If you’re in a financial services business, you know that few things are as personal to customers as their money. Your job may be to help them make wise financial decisions, but you also have to be prepared for time-critical incidents, as when someone is locked out of their account or when thousands of customers are panicking during a market meltdown. Whether it’s business as usual or exceptional circumstances, you need to put customer needs first.

Putting customers first helps every business, but it’s particularly important for financial services companies, because they deal with their customers on a very personal level. Financial services concerns are just as intimate as healthcare issues, and just as likely to be messy if things go wrong.

People such as bankers, insurance agencies, and accountants are personally involved with their customers’ money. Stockbrokers, investment advisors, and mortgage lenders and payment service providers all need to take a sensitive approach to working with customers.

To take a customer-first perspective, you first have to get to know your customers. Start with their demographics, but go beyond that to their emotions. What do they like and dislike? Why would they choose your company over a competitor’s? Uncovering this information doesn’t benefit just you; customers expect you to understand who they are, what they stand for, and why they do business with you.

Like most consumers, financial services customers expect excellent customer service and personalized communications. This expectation for personal attention may seem to be in conflict with businesses’ need for automation, but it doesn’t have to be. You can use customer relationship management (CRM) software or home-grown applications to automate your communications and give customers exactly what they’re looking for. Better yet, you may be able to give customers things they need before they realize they need them.

The best technology for customer communications

Customers appreciate businesses that use the latest technology to make their relationship between you easier. While we’re not yet ready for mass communication via the metaverse (whatever that is) or virtual reality, we have reached critical mass for other communications channels.Some financial institutions are exploring the use of VR videos for virtual branch tours or product demonstrations, offering an immersive experience to customers.

Text messaging (officially SMS) has become most people’s preferred communications channel. According to Slicktext, “85% of customers in 2022 prefer receiving text messages over a phone call or email.” That means customer-first financial services businesses need to deliver information and alerts via SMS. Plivo’s SMS API and cloud communications platform are an excellent way to do that.

Text messaging is particularly useful when time is of the essence. According to TechJury, SMS messages have a 98% open rate — higher than email or voice calls — and 60% of customers read texts five minutes after receiving them. That makes texting the best medium for notifications and alerts. Having said that, though, you should be sure that your SMS API provider also offers a voice API as an option for customers who can’t receive texts, or who simply prefer hearing (literally) from you.

Of course businesses can leverage SMS for many use cases. Consider security, which is particularly important when customers’ money is on the line. You can offer two-factor authentication for customer accounts by texting customers a passcode that they need to use to authenticate themselves. In fact your security team may already do this, in which case adding texting for customer communications could hardly be simpler.

Once you have the software tools for texting, the use cases begin to write themselves.

• Financial advisors can send alerts in the event of technical outages or market movements.
• Stockbrokers can share required disclosures, market holidays, and research reports.
• Banks and credit card issuers can send notifications for things such as low balances, overdrafts, and suspicious activity on accounts.

Looking ahead

While today’s tools work well today, things change. Consider how the communications landscape has evolved in just the last decade. To stay relevant, businesses have to ask customers how they want to be treated. What information do they need, how often, and via what channels? You need to actively solicit feedback from customers on a regular basis — simple “let us know what you think” messages seldom provide useful insights. Here again, use the channels customers most want to use to communicate — starting with SMS — until their feedback tells you it’s time to change.

Finally, stay true to your company’s mission and values. Go back to why your company exists, and do things that enhance desirable outcomes for your business and your customers. Once you can check off all of these boxes, you can consider yourself a customer-first business.

If you’re ready to learn more, consider the advantages of Plivo’s APIs for financial services businesses.

If you run a small business, you might be tempted to use your personal phone for work — but you may have privacy concerns, and justifiably so. Putting your personal number out in the world makes it easy for strangers to track you down. No one wants an unhappy customer unexpectedly ringing their doorbell after sunset.

For improved privacy, you can set up a virtual phone number — a number that’s not associated with any of your accounts or your physical location but that forwards to your real number. You can give out this virtual number without compromising your privacy.

Though it’s not our primary business, Plivo lets customers set up a virtual number. You do have to be a customer, which means signing up with your work email address. If your company is already a Plivo customer, think of privacy-oriented virtual numbers as a fringe benefit.

Renting a virtual phone number isn’t free, but it’s cheap and easy. Go to the Phone Numbers page of the Plivo console and click Buy Number, then pick the country where you want to be from, virtually. Suppose you’re in the US and want to be seen as someone from eastern Massachusetts. Enter 508, representing the local area code, in the Number box, or change the drop-down selection to Location and enter “Massachusetts” (if you can spell it). Then click Search.

Plivo will present you with a list of numbers you can rent. You can see whether they support voice, SMS, and MMS, and see the monthly fee for each available number.

As you can see, the price for a local number that supports both voice and messaging is just half a dollar a month — less than the cost of a postage stamp. (Remember when we used to send postal mail?) Click Buy Number, and voilà — instant phone number.

How to forward a virtual number

Once you have a number it’s simple to put it to use by setting up forwarding from your instant virtual number to your real number. Your forwarding destination can be a fixed or mobile number or even a SIP endpoint. Follow our use case guide for Plivo’s no-code tool PHLO to set up the connection in less than five minutes. Then, every time the virtual number rings, the call will get forwarded to your real number.

If you’re more interested in using a virtual number for messaging, make sure you rent a number with SMS capabilities and follow our use case guide for forwarding SMS messages.

Note that in either case you don’t have to write any program code or create XML files to make forwarding work. At Plivo, we like to make things easy for our users.

A virtual number gives small business owners convenience and flexibility. You can change the forwarding number whenever you want to, so you can have someone else field inquiries late in the day, or when your primary contact goes on vacation.

Want to turn your virtual number into a temporary number? Go back to the Phone Numbers page of the console, put a tick next to the number, and from the Choose Action drop-down pick Unrent Numbers. If you later need a new virtual number you can run a new search and rent a new number.

Bear in mind that this approach lets you forward incoming calls and messages to a real number. Outgoing calls and messages? That’s a whole other battle to fight, but there are other ways to preserve your privacy when you need to call or send SMS messages.

For calls, you can temporarily block caller ID by pressing *67 before you key in the phone number you want to call, or block caller ID permanently through phone settings. Of course, that’ll make your call appear as “Private” or “Anonymous” to the call recipient, which means they might not pick up, but hey, that’s why Ma Bell created voicemail. If you want to send anonymous text messages, you can find apps in your favorite app store for that.

SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) is a signaling protocol that enables businesses to use Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) as a replacement for plain old telephone service (POTS) over the public switched telephone network (PSTN). SIP supports voice calls, video conferencing, instant messaging, and media distribution. SIP trunking, which replaces the cable trunks that phone companies used to run to office buildings, offers businesses advantages over traditional telephony such as quick provisioning, low costs, and no equipment to procure or maintain.

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The SIP registration process

SIP endpoints, a.k.a. IP phones, can be anywhere on the internet. Most IP phones don’t have a fixed IP address, so each SIP endpoint needs to register its IP address and port number with a central server called a Registrar so other endpoints can find it when they want to connect. A REGISTER message creates a bond between the device and a SIP Address of Record (AOR) in the format sip:user@domain (e.g. 2025551234@sip.plivo.com), which another endpoint can use to reach the registered device.

When someone starts up an IP phone, whether it’s a hardware device or a softphone, the registration process generally begins automatically, per the SIP standard. SIP registrations have an expiration timeout value — typically 60 minutes, but registration timeouts vary among SIP device vendors. IP phones have to reregister before the timer expires or their connection is disconnected, so most IP phones automatically repeat the registration process halfway through the registration period, or every 30 minutes.

SIP benefits

So much for getting started on the technical side of the SIP registration process — why get started with the technology at all?

Agility - With SIP trunking, businesses can add numbers easily whenever they need them, and each number can make and receive unlimited local and long-distance calls.

Scalability - You can add as many numbers as you need, and drop them when the need goes away. You pay only for what you use.

Mobility — With a regular PSTN phone number you can only make and receive calls from wherever your phone is. A SIP endpoint can move to almost any device, so employees can be reached when they’re in the office or working from a coffee shop.

Manageability — Working with the phone company can make you want to tear your hair out. Managing SIP trunks is much easier and less time-consuming.

Cost savings — Pricing for SIP lines is attractive. With Plivo, businesses pay a minuscule monthly fee and less than a penny a minute (in the US; pricing varies by country) for outgoing voice calls, which is less than the cost of a call on a number leased from a phone company.

SIP trunking offers another cost advantage — no hardware phones necessary. Any network device with a microphone and speakers can act as a softphone. That saves companies the cost of procuring and maintaining telephones — though if you prefer to have a separate device for phone calls, you can buy SIP handsets.

Virtual local presence — You can use SIP phone numbers with any area code and exchange that your provider offers. That means you can seem to be local to your customers, who tend to like doing business with local companies, even if you’re based far away.

If all of this sounds worthwhile, you should look into Zentrunk, Plivo’s SIP trunking service. If you’re already a Zentrunk customer, we have SIP registration instructions that show and tell you exactly how to register a SIP endpoint.

Most physicians’ offices already send appointment reminders, and for good reason. Research in the National Library of Medicine “found consistent evidence that all types of reminder systems are effective at improving appointment attendance across a range of healthcare settings and patient populations. … Unless otherwise indicated, all patients should receive a reminder to facilitate attendance at their healthcare appointment.”

Researchers also found text messaging was the most effective way to remind patients: “SMS reminders are reported to have successful contact rates of 97%–99%.”

Does your electronic medical record (EMR) system let you send appointment reminder texts? If not, it’s easy to add that capability with Plivo’s SMS API. We’ve written a getting started guide that shows just how easy it is for developers to add text messaging to existing application code. Plivo provides SDKs for the seven most widely used web development languages, including Python, Ruby, and Java.

Implementing appointment reminders is technically easy, but you should follow some best practices for optimal results. These practices apply to any kind of business in which customers make appointments — not just healthcare communication but also hair stylists, tax professionals, and even restaurants that accept reservations.

What is an appointment reminder text?

An appointment reminder text is just what it sounds like—a short message sent to a person reminding them about an upcoming appointment. These messages are typically sent via SMS to conveniently make sure someone doesn't forget about their scheduled meeting, salon appointment, medical consultation, or other type of event.

Medical appointment reminders are used specifically by clinics, doctor’s offices, hospitals and other health institutions to schedule or confirm follow-ups, routine checkups, or specialist consultations. Medical appointment reminders take the same format as, say, a salon appointment reminder. However, these texts have to comply with HIPAA regulations.

Why do some clients prefer text message reminders over call and email?

There are several reasons why some people prefer to get text message reminders rather than email or calls. Text messages are convenient and non-disruptive: they can be read when the client has a free moment and don’t require immediate action, especially if received during work hours. Text messages are also quick and easy to respond to if someone needs to reschedule or cancel their appointment.

Text messages are also one of the most effective ways to reach clients. More than 80% of consumers check their texts within five minutes of receiving a notification. Text messages typically have higher open rates than emails, which can get lost in cluttered inboxes. 

Finally, text messages are accessible to virtually anyone with a basic mobile phone — no internet is needed. Text messages may be the easiest way to communicate, especially for medical patients with hearing impairments.

How do you write an appointment reminder text message?

Appointment text messages should be clear, straightforward, and to the point. The most important thing is to include the following information:

• Time and date of the appointment
• Your business name
• How to reschedule or cancel

Some businesses include the appointment location (address) to make it convenient for clients to find them. Note that SMS messages have a limit of 20-40 words; as a result, stick to the most important information with a way for clients to get in touch if they need more details.

Examples of appointment reminder texts

Here are a few templates that you can customize to send appointment reminders to your clients.

Example 1: Hi, [Name]! You have an upcoming appointment on [Date] at [Time] with [Business Name]. Please respond 1 to confirm, 2 to cancel and 3 to reschedule. We look forward to seeing you soon!

Example 2: Hi [Name], this is a friendly reminder that your appointment is on [Date] at [Time]. You can find us at [Address]. If you can no longer attend, please call us at [Phone Number]. We look forward to seeing you soon!

Example 3: Hi [Name], I’m with [Business Name] reaching out to remind you that your appointment is on [Date] at [Time]. Please let us know within 24 hours if you need to cancel or reschedule. Thank you!

Best practices for text message reminders

1. Be timely

Medical offices and most other businesses should send a reminder 24 hours before the appointment. If your office charges a fee for last-minute cancellations, send the reminder 24 hours before the fee would kick in. That gives the patient enough time to cancel or reschedule.

2. Be personal

Include the recipient’s name so that the recipient knows the message is coming to the right person, even if they’re forgotten all about the appointment.

3. Be precise

Include all of the facts they need to know — not just the appointment time but the location. You can also remind them to bring proof of insurance. If there are special considerations, such as a nearby detour for ongoing roadwork or a closed parking garage, include that information as well if you want your patients to be on time.

4. Be professional

Appointment reminder messages should be conversational in tone — friendly and professional. Nobody wants a machine-generated text that sounds like it was generated by a machine.

5. Be compliant

Make sure you comply with legal and regulatory SMS messaging compliance requirements in your country. If you send appointment reminders through Plivo’s Premium Communications Network, we’ll make sure you stay in compliance with rules about the volume of messages you send and allowed times of day. It’s your responsibility to stay compliant with message content. For example, in the US, to comply with HIPAA, you should avoid including any personally identifiable information or protected health information in the body of the reminder text. (That’s good advice no matter where you are.)

6. Ask for confirmation

How will you know your patient has seen your message? Provide a keyword they can use to confirm that they plan to come in. It can be as simple as “Reply Y to confirm or N to cancel.” You can also supply your phone number in case they have questions or need to reschedule.

7. Have a backup

If a patient doesn’t have a cellphone, or if you get a notification of an SMS delivery failure, you should be able to generate a voice reminder with the same information using machine-generated text-to-speech technology.

Here’s an example of a reminder message that touches all the bases.

Sam, your appointment with Dr. Adams is tomorrow at 11:45 at Adams Medical, 123 Main St, Springfield. Reply Y to confirm or N to cancel, or call us at 610-555-3456. Please bring your insurance card and a photo ID.

Benefits of patient and medical appointment reminders

Patient appointment reminders benefit health institutions and their clients alike. 

Reminders help patients keep track of their appointments, reducing the chance of forgetting a check-up. Making sure patients make it to their appointment is critical for improving health outcomes, since these check-ups help patients stick to their treatment plans and give doctors greater visibility. SMS medical reminders also improve communication, keeping patients organized with pre-appointment information and instructions. Knowing they will receive a reminder can reduce anxiety associated with remembering appointments.

For healthcare providers, medical appointment reminders reduce no-shows, thereby helping use resources more efficiently and helping staff members better manage doctor and nurse schedules. Consistent appointment attendance leads to smoother patient flow and a more organized practice.

By reducing wasted appointment slots, reminders contribute to a more efficient healthcare system. Reducing no-shows and improving efficiency can lead to significant cost savings for the healthcare system as a whole.

How to write HIPAA-compliant appointment reminders

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) does permit medical providers to send medical appointment reminders. As long as treatment details are not in the text content, appointment reminders can be made without an authorization. This means appointment reminders are “opt-out” — you can send them to patients without getting permission. To protect patient privacy, it’s ideal to send messages over a secure network. 

Here’s an example of a HIPAA-compliant appointment reminder. 

‍Hello [Name], this is a reminder for your upcoming appointment with [Doctor/Practice Name] on [Date and Time]. Please reply YES to confirm.

Key features of effective reminder tools

Medical appointment reminder tools are only useful if they work — meaning complex features, integrations, and steep learning curves can all make these tools not worth the effort. Here are a few key features to look for when assessing if a medical appointment reminder tool will alleviate admin for your team. 

1. Easy integrations: Look for a tool that integrates with your electronic health record (EHR) and calendar systems to automate reminders as much as possible. 
2. Multi-channel options: Platforms that allow you to send reminders via SMS, voice, WhatsApp, or email can help ensure patients receive updates on their preferred channel. 
3. Customizable templates: Look for reminder templates that include dynamic fields that incorporate client names and details from your EHR. Some templates can also be customized with branding and logos. 
4. User-friendly: Appointment reminders should be easy for patients and providers alike. Make sure your reminders are accessible to everyone — regardless of ability or tech fluency. 
5. Automated follow-ups: Look for tools that not only remind users of upcoming appointments but also of post-appoinntment next steps. 

More advanced tools will include advancements such as: 

• AI-driven reminders for predictive scheduling and personalization.
• Analytics to optimize timing and improve message effectiveness.
• Integration with patient portals and mobile apps for seamless communication.

Conclusion

These simple rules will ensure your reminder texts help patients keep the appointments they made. Sign up for Plivo — it’s free to try — and review our sample message notification code to get started.

Last year, we were delighted when Plivo won the Appealie Overall SaaS Award in the Development and DevOps category. Well, it’s happened again: New year, same award.

The Appealie is awarded annually to SaaS applications that demonstrate excellence through innovation, customer delight, and dedication to constant improvement. This year, innovation was a big component for Plivo — and as for customer delight, we’ve been No. 1 in customer satisfaction on G2 for eight consecutive quarters.

“We were honored to win last year,” says Venky B, Plivo co-founder and CEO, “but we couldn’t have repeated without a strong effort on the part of everyone in the company. Since last year we’ve launched a long list of new features for our customers.”

The list of new features includes:

• 10DLC console registration
• 10DLC API
• Self-service phone number port-in
• Hosted messaging
• Called ID Name (CNAM) registration

“Looking back, we put in a lot of effort,” Venky says, “but we’re not going to rest here. If you check in with us a year from now you’re going to see the result of many more amazing initiatives that are already in the works.”

In the post announcing the winners, Arabella Solaybar of Appealie says, “As the cloud continues to grow, user expectations are also growing. Our highly selective software award honors customer-obsessed SaaS platforms that deliver extraordinary experiences and results.”

According to the awards criteria, and “as an indicator of Appealie’s SaaS Award selectivity, the Overall SaaS Award winners averaged over 4.6 stars on the most popular software review platforms (G2, Capterra, and GetApp — all of which use a 5-star rating scale).” The Appealie SaaS Awards recognized 42 SaaS apps this year for their demonstrated excellence and customer outcomes.

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

Migrating from Telnyx to Plivo is a seamless and painless process. The two companies’ API structures, implementation mechanisms, and SMS and MMS message processing are similar. We wrote this technical comparison between the Telnyx and Plivo APIs so that you can scope the changes for a seamless migration.

Understanding the differences between Telnyx and Plivo development

Most of the APIs and features that are available on Telnyx are also available on Plivo, and the steps involved are almost identical. This table gives a side-by-side comparison of the two companies’ features and APIs. An added advantage with Plivo is that not only can you code using the old familiar API method, you can also implement your use cases using PHLO (Plivo High Level Objects), a visual workflow builder that lets you create workflows by dragging and dropping components onto a canvas — no coding required.

Plivo account creation

Start by signing up for a free trial account that you can use to experiment with and learn about our services. The free trial account comes with free credits, and you can add more as you go along. You can also add a phone number to your account to start testing the full range of our voice and SMS features. A page in our support portal walks you through the signup process.

You can also port your numbers from Telnyx to Plivo, as we explain in this guide.

Migrating your SMS application

You can migrate your existing application from Telnyx to Plivo by refactoring the code, or you can try our intuitive visual workflow builder PHLO. To continue working with the APIs, use one of the quickstart guides to set up a development environment for your preferred language. Plivo offers server SDKs in seven languages: PHP, Node.js, .NET, Java, Python, Ruby, and Go. For another alternative that lets you evaluate Plivo’s SMS APIs and their request and response structure, use our Postman collections.

How to send an SMS message

Let’s take a look at the process of refactoring the code to migrate your app from Telnyx to Plivo to set up a simple cURL application to send an SMS message by changing just a few lines of code.

    import telnyx

telnyx.api_key = "<api_key>"

telnyx.Message.create(
    from_='<sender_id>',
    to='<destination_number>',
    text="Hello, from Python!",
)
   

    import plivo

client = plivo.RestClient('<auth_id>','<auth_token>')
response = client.messages.create(
    src='<sender_id>',
    dst='<destination_number>',
    text='Hello, from Python!',)
print(response)

‍

Alternatively, you can implement the same functionality using one of our PHLO templates. For example, if you want to send an SMS message, your PHLO would look like this.

Migrating your MMS application

How to send an MMS message

Let’s take a look at the process of refactoring the code to migrate another application from Telnyx to Plivo — a simple cURL application to send an MMS message — by changing just a few lines of code.

    import requests

profile_secret = '<YOUR_MESSAGING_PROFILE_SECRET>'

headers = {
    'x-profile-secret': profile_secret,
}
url = 'https://sms.telnyx.com/messages'
payload = {
    "from": "<sender_id>",
    "to": "<destination_number>",
    "body": {
        "subject": "Hello",
        "media_urls": [
            {"img": "https://media.giphy.com/media/26gscSULUcfKU7dHq/source.gif"}
        ]
    }
}

response = requests.post(
    url,
    headers=headers,
    json=payload
)

print(response.text)
   

    import plivo
    client = plivo.RestClient('<auth_id>','<auth_token>')

    response = client.messages.create(
        src='<sender_id>',
        dst='<destination_number>',
        Text ='Hello',
    media_urls=['https://media.giphy.com/media/26gscSULUcfKU7dHq/source.gif'],
        type_='mms')
    print(response)

‍

Alternatively, you can implement the same functionality using one of our PHLO templates. For example, if you want to send an MMS message, your PHLO would look like this.

More use cases

You can migrate applications for other use cases too:

• Reply to incoming SMS messages
• Two-factor authentication
• Forward incoming SMS messages
• Delivery reports
• SMS alerts
• SMS marketing
• SMS notifications
• SMS survey
• SMS autoresponder
• Forward SMS to email
• Receive MMS

Porting your existing numbers from Telnyx to Plivo

If you want to continue using your phone numbers from Telnyx, you can port the numbers to Plivo painlessly without having any downtime on your service for your customers. Our number porting guide shows you how to initiate the process.

Buy new phone numbers for your migrated app

Those are the basics for migrating from Telnyx to Plivo. Our simple APIs work in tandem with our comprehensive global network, using Plivo’s premium direct routes that guarantee the highest possible delivery rates and the shortest possible delivery times for your SMS messages, making Plivo the best Telnyx alternative. See for yourself — sign up for a free trial account.

Almost every kind of business, from retail to real estate, can use a cloud communications platform to enhance revenue and save time and money. Today we’ll look at some of the ways healthcare businesses can benefit from Plivo’s healthcare communication APIs.

Automation for the win

For any medical organization, whether it’s a physician’s office, dental practice, pharmacy, or clinical lab, patient service is the top priority. Adding automated messaging and voice capabilities to your applications lets you improve communication with the people who need your services. Think of all the common ways you provide information to patients — they all can be enhanced with a communications platform as a service (CPaaS). You can create programs to

• Send medical appointment reminder texts
• Send prescription status update notifications
• Send links to a portal where patients can see lab results

Chances are you already use an electronic medical records (EMR) system, but does it do all that you want? A CPaaS can let you communicate beyond the capabilities of your EMR system. Here are a few more ways to add minutes to your day and dollars to your bottom line.

Save staff time

Let’s start with making your team more efficient through better communication. You can send pre-appointment messages to patients to remind them to bring an insurance card and ID. You can deliver post-care messages and lab results, saving receptionists time. Saving staff time means employees can be busy on more productive work — time is money.

You can also save time by implementing an interactive voice response (IVR) menu system — ideally one that accepts both Touch-Tone keypresses and voice responses. An IVR system responds to user input (“press or say ‘one’”) and sends callers to their choice of destinations, so they can make an appointment, request a form, or get business hours automatically, or reach the right person to help them.

A CPaaS can also support conversations via text. Implementing SMS gives you the ability to exchange two-way text messages between patients and office staff. Office personnel can send and respond to texts from their desks, while patients get to avoid making a phone call — as many of them prefer to do. According to Soprano Design, 85% of smartphone owners prefer texts to calls or email.

Improve internal and external communications

Your employees probably prefer texting too. As a medical practice grows, or in a hospital that might have hundreds of employees, it can be hard to keep everyone updated on hours, policies, and other information. With a CPaaS you can customize outgoing messages to the entire staff or department by department — or any way you choose — to enhance internal communications.

And a tool that helps with internal communications can be just as helpful when you need to consult with people outside of the organization. A CPaaS can let you set up conference calls, so you can loop in a provider at another practice when you’re coordinating a particular patient’s care.

Bring in more business

Though medicine is a vocation, it’s also a business, and that means a little marketing doesn’t hurt. If you manage a pharmacy, for instance, you can remind people to get flu shots when the newest batch is ready, or offer them a coupon for a discount on merchandise they can use when they come in to pick up a prescription. A dental office can inform patients that they now offer Invisalign or Botox services as well.

Do more, better, with a CPaaS

In summary, healthcare providers that use a cloud communications platform can save time and money, improve internal and external communications, and beef up their businesses by adding automated text messaging and voice capabilities. Just as your business wants to partner with patients to improve their health, so Plivo wants to be your partner in improving your business. Read about how Plivo customers MDabroad, a medical services provider for travelers, and Flight Vector, an application for air ambulance companies and others, have powered up their platforms with Plivo. Then sign up for a free trial and see what we can do for your business.

Text messaging: so simple in concept, so fraught with regulatory perils for business.

Businesses that want to send SMS messages to customers have to take into account legal and regulatory considerations. Every country has different requirements regarding business text messaging compliance, and if you run afoul of local SMS compliance laws and regulations, carriers or governments may prohibit you from sending future messages. Here are some guidelines on how to keep that from happening.

P2P and A2P

There are two primary types of SMS content: person-to-person (P2P) and application-to-person (A2P).

P2P SMS is what most people imagine when they think of text messaging. P2P SMS is generally conversational, and it takes place between real people, generally in real time. The good news is that there are few regulations around P2P messaging; the bad news is that businesses aren’t people, so P2P conditions don’t apply.

A2P SMS comes in three varieties:

• Promotional text messaging contains a sales or marketing promotion.
• Informational messaging provides information to consumers.
• Transactional messages are non-marketing messages that provide important information to customers, such as a welcome message, an order confirmation, or a shipping update.

Pro tips for promotional text messages

Today we’re focusing on promotional messages. Here’s a list of things you should and shouldn’t do.

• Do get opt-in permission from anyone you want to send promotional messages. The people you contact must agree to be texted.
• Do let people opt out. Give recipients a keyword (often STOP) they can send in reply to your messages to tell you to stop sending them texts. If they opt out, be sure that the opt-out confirmation message you send in reply is the last message they’ll receive (until and unless they opt back in).
• Do be clear about what recipients are signing up for. Describe what they can expect in terms of content and frequency in a sentence or two on the web page on which they can provide their phone number, and in the autoresponder you send when you receive a new opt-in. The autoresponder should also include the phrase “message and data rates may apply.”
• Do offer a keyword (often HELP) that recipients can send to receive guidance.
• Don’t spam people. If you overwhelm recipients with frequent messages, you risk having them see your promotions as a nuisance and opting out. Sending promotional text messages more frequently than once a week is iffy, and even weekly is too much for some people.
• Do answer recipients’ question “what’s in it for me?” Make sure that every text offers them something they can benefit from.
• Do be thoughtful about when you send messages. If your intent is to get people to visit a store, for instance, send messages only when the store is open. If your promotion isn’t time-bound, keep it within normal waking hours — you should be fine if you send texts from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.
• Do measure results. For every campaign, check your unsubscribe rate, your interaction rate, and your conversion rate and determine your return on investment. You can also measure the performance of your communications platform by checking your delivery rate; if it’s low, consider switching to Plivo.

Consent is key

If you remember only one of points in that list, let it be the first: You should send promotional messages only to people who have opted in. You can gather opt-ins in several ways:

• Keyword opt-in: For instance, “text START to 75486 to subscribe to our notification services”
• Web opt-in: Signup through a web form. Users can subscribe to your notification services while registering for an account or by changing their notification preferences in the account settings.
• Paper opt-in: Signup by filling out a paper form at a store or kiosk.

We offer more guidelines for collecting opt-ins on our support portal.

Pick a number, any number

You can use any number type to send A2P messages: long code, toll-free, or short code. In the US you must use 10DLC registered numbers rather than unregistered long codes. We cover the pros and cons of each type in a blog post, with bonus infographic.

If you follow these dos and don’ts, you should be in compliance with regulatory guidelines for SMS text messaging. For more information on getting the most out of messaging, download Plivo’s SMS Best Practices Guide.

Call Queuing: Benefits, Best Practices, and How It Works

If people get frustrated waiting in lines for something as fun as a roller coaster ride at an amusement park, imagine their agitation while waiting to speak with a vendor about technical issues and billing errors. Yikes.

As humans, patience is not our strong suit, especially when it comes to things we don’t necessarily enjoy in the first place. But, fortunately, we have tools and technologies at our disposal to alleviate the challenges or frustrations associated with customer service experiences.

These days, businesses have access to call queuing technology that ensures their customers can quickly reach an agent and have a satisfactory experience.

We’re here to offer you the basics of call queuing—how it works, why it’s so effective, and best practices for managing it.

What is call queuing?

Call queuing allows callers to virtually wait in line for their turn to speak with a customer service representative. This call queuing system allows contact centers to follow the social rule of first come, first served, mimicking what would occur in a physical place of business.

Implemented correctly with the right technology, call queuing leads to happier customers, more satisfied agents, and lower call-abandonment rates.

How does call queuing work in a contact center?

When a customer calls into a contact center, the call-queue feature assigns them a spot in line where they wait on hold, often listening to music, until it’s their turn to speak with an agent. This process is mostly consistent across systems—the specifics of the call-queue process, however, depend on which technologies the business uses.

For example, some cloud-based contact centers have a feature called automated callback, which enables the customer the option to hang up without losing their spot in the queue. When the customer reaches the front of the line, the phone software automatically calls them back and connects them with an agent.

Many call-queue software tools utilize an automated voice message to greet callers and tell them their spot in the line or the expected wait time. This gives customers a sense of control and helps to manage expectations—without this feature, 60% of customers are likely to abandon the call within the 2-5 minute range.

Five ways call queuing benefits your business

There are many benefits to using call queuing in your contact center, all of which lead to greater revenue numbers and lower customer churn for your business.

• Reduce customer wait time: IVR technology, a necessity for effective call queueing, routes customers to agents based on factors such as: availability, skill or specialty, region or time zone, language, and others. This distributes calls evenly and appropriately among agents and can significantly reduce average handle time.
• Keep customers engaged: Call-queuing software enables you to upload music files, greetings, and other messages to entertain or educate the customer during the wait.
• Improve brand loyalty: Customers are grateful to businesses that prioritize their time. They take it as a gesture of respect and value.
• Lower call abandonment: When customers can visualize how long the line is in front of them, they can more easily handle the wait. The automated callback feature makes it so they don’t even have to stay on the line.
• Increase customer satisfaction: Aside from shortening the wait, call-queueing software also often uses intelligent call routing to send customers to agents best equipped to answer their inquiry, which leads to faster resolution.

Call queuing isn’t just about keeping current customers happy—it’s also effective for securing new ones. If a new customer calls your business and then abandons the call because they cannot reach a service agent, it’s unlikely they’ll ever call back. They’ll take their business to a competitor instead.

Software for call queuing can reduce call abandonment rates via various features and therefore ensure that you avoid losing new, interested leads who call your business.

4 best practices of call queue management

Call queueing needs to be set up appropriately using the right software to effectively reduce the wait for your customers. Let’s go over four best practices for call queue management.  

Provide self-service options to reduce the queue

The fewer people there are in line, the faster the queue moves. Find an omnichannel contact center solution that enables you to offer self-service options to your customers, such as chatbots and interactive voice response (IVR).

That way, customers with simple questions can get their answers quickly without calling your contact center and taking up a spot in the line that could go to a customer with a more complex issue.

Always use an IVR system

Most contact center solutions with call queuing offer an IVR system, which automatically greets inbound calls with an automated voice message and, based on caller input, routes them to the right department, team, or skill group.  

You’ve likely been on the customer end of an IVR system before. The system begins by prompting you to select from a list of options (“dial 1 for customer service, 2 for sales”, etc.). Then, based on your response, it routes the call to the right department, where you may have to wait in a queue.

Or, if the question is a simple one like “what are the business hours,” the IVR can provide the caller with an answer, thereby eliminating their need to wait in line and shortening the queue for other customers.

Set up automated callbacks

Automated callback is a feature that allows customers to maintain their place in line without staying on the phone call. Depending on how costs are structured for outbound calling, businesses may opt to only use this feature during peak call volume periods.

If the customer opts into an automated callback, the phone system software will keep track of their spot, and when an agent becomes available, automatically place the outbound call.

Minimize customers’ hold time

According to HubSpot, 90% of customers rate an “immediate” response to a customer service question as being extremely important to their experience.  One of the best ways to reduce hold time and get customers the fast service they want is to improve agent productivity.

Alongside call queuing, a cloud contact center solution will give your agents tools that enable them to more effectively handle customer calls, from call whispering to a unified agent dashboard - where they can review the customer’s details and past conversations, call scripting, and conversation analytics.

Conclusion

Customers just can’t stand waiting in line, so it’s essential that your business uses call queuing in your contact center to shorten the wait time or at least make it less painful.

If you’re looking for a tool that offers not only call queuing but also IVR, automated callbacks, and other features that help you improve your call handle time, check out PlivoCX, a cloud contact center platform that’s easy to use.