TSP) to implement STIR/SHAKEN — two technical frameworks that attempt to authenticate calling numbers and measure trust in displayed caller names. We’ve been remiss at noting that Canada too has jumped on the STIR/SHAKEN train.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) Decision 2021-123 “directs telecommunications service providers (TSPs) to implement STIR/SHAKEN to authenticate and verify caller identification (ID) information for Internet Protocol (IP)-based voice calls as a condition of offering and providing telecommunications services, effective 30 November 2021.” In other words, any Canadian carrier whose calls traverse IP networks in whole or in part must implement STIR/SHAKEN.

On May 31, 2022, TSPs were required to file their first post-implementation STIR/SHAKEN status reports with the CRTC. Reports are filed every six months.

An end to call spoofing?

Unfortunately, STIR/SHAKEN doesn’t guarantee that no calls will be spoofed. Even if calls are made and terminated on IP networks, if they’re interconnected via time-division multiplexing (TDM) on the public switched telephone network (PSTN), STIR/SHAKEN attribution information won’t be carried over. And calls from numbers outside the US and Canada, from countries that haven’t implemented STIR/SHAKEN, won’t carry attestation information either.

Still, it’s a start, and we expect more accurate attribution information on a higher percentage of voice calls as carriers do a better job of implementing the protocols.

While STIR/SHAKEN technology can uncover call spoofing, it doesn’t stop it or reduce the number of times it occurs. That will take additional standards that have yet to be written. For now, consumers can rely on smartphone apps like Truecaller, Hiya, and a host of others that let people identify incoming calls as possible spam and potentially automatically block them or send them to voicemail.

Plivo has been compliant with STIR/SHAKEN regulations since they rolled out, so you can be sure that any calls you make using Plivo’s Voice API and phone numbers rented from Plivo will have the highest possible levels of attestation

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) mandates that all organizations that want to send SMS to phones in India via domestic messaging register on distributed ledger technology (DLT) platforms. Sender registration and whitelisting is designed to curb unsolicited commercial communication (UCC), control promotional spam, and reduce SMS fraud.

The size of the commercial communication market in India makes spam a giant problem. The country has 1.2 billion mobile subscribers who send and receive more than 30 billion messages per month. Not all of those messages are welcome, however.

DLT is a blockchain-based registration system that, for TRAI, records details about organizations, headers, consent information, and message templates. By following the rules around DLT registration, businesses that engage in telemarketing can ensure that their messages reach their target recipients.

We’ve written a post in our support portal that walks Indian businesses through the process of registering using any of four telecom providers’ portals. The process involves

1. Obtaining an Entity ID
2. Registering headers
3. Registering consent templates and content templates

Step 1 — Register an Entity ID

An Entity ID is a 19-digit number that uniquely identifies a business. Once you’ve obtained it, you can use your Entity ID for all future header and template registrations. You’ll need several documents to obtain an Entity ID:

• Business PAN, a government-issued permanent account number. You can register for a PAN online.
• GST or TAN certificate. GST stands for Goods and Service Tax, and TAN is Tax Deduction and Collection Account Number. As you can for a PAN, you can register for a GST or TAN certificate online.
• Letter of Authorization allowing an individual to register on behalf of the business.
• Government-issued ID for the authorized individual.

Step 2 — Register headers

Once you’ve obtained an Entity ID you should register your headers. Headers are simply sender IDs for the numbers you plan to use to send text messages. To avoid confusion among message recipients, you may not use look-alike headers that differ only in their use of uppercase and lowercase letters.

Step 3 — Register templates

The next step is to register consent templates and content templates. A consent template is a standard message that’s sent to users to get their consent to receive communications from enterprises. There’s no limit on the number of consent templates you can create. After consent templates are approved by the registrar, you can link them to content templates.

A content template is the actual text of an SMS message. Content templates can include variables, so you can show where specific values are supposed to go in your messages; for example, “your verification code is {#var#}.”

There are four types of content templates:

• Transactional — messages that contain a one-time password (OTP) required to complete a banking or credit or debit card transaction initiated by a bank customer
• Service implicit — any message arising out of customers’ actions or their existing relationship with the enterprise, and that is not promotional
• Service explicit — messages that require explicit consent from customers. This category includes service messages that don’t fall under the service-implicit category.
• Promotional — messages intended to promote or sell products, goods, or services. Service content mixed with promotional content is treated as promotional.

Our support post shows examples of each, and presents a list of dos and don’ts for both consent templates and content templates. For consent templates, for instance, choose a logical short name for each consent template; that’ll help you choose the right consent template to associate with content templates. In your consent template, include the brand name that’s relevant to the scope of the consent, along with a complete description of what you’re asking consent for. For example, “We would like to send marketing offers and events to our registered customers” or “We need your consent to send you messages about your account as well as marketing offers.”

After consent templates are approved by the registrar, you can link them to content templates in promotional or service categories. As with consent templates, use relevant and recognizable names for content templates. You can insert a variable placeholder {#var#} to stand in for values such as dates, amounts, account numbers, names, and one-time passwords. Each content template may be associated with only a single header; don’t use the same content template with multiple headers.

Making registration easy

We’ve done our best to make the multi-step DLT registration process as simple as possible. If you follow the instructions in our support post you should have no trouble registering your business, so you can send text messages to domestic Indian phone numbers in compliance with TRAI DLT regulations.

The good news is that DLT registration is working. Since the government imposed its mandate, more than 2.5 million principal entities have obtained IDs. They’ve registered more than 600,000 headers and generated more than 5,500,000 approved message templates. All of this activity has yielded a welcome reduction in the number of customer complaints about registered telemarketers.