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.

We’ve reduced the price for our call transcription service from $0.015 per minute to $0.0095 per minute — a cost savings of 37%. This price reduction is immediate and applies to all existing and future Plivo customers. You don’t need to do anything, and the change will automatically be reflected in your account balance when you transcribe calls.

To put that price in perspective, here’s how our updated rates compare with other services that also provide transcription for voice calls.

This price reduction is part of our continued commitment to pass on savings to our customers as we continue to scale, to provide you with the best customer experience possible.

What is call transcription?

Call transcription is the process of converting recorded phone conversations into written words. Transcription isn’t the same as real-time automatic speech recognition, which you might use in interactive voice response (IVR) systems, though we offer that as well.

Call transcription can help you in a number of ways. You can enhance your agent monitoring process and your company’s operational efficiency by gaining a perspective on how your employees handle incoming calls. You can provide sales and support reps with text records of every conversation they have with customers. With a transcript, anyone can search or visually scan call conversations instead of listening to an entire recording — a process that’s more efficient than manual call monitoring.

In addition, with call transcription you can:

Improve agent performance

You can search and organize transcribed calls based on outcomes, and learn from them to create best practices documents or knowledge base articles. Transcripts can help you improve grading, quality monitoring, and agent and team performance. They can also help managers develop personalized training objectives for agents to improve their performance over time. Meanwhile, sales agents can use transcripts to identify cross- and upsell opportunities and identify effective ways to move leads further along the pipeline.

Reduce training time

Transcriptions can be shared among reps and throughout the new-hire onboarding process. They can serve as example scripts that illustrate what a rep should (or shouldn’t) say to a customer.

Do post-facto keyword analytics

Transcripts make it easy to analyze which keywords appear in call conversations and how frequently, so you can learn what your customers are saying and use that information to make better decisions. For instance, if you can understand what aspects and features of a product customers are happy or unhappy about, you can better prioritize efforts to improve the product.

Enhance the customer experience

For contact centers especially, customer satisfaction is crucial, and the best way to deliver on customer satisfaction is to have customer insights. Call transcripts unlock those insights, giving you an easy-to-review format and high-level perspective, which is especially useful when you have a lot of calls covering a number of subjects. Call transcription makes it simple to review information and discern trends, and identify instances where you should go back and listen to specific calls for more context.

Whether it’s getting a summary of a meeting, evaluating a focus group, or just making sense of customer service calls, transcription can help you understand your customers better, and with that information you can improve future interactions with them.

How Plivo transcribes calls

While there are a ton of stand-alone transcription services in the market, Plivo is unique in providing a full-scale voice API solution with a range of capabilities, including dual channel call recording, global conference calling, and supervisor coaching. When you want to transcribe a call, your application can use a Plivo API request to enable audio recording for conversations, conferences, or multiparty calls, and specify that you want to transcribe the recording.

When customers call in, Plivo begins recording when your application passes the recording instruction to us using a Record API request or Record XML element. Upon the completion of the call, we’ll automatically transcribe the recording to text if you requested transcription.

You can also record and transcribe outbound calls — for instance to prospects when launching a telemarketing or collection campaign. As with inbound calls, when the recorded call is complete, Plivo generates a transcript, which you can use to, for instance, search for keywords to identify trends related to campaigns and customer engagement. You can use these findings to improve campaign performance and train both new and existing agents by highlighting best practices in addressing customers’ needs.

With dual channel recording, high-quality voice through our Tier 1 carrier network, and per-second billing, Plivo offers businesses of all sizes a comprehensive transcription tool.

Haven’t tried Plivo yet? Getting set up takes only a few minutes! Sign up today.

Why do businesses need ticketing software?

In today’s hyper-personalized market, customers are seeking to be understood. Quick resolution, regardless of the issue, and emotionally intelligent service staff are paramount to small and medium business success. Investing in tools that facilitate an efficient agent experience and a frictionless customer experience will elevate your business.

To accomplish this, consider your ticketing or customer relationship management (CRM) software and how well (if at all) it can integrate with your customer service software. In the short term, your customer service staff need to solve customer issues fast. Looking at the midterm, you need to track customer interactions with your brand and derive insights from those interactions. Monitoring patterns of customer behavior and agent “hacks” or workarounds to overcome points of friction in your systems and workflows can make a huge difference in customer experience. From a long-term strategy viewpoint, the insights from one quarter can inform forecasting to scale staffing, product, or support activities in the next.

In any case, a ticketing system coupled with a customer service solution will help enable you to find where customer relationships can improve and to position your business for continued growth.

Benefits of integrating your ticketing system and contact center

Consider critical tools used in other areas of your business: accounting software, inventory management, point of sale, and so on, each to manage a certain function of your business and give you insight as to what is happening. A ticketing system helps you manage internal or external issues that need resolution. For external customer interactions, that ticketing system coupled with an integrated contact center platform or customer service workspace will enable you to receive, process, and resolve customer inquiries. With robust integration between these two systems, the following are just a few examples of the benefits:

• Single source of truth and synchronized data across systems
• Efficient and effective business processes
• Improved agent experience and satisfaction
• Reduced duplication and errors
• Insights for agent coaching
• Historical data to inform forward-looking strategy

Who would benefit from integrating ticketing system and contact center

In general, any business that interfaces with customers would benefit from a ticketing system. Some signs or symptoms indicating you might need to make the investment could be:

• You frequently apologize for not getting back to customers
• Email is your customer service system
• Currently you have no way to calculate average issue-resolution time

If you currently have dedicated staff or agents for customer service inquiries and you do not have a ticketing system, your business is a prime candidate.

For support teams utilizing a multichannel approach—meaning your contact channels (phone, email, text, WhatsApp) are distinct or siloed, or you have to “swivel chair” from system to system to manage communications on each channel—a unified omnichannel customer service platform integrated with a ticketing system can be a game-changer for your business.

Contact center features to look for when integrating with ticketing systems

For businesses that are just beginning to unify and mature their customer service—perhaps from that multichannel approach to an omnichannel approach—or for businesses that are evaluating a system upgrade or replacement for their long-standing customer service practice, there are really two primary features to consider:

• API integration: Does the ticketing system provide an application programming interface (API) that can integrate with your customer service workbench?
• Automations: Are time-saving automations possible with my customer service, e.g., callbacks, sending reminders or notifications, queues, and routing

Why Contacto’s integration with ticketing systems can help

When considering the benefits of this type of integration, those most directly impacted are undoubtedly the customer and the agent. But simply tracking issues is not enough. You need a system to interface with customers and track those interactions for internal use. Let’s take a look at how a ticketing system coupled with a contact center can not only alleviate pain points, but offer added value as well.

Customer

Above customer satisfaction and net promoter score, customer effort has the most direct impact to top line revenue. The following pain/gain approach illustrates the benefits of various customer conversation channels coupled with a ticketing system:

Agent

Streamlined agent workflow makes efficient use of precious time and resources and increases agent satisfaction as a result. There are many agent experience enhancements a business might prioritize, but we recommend the following as the top two pain points to alleviate:  

Conclusion

No matter where you are on the journey to improving, scaling, or maturing your customer service motion, a ticketing solution coupled with a contact center platform will drastically improve your business workflows, employee performance, and customer satisfaction.  

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 certain information — their entity/organization, CTAs, and message templates — along with required consent information on distributed ledger technology (DLT) platforms. Many people find the process confusing; this post walks you through it.

The online DLT registration process necessary for sending bulk SMS messages involves four steps: registering your business entity, registering your calls to action (CTAs), registering your sender IDs (called headers in DLT parlance), registering consent templates, and registering content templates and associating them with headers and consent templates.

What does DLT stand for?

DLT is an acronym for Distributed Ledger Technology. The most well-known application of DLT is the blockchain, but it is also relevant to telecommunications.

DLT replicates, shares, and synchronizes data across multiple locations. Imagine a digital ledger shared among multiple computers instead of stored in a single location. In telecoms, DLT registration is mandatory for all businesses sending SMS messages in India. The goal of registration is to protect customer privacy and deter spammers from sending unsolicited SMS messages.

What is DLT registration?

DLT registration is the process of adding your business details, including sender IDs, message templates, and other required information, on a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) platform. As part of DLT registration, companies need to submit their business name, address, contact information, and the purpose of their SMS campaigns. DLT registration provides each business with a unique identifier to use when sending SMS messages.

Why is DLT registration required?

The TRAI discovered that, in India, 85-90% of the total SMS senders are spammers. The high number of fraudulent messages sent throughout the country damages customer relationships, compromises data security, and weighs down the profit margins of businesses that use SMS campaigns.

DLT registration aims to enhance customer privacy by deterring spammers. DLT registration involves using pre-approved message content, allowing for easy tracking and identification of spammy or misleading messages. Consumers can report unwanted messages, helping authorities crack down on fraud and spam.

Likewise, non-compliance with DLT regulations can lead to severe penalties, including suspension or termination of SMS services.

How does DLT work?

DLT registration deters spam and other bad actors in a few different ways: 

• Identification: Each message is linked to a registered entity and template.
• Tracking: Message content and sender information can be traced.
• Penalties: Non-compliance can lead to severe penalties, including blacklisting.
• Consumer Control: Consumers can report unwanted messages.

By implementing these measures, DLT registration helps create more reliable, trustworthy brand communication and protects consumers from fraud.

How to apply for DLT registration to send SMS in India

The major India telecom providers all host DLT registration platforms and share their information with each other. You can use any of them to register:

• Videocon
• Vodafone Idea Limited (VILPOWER)
• Airtel
• Jio

1. Get a unique Entity ID

The first step is to visit one of the DLT registration platforms and fill in the information required to register your business as an entity, including the organization type, KYC documentation, and the business’s postal and email addresses. There are two organization types: principal entity (a.k.a. enterprise) and telemarketer. You’ll get a temporary ID or reference number; please share your ID or reference number with the Plivo support team. After the DLT platform verifies your documents, the operator will email you a unique Entity ID for the company registering, which you should share with us too.

2. Register headers

Once you get your unique Entity ID, register your headers on the DLT platform’s portal. Only entities with registered headers can send SMS messages.

Add your headers under the Headers tab in the dashboard.

You can choose between two types of Headers — Promotional and Others. To send campaigns of the former type, such as offers, discounts, and promotions, choose a six-digit numeric sender ID. The DLT platform will automatically add a prefix that represents your industry; for instance, for the communication industry, the prefix is “6.” If you plan to send transactional campaigns, such as alerts and notifications, you can choose a six-character alphanumeric header name. Headers are case-sensitive, so PLIVO and Plivo, for example, are two different headers and can be registered separately.

Enter each header name in the text box and state the reason for choosing it in the description box below. Use one header per use case: one for OTP, one for promotional, and one for notification messages, for instance. We recommend using as few headers as you can and linking multiple templates to a single header.

Your header name should correlate with your entity name. If the header name is different, explain the discrepancy in the description box. Include your mobile number in the description so the DLT platform’s support team can contact you if they have questions.

3. Register your CTAs

Recently TRAI updated its rules to require brands to whitelist any CTAs included in their messages. Whitelisting takes place on the DLT platform and is a crucial process for ensuring your messages are successfully delivered. The following types of CTAs must be registered.

1. URLS

• Any link/URL used in an SMS.
• WhatsApp links
• APK links

2. Numbers used for calls or messages

• Mobile
• Landline
• Toll-free

3. Email addresses

For example:

• If you include a link for users to sign up for an account, that URL must be whitelisted.
• If your messages contain a callback number or an email address, those must also be whitelisted.

Whitelisting Requirements at a Glance

4. Register consent templates

After you’ve registered your business entity and headers, the next step in the DLT registration process is to add consent templates. A consent template contains a standard message that the business must send to users to get opt-in consent to receive promotional communications from enterprises.

When users receive a consent message, they can respond directly or use a link in the message to allow the business to send them future messages. Promotional messages, which we’ll talk about in a moment, must be linked to consent templates. You can create multiple consent templates to cover as many brands and use cases as you have.

Give each template a descriptive name; you’ll use the name to associate content templates with the consent template later. For brand name, use a relevant product or trade name. The scope of consent should describe the content you plan to send to users, and should be related to the brand name provided. For example:

• We would like to send communication regarding marketing offers and events to you as one of our registered customers
• ABC Solutions needs your consent to send you messages about your account information and activity and our best offers
• We want to send updates, transactions, and recommendations of our services and products to registered customers like you

Be descriptive; don’t say something short like “consent” or “SMS to customers.” Also, don’t use variables in the scope of consent; variables are applicable only to content templates.

You can include opt-out instructions in the consent template; for example: “To opt out, send STOP to <your number>.”

After you fill in the details in the three fields, click Submit to submit the template for approval. The registrar may take three to seven business days to return an approval or rejection. If your template is rejected — if, for instance, the template isn’t a match for the header — you can update the template and submit the revised version.

5. Register content templates

After you’ve registered consent templates, the next step in the DLT registration process is to add content templates. A content template includes the actual text of an SMS message you want to send.

Choose the template type from among available choices: transactional, service implicit, service explicit, and promotional. We’ll explain what each means in the section below.

Give each content template a relevant and recognizable descriptive name; you’ll use the name to associate a consent template with your content templates later.

For the message type, choose “Text” for general messages and “Unicode” for regional messages.

For the template message, you can use letters, numbers, and special characters. Avoid using two or more spaces before, after, or between words.

Insert values such as dates, amounts, account numbers, names, and OTPs using variables. There’s no limit on the number of variables you can use per message; individual variable length may not exceed 30 characters. Transactional and service content should always have some variable content. Promotional content can have some variable or all fixed content. All messages should have some fixed content; no message should be only variables.

The variable format in text is {#var#}, which is case-sensitive.

Don’t use a single content template with multiple headers — tailor the content to a specific use case, and thus a single header. Also, make sure that you associate each content template with the relevant header; if you have a header for sending OTPs and another for promotional messages, pay attention to which header you map to each content template.

If your content template is for a promotional message, you must also associate the content template with an existing consent template, so users have a chance to opt in to receiving your promotional messages.

Click Save or Submit (depending on which portal you use) when you’ve filled out all the required fields. You should then see a screen that shows a list of your content templates.

One of the fields in the list shows the status for each template. New templates are marked Pending. The portal operator will review the template and return an approval or rejection in three to seven working days. Templates may be rejected if they’re irrelevant or not related to the business. The DLT platform will notify you if your template is rejected, and you can update it and reapply.

Types of content templates

Here’s more information about the four types of content templates.

Transactional

A message that contains a one-time password (OTP) required to complete a banking or credit or debit card transaction initiated by a bank customer is considered transactional. Here are some examples of this type of content, along with examples of the template formats that would create them.

Financial service enterprises should use the transactional category for OTP messages during fund transfers, online payments, and merchant transactions. Don’t select the transactional content type for nonbanking enterprises.

Service-implicit

Any message arising out of customers’ actions or their existing relationship with the enterprise, and that is not promotional, is considered a service-implicit message. These include:

• Confirmation messages of net banking and credit/debit card transactions
• Product purchase confirmation and delivery status from ecommerce websites
• Customer is making payments through a payment wallet for an ecommerce website or mobile app, and an OTP is sent to complete the transaction. These OTPs are not considered transactional because they’re not sent from a bank but from a third party.
• OTPs required for ecommerce websites, app logins, social media apps, authentication and verification links, securities trading, demat account operations, KYC, and ewallet registration
• Messages from telecom and internet service providers
• Periodic balance info, bill generation, bill dispatch, due date reminders, recharge confirmation (DTH, cable, prepaid electricity recharge, etc.)
• Delivery notifications, updates, and periodic upgrades
• Messages from retail stores related to invoices and warranties
• Messages from schools, such as attendance and transport alerts
• Messages from hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, radiologists, and pathologists about registration, appointments, discharge, and reports
• Confirmatory messages from app-based services
• Government/DOT/TRAI mandated messages
• Service updates from car workshops, repair shops, and gadgets service centers
• Directory services such as Justdial and Yellow Pages
• Day-end and month-end settlement alerts to securities and demat account holders

Service-explicit

Service-explicit messages require explicit consent from customers. Consent must be verified by the recipient in a robust and verifiable manner and recorded by the consent registrar. This category includes any service messages that don’t fall under the service-implicit category.

Service-explicit content templates must be linked to consent templates.

Examples include messages to the existing customers recommending or promoting products or services.

Promotional

Promotional messages promote or sell products, goods, or services. Service content mixed with promotional content is treated as promotional. Plivo will send these messages to customers after scrubbing them to ensure that messages are delivered only according to the consent criteria set by the customer in the national Do Not Disturb (DND) registry.

Promotional content templates must be linked to consent templates.

Promotional content must be sent only from numerical sender IDs.

Benefits of DLT registration for customers

DLT registration reduces spam that, at best, is irritating for customers — and at worst, compromises personal data security. By verifying the identity of message senders, DLT significantly reduces the number of spam and fraudulent messages customers receive. Cutting back on spam increases trust, enhances privacy, and gives customers more control over their communication preferences. With DLT registration, customers know the messages they receive come from verified businesses. DLT prevents unauthorized access to personal information through unsolicited messages.

Plus, many DLT platforms offer customers the ability to opt out of specific message categories or from particular businesses, giving them power over the messages they receive.

Benefits of DLT registration for businesses

The TRAI primarily designed DLT registration for customers, but it benefits businesses, too. Messages from registered senders are more likely to make it past spam filters and reach their intended recipients. In turn, reduced spam and higher message delivery rates contribute to better customer engagement and satisfaction. By adhering to regulatory standards, businesses build trust and credibility among customers.

There are also financial reasons to complete DLT registration. By complying with regulations, companies avoid TRAI penalties and legal issues. Businesses can optimize their SMS campaigns for better results, using pre-approved templates to boost conversion rates. And, DLT registration creates a more reliable communication channel.

After successful registration, leave it to Plivo

Once you’ve registered everything on the DLT platform, please create a ticket to share with us your

• Entity ID
• Header
• Header ID
• Whitelisted CTAs
• Template ID
• Message Template

Include screenshots for reference so Plivo can share the information with the carriers. Once the carriers have mapped the header and content, Plivo will map the sender ID to your account and let you know that you’re good to go.‍

Recently, in a live webinar, Plivo customer LAZ Parking shared the story of how they created a Text to Park revenue stream with the help of Plivo’s SMS API. You can view the recording on demand, or, if you’re more of a reader than a watcher, you can look at the LAZ Parking customer case study we wrote about.

Parking lots — lots of parking

LAZ manages payments for more than 3,500 parking facilities in the US with more than a million parking spaces.

Patrick Ryan, vice president of innovation at LAZ, talked with Plivo Product Marketing Manager Tony Graham about how the company relies on Plivo’s SMS API to power a huge number of revenue-producing transactions every day.

Some of the lots LAZ manages had pay stations, which take time and effort and money to support — and when COVID came in, no one wanted to be touching public surfaces. LAZ wanted a mobile-friendly solution, because almost everyone now carries a smartphone. The company already had a mobile app, which was fine for repeat customers, but did they want to force people who might be using a lot just one time to download a new app?

In the webinar we asked attendees how they’d prefer to pay: a pay station, an app, or a text link. Two-thirds chose the link, while one-third liked the old-school pay station. No one wanted to download the app.

One of Ryan’s mottos is “think like a customer,” so LAZ got it right with a text-friendly solution. They rented a short code — a single five-digit number that could accept text messages across the entire country. At each lot, they put up a sign that asked consumers to text a unique code for that lot to their short code. LAZ then automatically replies to the incoming text with the URL of a web page on which customers can enter their license plate and payment information.

Making everyone happy

Customers love the simplicity of texting — and that made lot owners happy too. Many of them removed their pay stations — or just put a bag over them — which cut down on their costs. Some gated garage owners now want to get in on the texting solution that LAZ’s surface lots are enjoying. Today, LAZ sends out more than a million text messages every day using Plivo’s SMS API, with messages traveling over its Premium Communications Network. In the future, they’re considering expanding their use of SMS to send reminders when customers’ time is running out with a link to extend the time, and to provide one-time passwords for added security when customers access saved payment information.

As LAZ ramped up its use of texting, one of the webinar attendees asked, did it experience any issues with scaling? “Literally not a one,” Ryan said. The Plivo API calls put less load on his systems than the application code.

“We’re dealing with a company that really are experts in the cloud space,” he said. ”It really is a best-in-class experience.”

See for yourself how adding Plivo’s SMS APIs to your application code can generate new revenue for your organization. Get started with a free trial.

By using Plivo and an integration platform, you can forward your voicemail messages to your email address without doing any coding. Here’s how to set up voicemail on Plivo and forward it to email using Pipedream.

To get started, you need a Plivo account — sign up with your work email address if you don’t have one already. To receive incoming messages, you must have a Plivo phone number that supports both voice and SMS; you can rent numbers from the Numbers page of the Plivo console or by using the Numbers API.

You also need a free Pipedream account.

Step 1: Create a PHLO to forward voicemail

We’ll use Plivo’s low-code visual design tool PHLO to set up voicemail and attach it to a Plivo number.

On the Plivo console, go to the PHLO page and click Create New PHLO, then click Build My Own. Drag the Record Audio component onto the canvas, then draw a line from the Incoming Call trigger of the Start node to the Record Audio node. In the Configuration panel at the right, enter the text you want the caller to hear when the call gets connected, then click Validate. Click in the upper left of the page to give your PHLO a name, then click Save to create the PHLO.

To associate the PHLO with a phone number, go to the Phone Numbers page of the console. Click on the number for which you want to forward voicemail. In the Number Configuration, click the Application Type dropdown and choose PHLO. From the PHLO Name dropdown, choose the name of the PHLO you just created, then click Update Number.

Step 2: Configure Pipedream

Now go to your Pipedream console and create a Pipedream workflow. Click New HTTP/Webhook Requests, choose HTTP Requests with a Body, then Save and Continue. Pipedream will display a URL, which you need to copy.

Return to your PHLO on the Plivo console and click on the Record Audio node. Paste the URL you copied from Pipedream into the Event Callbacks box, then click Validate, then Save. This sets up the webhook to which we will post the voicemail recording details, which we’ll use when we send the email.

Step 3: Test the webhook

Now you’re ready to test out your integration. Make a call to your Plivo number and leave yourself a message. Pipedream will capture the HTTP response.

Step 4: Add email connector to receive email

Once you have the response you can set up your Pipedream workflow to forward the recording to your email. Return to the Pipedream console and click the “+” icon below the trigger pane. Click on Send Email. In the new pane that appears, enter Subject and Text values as shown below. Click Test to test the workflow, then Deploy to make it live.

Your integration should now be complete. Whenever someone leaves voicemail at the number you specified, Pipedream will send an email message that contains the from and to numbers and the voicemail recording to the address you used when you signed up for your Pipedream account.

Integrations for all kinds of applications

Pipedream offers integrations for many applications, so you could use a similar process to send voicemail messages from a Plivo number to Slack, Discord, or a Google Drive.

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Plivo customers control call flows and business logic based on webhook requests Plivo sends to their servers, which also convey critical information such as call records and message status. To keep these webhooks secure, we enable signature validation using hash-based message authentication codes (HMAC-SHA256) so you can check whether the webhook delivered to your server originated from Plivo. This post walks you through how to secure webhooks and authenticate webhook requests using the Plivo Python SDK.

All voice API requests from Plivo’s platform to your application server contain three custom HTTP headers for signature validation: X-Plivo-Signature-V3, X-Plivo-Signature-Ma-V3, and X-Plivo-Signature-V3-Nonce. (For SMS we use X-Plivo-Signature-V2 as of now.) To verify that the request to your server originated from Plivo and that it was not altered en route, you can generate your own request signatures and compare them with the Plivo-Signature headers we pass.

Validating requests on the application server

Plivo Server SDKs include functions to help you validate incoming requests with X-Plivo-Signature HTTP headers. Here’s some sample code that shows how to validate a signature and return an XML element if the webhook is authenticated.

To start, create a working directory and change into it. Within the directory, create a Python virtual environment and activate it, then install the Python libraries we’ll be using.

Create a file named signature.py and paste into it this code.

When someone makes an outbound call to a destination number, Plivo requests the webhook associated with this code. The code runs and returns a Speak XML element if it can authenticate the request sent. If the validation fails the call will terminate, since no XML is returned to the Plivo server.

Run the file using the command python signature.py to initialize the server locally.

When you’re satisfied, make the application publicly available with ngrok. To test it, make a call to the API using Postman and use the ngrok URL as the answer URL.

Stay secure

Be sure to verify your webhooks using Plivo’s Python SDK and avoid causing any harm to your servers. You can learn more about signature validation logics for voice and messaging.

By the way, signature validation isn’t the only technique we use to keep webhooks secure. All webhook communications run over HTTPS, which are secured by SSL certificates on your server. We also provide a list of IP addresses for our voice API from which you can expect callbacks. You can whitelist these addresses in your infrastructure.

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When you receive a phone call on your smartphone, you get information about who’s contacting you in the form of a caller ID. Similarly, when you get a text message, it’s accompanied by a sender ID. Though they’re used in similar ways, caller ID and sender ID aren’t the same. Here’s a brief primer on the two most prominent telecom IDs.

What is caller ID?

Caller ID has been around since the late ‘80s as a numeric indicator of the phone number of the originating caller. Back in the days before cellphones, caller ID used technology called frequency shift keying (FSK) to encode data into discrete tones that could travel over analog phone switches and be decoded at the receiving end. At the time most phones didn’t have a display, but you could buy a little device to plug in between your phone and the wall to show the calling number.

Later, caller ID was enhanced to include caller names via Calling Name Presentation (CNAM). CNAM records associate a number with a 15-character alphabetic description — a company’s or a person’s name. CNAM information is not transmitted over phone lines, but entered in a line information database (LIDB) by the carrier that provides the business or individual’s service. When a call is made, the terminating carrier looks up the CNAM information and presents it to the call recipient along with the calling line identification (CLI — another name for caller ID).

Today, cell service providers offer caller ID for voice calls over their networks, but since everything that travels over cell networks is digital, caller ID on cell networks relies on protocols defined for voice over IP (VoIP) networks instead of FSK.

Different countries have differing regulations around caller ID. Lack of a global standard means that carriers may not be able to maintain CLI across international borders.

Caller IDs apply to long codes and toll-free numbers but not to short codes, because short codes are never used to make voice calls.

What is sender ID?

Sender ID is a different way of identifying an originating endpoint. Caller IDs were developed for plain old telephone service (POTS) to identify who made a voice call, but sender IDs originated with SMS to identify who sent a text message on cellular networks. The two are generated in different ways: Caller IDs originate with the telecom provider based on a phone number, while sender IDs are registered by businesses’ service providers.

Sender IDs are alphanumeric strings of six to 11 characters that appear on call recipients’ handsets. Consumers in the US, Canada, and 40 other countries could be forgiven for thinking that “caller ID” and “sender ID” mean the same thing, because sender ID doesn’t exist in their countries. When no sender ID is set, the initiating party’s phone number appears to the recipient instead, in a way that’s functionally identical to caller ID.

In countries where it’s available, however, sender ID can be a valuable way for businesses to identify themselves. You can read more about sender ID in our detailed guide on sender ID.

Different countries have different regulations around sender IDs. Some require that sender IDs be registered with a carrier or regulatory body as a way of cutting down on fraud; others are more relaxed and allow instant registration and use of sender IDs.

Sender IDs are available for long codes, toll-free numbers, and short codes.

What caller ID and sender ID have in common

Both caller ID and sender ID help build trust between the originating and receiving parties. When caller recipients see a familiar local number, they’re more likely to answer the phone, and when they receive a message from a familiar party, they’re more likely to trust it.

Unfortunately, it’s fairly easy for bad actors to spoof a caller ID — that is, provide a fake number to mask the real source of a call. This has been a common practice among telemarketers, who use the number of a trustworthy brand or a local area code and exchange to make their targets more likely to take a call.

The US Federal Communications Commission is cracking down on caller ID spoofing. Last year it began requiring carriers to implement call authentication via standards called STIR/SHAKEN as a way to attest the validity of the originating number.

Whether you need to customize the CNAM information for your caller ID or set up an alphanumeric sender ID, Plivo’s voice API can help you out.