As part of delivering on our 99.95% uptime promise, we’re introducing an updated status page. Think of it as our internal checks and balance report to show that we’re not only abiding by our uptime SLA, we’re also offering full transparency while doing so. Plivo’s revamped status page gives everyone a real-time view into our service availability, as well as the status of telecom carriers globally.

Categorization of Plivo vs. carrier partners

We’ve categorized uptime by our different services, and under each section you can differentiate between incidents related to Plivo’s software and those concerning carrier partners’ connectivity, which indicate an issues outside of our network (and out of our control). We’ve also broken down carrier connectivity status by region, which you can view by clicking the plus sign in the top right corner of each section.

Easier-to-use interface

A simplified UI helps page visitors check the status of Plivo products and services. Any upcoming maintenance planned by external carriers is reflected in the Scheduled Maintenance section, while the Past Incidents section links out to a detailed incident history that provides more information about service degradation. You can navigate to these sections through the top header.

Status categorization

Each section has a lookback of 30 days, and each status component is color-coded per the severity of the incident — Operational, Under Maintenance, Scheduled Maintenance, Degraded Performance, Partial Outage, and Major Outage — giving you visibility into critical issues in real time.

Subscriptions to updates and incidents

You can sign up to receive automated email notifications whenever the Plivo status page creates, updates, or resolves an incident by clicking the Subscribe to Updates button in the header.

You can specify that you want to be notified by service type, so that if you only want to be notified of incidents regarding the Messaging API, for example, you can indicate that by ticking that respective field before you click Save. We have an extensive list of subscription options at both the Plivo services side and the carrier partners side.

We have carried over the System Metrics section from the old status page, so you can still have a real-time view into our API uptime and response times during the day, if you want to get that granular.

Quickly identify issues

Having visibility into service issues is a critical step in any incident resolution process. From the real-time status of all Plivo products and services and global telecom carriers to incident categorization and the ability to subscribe to updates, we’re making it easier for our customers to get to the bottom of any issues.

Not using Plivo yet? Getting started takes just five minutes. Sign up today.

Plivo SMS and MMS API customers can now register sender IDs through the console, removing the need to submit a ticket with the Plivo support team. Plivo is the first CPaaS provider to offer registration in the console.

Businesses outside of North America use sender IDs to show on someone’s phone who sent an SMS message. By default, the sender ID is set to the sender’s phone number, but businesses can register an alphanumeric sender ID like the company’s name or service — something marketing teams love to do. Some countries require businesses to have sender IDs. Find out which countries support sender IDs, as well as their registration requirements.

You can register a sender ID by visiting Messaging > Sender IDs on the Plivo console and selecting Register Sender ID, then filling out the registration form.

You can also track the status of your sender ID registration on the console, without needing to check email.

Watch this short video to learn more.

There are two types of registration for sender IDs.

1. Dynamic: This process does not require preregistration. Customers can instantly provision a sender ID in 109 countries.
2. Preregistration: For this type of registration, customers need to provide information, and sometimes additional documents, to validate their sender ID. This process varies depending on the country of registration. It can take up to two weeks to complete this process and be able to use the sender ID.

We now ask new customers from countries where a sender ID is required to register for a sender ID upon registration with Plivo.

As per new TRAI regulations, customers in India need to follow a separate process with the DLT platforms.

What are the associated costs?

If you’ve already purchased an SMS-enabled phone number, there’s no additional charge for using an alphanumeric sender ID in most countries. However, for some countries that require preregistration, there may be charges such as one-time setup fees or recurring monthly fees. Some customers are also subject to a one-time $25 setup fee, depending on the product plan they’ve subscribed to.

What are the benefits of having a sender ID?

Companies that use a sender ID as part of their marketing strategy typically achieve higher open rates and improved brand recognition. A unique sender ID instantly connects with your recipients, as it’s the first thing they see upon receiving a message. When a customer receives a message from a random number, they may dismiss that message. A sender ID gives the phone number more legitimacy.

Want to learn more? Get step-by-step information on getting started. Not using Plivo yet? Sign up today!

Plivo became a market leader in the CPaaS technology category by shaking up the stodgy telecom industry and making it easier for businesses to connect with their customers. Today, CPaaS use cases range from banks providing direct access to call centers with one-click calling from within an app, to restaurants pushing out SMS messages updating their customers on the status of their deliveries.

We’ve learned a lot of lessons along the way, all based on what helps customers. In this first post in a new blog series we highlight the importance of a CPaaS platform having its own carrier network.

When we started Plivo, as long as we could gain access to markets around the world, we assumed it didn’t matter what carriers we used. Coverage was the key, or so we thought. Instead, we learned that for our customers to be able to reliably reach their own customers, we had to put together our own network of high-quality carriers. More specifically, we learned five important lessons.

Lesson 1: Strong technology and infrastructure alone cannot compensate for poor carrier network quality

We started by partnering with large telecom carriers that aggregate local players to connect calls and deliver SMS messages globally, but we soon realized it made a difference which carrier networks we connected to.

Sure, technology and infrastructure are important, but if the carriers we connected to dropped calls, had poor call quality, provided unreliable caller ID, or failed to deliver messages, we couldn’t help our customers no matter how sophisticated we made our platform technology.

Carrier quality issues aren’t just inconvenient, they can stand in the way of businesses delivering the time-sensitive, mission-critical communications required for a high-quality customer experience. We realized we had to build our own carrier layer to pair with our technology and infrastructure layers.

Lesson 2: Relying on aggregators is not a good way to ensure carrier network quality

Carriers that aggregate traffic focus on cost, not quality. But carrier quality is not a commodity, so connecting with cost-focused carriers can turn out to be more expensive in the long run.

Calls can take a long, suboptimal route through an aggregator’s infrastructure, which leads to inconsistent quality. And inconsistent call quality or message deliverability — which manifests as latency, jitter, dropped calls, and undelivered messages — can lead to unhappy consumers and additional expenses for companies.

For example, suppose a company’s mobile app sends an appointment verification message to a prospective customer via an API platform. If that platform works with unreliable carriers, that potential customer might not receive that message and may miss the meeting, leading to a lost business opportunity. Businesses that rely on Plivo’s direct connections to local carriers, on the other hand, benefit from more reliable service. They can automatically leverage our real-time routing engine that routes calls and SMS messages over the best possible routes based on quality.

Using aggregators also means that troubleshooting issues take longer, since there may be multiple layers between the end carrier network and the communications platform. If an error occurs, you want your communications platform provider to be able to get the bottom of the issue as soon as possible so you can get back to serving your customers.

Lesson 3: Building a premium carrier network requires redundancy

Plivo chooses carrier partners based on their ability to reliably connect calls and deliver SMS messages. Still, the nature of telecom means that even high-quality carriers have issues from time to time, so we learned to build redundancy into our network to provide customers with automatic failover in the event of any errors or outages.

In almost all major regions we have at least two direct connections with local carriers to establish redundancy. If one of these carriers goes down, all traffic automatically gets routed to the other. That means businesses don’t have to scramble when an outage occurs. Automatic failover means you continue to communicate with your customers as if nothing occurred behind the scenes.

Lesson 4: The infrastructure and technology layer all need to have the same commitment to quality

With a cloud communications platform, the technology, infrastructure, and carrier layers all need to pull their weight.

Part of building a quality infrastructure layer includes establishing seven points of presence (PoP) in strategic locations to minimize network hops, and therefore reduce latency, so customers have reliably clear calls. We also have network operations centers (NOC) on opposite sides of the world that proactively monitor network performance 24 hours a day, which helps us get in front of any carrier issues that arise.

We also do this type of behind-the-scenes work within the technology layer. For example, we use a dynamic routing engine that can find the best paths for calls and SMS messages in real time, which helps our customers consistently connect with their users without having to think about it.

All of these layers need to move in unison. We continually test how the system as a whole works to get ahead of any potential issues.

Lesson 5: You can’t build a quality carrier network overnight

Establishing a quality carrier network globally, along with the infrastructure and technology to support it, takes both expertise and a significant time investment.

Rather than relying on aggregators, we invested more than seven years in building out a global carrier network, because if you want to establish quality connections, you can’t rush this process. Onboarding local carriers takes six to nine months each and involves steps like commercial and legal discussions, interoperability and quality testing, and capacity provisioning.

We continue to invest time and resources into expanding and strengthening our global network, understanding that there are no shortcuts when it comes to continually ensuring quality.

Be proactive: Don’t accept carrier network quality as a given

If your businesses uses a cloud communications platform to connect and engage with customers, don’t assume that carrier quality is a commodity.

Given how difficult business has been around the world lately due to COVID-19, companies cannot afford to lose business over customer experience issues. Rather than waiting until quality issues surface before you deal with them, be proactive. Find out how different platforms connect to carrier networks and assess whether certain providers can help you deliver reliable, high-quality voice and SMS services through your applications.

The bottom line is: if you want to create great customer experiences, you can’t take carrier quality for granted. Choose a platform that helps you create amazing customer experiences by reliably connecting with your customers.

To learn more about the importance of carrier quality and what businesses should consider when choosing a communications platform, download our white paper: The Carrier Network: What Powers Quality in Voice and SMS APIs.

Read more posts in our CPaaS Lessons series:

• How Plivo Takes Care of Our Customers
• Reliability Rules
  

We’ve redesigned our Plivo support plans to ensure you can get the help you need, whenever you need it. Our new support offerings provide improved service level agreements, and businesses that need custom assistance from Plivo’s support team can gain access to a dedicated account team for guidance on complex integrations and faster issue resolution.

Plivo gives customers one-on-one, fast-response support from experienced technical support engineers, all of whom are experts across Plivo’s multiple products and services. Here’s a breakdown of our new support plans:

Basic Support (free): This is our free plan, which every Plivo customer has access to. It includes Plivo’s real-time status dashboard within the console, which provides the most up-to-date and timely service health information, as well as speedy email support. We don’t offer specified response times on this plan, but our support engineers always aim to get back to you within one business day. As with all Plivo services, you don’t need contracts or minimum commitments to get support.

Priority Support ($250): This new plan includes 24/5 email support for users with sensitive and high-severity issues. If you’re experiencing critical issues, Plivo will get back to you in three hours or less, no matter the time of the day.

Business Support ($750): This premium plan offers 24/7 support for critical issues and an SLA of one hour for priority 1 and 2 issues.

Personalized Support ($2,500): This top-tier plan is perfect for customers who need guidance on products and configurations that are specific to their use cases. If you’re a large enterprise that wants to consult with Plivo for bigger-scale planning and problem resolution, this is the route you should go. Benefits include:

• 24/7 response: Access to Plivo support staff via email, phone, and chat via Slack 24 hours a day, with a one-hour service level agreement for business-critical issues.
• Dedicated customer success manager: Access to a designated contact at Plivo who understands the scope of your project or integration, is well-versed in your programming language, and can assist in expediting issue resolution.
• Quarterly business reviews: We’ll meet with you quarterly to review your support tickets and use cases, and assist you with capacity planning and optimizing any deployments specific to Plivo.

If for any reason you need to change your level of support, you can upgrade or move back to a lower-tier plan, no questions asked. With pay-by-the-month pricing and an unlimited number of support cases, you won’t be bound to any long-term commitments and can find a plan that fits your business needs.

Not using Plivo yet but considering getting started? Sign up today. It only takes five minutes.

Sending hundreds of thousands of messages at a go isn’t easy. How many phone numbers do you need to deliver those messages? What are the best phone numbers to use to ensure delivery?

Powerpack automates all of the complex logic that you would otherwise have to code manually. It’s designed to meet large-scale message throughput and volume requirements. By automatically distributing your overall messaging traffic across a pool of source numbers, Powerpack guarantees that you stay compliant with CTIA throughput limits.

We introduced Powerpack last year for SMS message, and now we’ve extended Powerpack functionality to MMS. MMS use has grown exponentially in recent years — businesses now employ rich visual experiences to give customers more information about a product, and in return they see higher engagement rates from their customers. If you send messages with image, audio, or video content, you can now configure a Powerpack to automatically deliver those multimedia messages. You simply select a pool of phone numbers when configuring a Powerpack and Plivo does the rest. And best of all, it’s absolutely free!

Key Powerpack features include:

• High deliverability: Powerpack provides high deliverability by intelligently managing your numbers. It eliminates the possibility of a single point failure and provides intelligent load management.
• Number pool: Powerpack intelligently distributes outbound message traffic over a pool of source numbers optimal for your message volume. It only takes a few seconds to set up a pool of source numbers that’s the right size for your message volume.
• Regulatory compliance: Messaging regulatory compliance varies not only by the number type but often by location as well. Powerpack includes compliance controls that help ensure high deliverability and throughput.
• Sticky sender: If you want to contact the same subscriber more than once, Powerpack can help maintain a single conversation thread by always sending messages to that subscriber from the same source number in the pool.
• Local connect: The local connect feature prioritizes phone numbers in the pool that match the region and/or area code of the subscriber. Recipients are more likely to show interest in messages from familiar sources.
• Automatic fallback: You can enable automatic fallback with Powerpack by adding Plivo toll-free numbers or short codes to Powerpacks. Powerpack can switch from one number type to another without any delivery loss.

Getting started

Configuring a Powerpack is easy — visit Messaging > Powerpacks on the Plivo console, then click Add New Powerpack.

When you configure your Powerpack, you have the option to enable the Sticky Sender and Local Connect features.

In the Configure Number Pool section, you can enter the count of phone numbers at a country and/or regional level. If you’re unsure about how many numbers to add to the pool, enter your daily message volume (US and Canada only) and Plivo will recommend an optimal phone number pool size.

Once you’ve configured your Powerpack, you can start sending MMS message with it by entering your Powerpack ID as the powerpack_uuid in the Send Message API request. See our Send MMS use case guide for complete details.

Not using Plivo yet? Getting started takes just five minutes. Sign up today!

In today’s mobile, digital-focused world, companies are increasingly leveraging SMS and voice capabilities within their web and mobile applications for things like authenticating users, sending account alerts, and providing delivery notifications. Incorporating text messaging and voice can help optimize customer engagement and user experience while improving operational efficiency and security.

As demand for SMS and voice integration has increased, CPaaS providers like Plivo have launched serverless, low-code, visual workflow builders that provide out-of-the-box use case templates to enable more organizations to leverage the benefits of an API platform. You can use these visual design studios to more easily create communications workflows and reduce development times.

In other words, with a few drag-and-drop moves (similar to what you might find on a visual website development platform like Wix or Squarespace), you can create and deploy new SMS or voice integration services in far less time than you could by using the usual combination of APIs and XML.

What might these integrations look like? Consider these three use cases to see how your company could benefit from PHLO, Plivo’s visual workflow builder.

Alerts and notifications

Perhaps the most widely applicable use case for SMS and voice integration is for sending alerts and notifications, such as:

• Automated account alerts — notifying customers of account activity regarding logins, usage, etc.
• Dispatch or delivery notifications — informing customers when a shipment is en route or delivered
• Reminders — alerting customers of an upcoming appointment

One of our customers, Deckers, a footwear brand, has built SMS delivery notifications to notify partner stores of upcoming orders so they can take the necessary actions needed to fulfill those orders. The company has many brands under its corporate umbrella, and if it had to make changes to these notification workflows using a traditional development cycle, it would be a time-consuming process that required developer resources on a continuing basis. Instead, Deckers uses PHLO to quickly adjust its notification workflows by dragging and dropping modules as needed.

In addition to using SMS alerts, businesses can benefit from setting up voice delivery alerts. For example, our customer Bosch InTrack, an integrated supply chain event platform, uses PHLO to send voice alerts to security teams about incoming deliveries. Because Bosch operates in multiple markets, it needs to be able to quickly add or modify voice alerts to support different languages. PHLO makes it easy to implement these changes.

Two-factor authentication

Another common use case for integrating communications capabilities into applications is for authentication. All kinds of businesses nowadays use two-factor authentication (2FA) to verify users’ identities when they log in.

Plivo customer Bigo Technology, an innovative live streaming company, uses SMS and voice to verify signups. Bigo used PHLO to quickly build a workflow that issues a one-time password (OTP) via SMS, then fails over to voice verification if necessary to improve conversions.

Our customer Gojek, an on-demand last mile delivery marketplace service, uses voice OTP for verifying users. PHLO helps Gojek quickly add a new country and corresponding language and enable users to choose their preferred OTP format — text-to-speech, their own voice, or a combination of the two.

Using PHLO makes building these workflows simple; you can start with an existing template and easily adapt your verification or authentication requirements via drag-and-drop modules.

Call forwarding and cloud IVR

In addition to different types of alerts and verifications, companies also benefit from integrating SMS and voice capabilities into applications for customer service purposes.

Interactive voice response (IVR) systems are the backbone of customer support organizations. Companies use them to guide customers who call in to the appropriate department. (“Press 1 for sales; press 2 for technical support.”) In the past, companies used complex, on-premises infrastructure to run these systems, but now you can use scalable, cloud-based APIs to play audio and trigger call forwarding.

Nutanix Beam, a multicloud optimization service delivered as part of the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS, uses Plivo to power its IVR for incident response and escalation. Using PHLO’s visual builder, Nutanix can add or edit an escalation point in seconds.

Another customer, Practi, develops cloud-based software solutions to manage retail businesses. Practi uses Plivo to power IVR and call forwarding for its customers. Using PHLO’s drag-and-drop templates, Practi can quickly build IVR flows for new customers and customize recorded greetings and thank-you messages.

Instead of having to involve your developers each time you want to tweak these types of announcements and associated forwarding rules, you can use PHLO to easily make updates without having to rewrite any code, which in turn helps you serve your customers better.

Start simplifying SMS and voice integration

As people grow more used to communicating with brands digitally, the need for businesses to integrate SMS and voice capabilities into their customer experience also grows. Businesses can use PHLO to quickly build workflows that help them communicate with customers.

See how PHLO can help you take your communications to the next level. Explore more SMS API and Voice API, or jump in to start building workflows using PHLO by signing up for a free trial today.

Sending SMS messages can be a great way to cut through email clutter and directly reach customers with critical information such as delivery notifications, account alerts, and login authorizations, along with marketing and other customer service messages. But when you use text messaging, keep in mind that SMS delivery isn’t failproof; it hinges on a number of factors, both in and out of your control.

Delayed, undelivered, or unreadable messages (due to unsupported characters) can increase your costs in two key ways:

• Your API platforms charge for SMS messages based on the number of messages you attempt to send, which could be higher than the number of messages delivered.
• SMS issues could upend your customer support and security strategies, leading to customer churn.

Understanding why your SMS messages might not get delivered — and working with a communications API platform that can help you avoid, monitor, and repair issues quickly — can go a long way toward improving your SMS reliability.

Here are five common reasons why your SMS messages might not reach your customers — and what you can do to address them.

Carriers filter your messages as spam

You want to send messages to your customers that add value to their experience, but the messages might not get delivered if a carrier mistakenly filters some of your messages as spam. Checks and filters differ by carrier, country, and local regulations, but they’re usually based on a combination of factors, including:

• Sender/source
• Number type used to send
• Volume of messages
• Message content

In particular, your messages might get filtered as spam if they follow certain patterns that spam messages tend to exhibit, such as including generic or free link shorteners within messages. To avoid having your SMS messages look like spam or phishing messages, use your own branded/dedicated link shortener if you need to use one. Better yet, avoid link shorteners, so text recipients can see exactly where their taps will take them.

Carriers may also consider your SMS messages spam if you send the same message to lots of recipients. Where possible, you should send personalized messages, as you would with email.

Plivo’s visual workflow tool PHLO helps you personalize SMS messages at scale. You can use it to configure a data sheet with personalized columns for information like a customer’s name and a coupon code you want to use for different customer segments. You can then include that content automatically within your SMS messages.

When messages get blocked due to spam regulations, Plivo sends delivery drop alerts to customers, so they immediately know when there’s an issue. Plivo’s customer success team can make recommendations if the customer is willing to share the content of their messages with us.

Customer complaints lead to blocked numbers

Rather than sending out unsolicited messages, you need to have a documented opt-in process, both to create a high-quality customer experience and to avoid being blocked. If an operator receives too many complaints about unwanted messages, it may block messages and ask the sender to provide an overview of the message campaign and the applicable opt-in/opt-out process. An abundance of complaints can even cause a network operator to suspend the sender.

Some of the things you can do to avoid customer complaints include:

• Explicitly note how to opt out: Senders must include “help” and “stop” keywords so that customers can learn more or opt out and avoid triggering a sender block.
• Clearly identify the sender: Senders should consider using branded short code numbers, which can help customers identify the sender and minimize complaints and opt-outs.
• Mention why customers are receiving the messages: Provide context and a reason in the messages as to why the recipient is being contacted.
• Use the same number for customers for each send: Switching between multiple numbers to send messages to the same customer can lead to a confusing and poor user experience.

Plivo provides a number of advanced features, such as a “sticky sender” feature that ensures the same number is used for the same customer, to deliver high open rates and avoid customer complaints. The platform also enables companies to send messages that come from local phone numbers, which can lead to higher open rates because they seem more relevant.

Carrier regulations restrict messaging

Businesses sending SMS messages have to abide by a complex web of regulations constructed by local telecom authorities. There’s no universal set of rules.

For example, in some areas you may have to use certain number types or sender IDs. In the US, when sending messages from an application to a person (A2P), you can’t use regular long codes with most carriers and instead need to use short codes, toll-free numbers, or specific A2P long codes.

Certain regions also have restrictions on when promotional SMS messages can be sent, which can cause messages to go undelivered or get queued until the accepted time in that region, depending on how local network operators function.

Plivo helps manage these regulations in an automated manner by queuing messages as needed and choosing the right number type. You can also leverage our customer success team for guidance on the appropriate number format for a message’s use case.

To familiarize yourself with some of these guidelines for number formats, review our white paper on SMS messaging.

A low-quality carrier network can lead to more outages

If an API provider partners with low-quality carriers, that can lead to lower delivery rates. Even if the messages go through, not having direct in-country connections can mean messages take longer to reach recipients because they have to take multiple network hops to reach their destinations.

Connecting to local markets via a large carrier that aggregates local players could exacerbate this issue. In that scenario, if an error occurs, it could take the communications platform a long time to resolve the problem, as there could be many layers between the platform and the local carrier experiencing the outage, which makes it difficult to get to the bottom of issues.

Network outages do occur from time to time, but you can improve delivery rates by leveraging API providers that connect directly to high-quality carriers.

Plivo prioritizes connecting to high-quality local carriers, and we have built-in redundancy, with at least two connections to carriers in most regions. That way, when errors and outages occur, businesses can continue using the service without interruption.

Lack of intelligent features provided by your API platform

Your API provider might lack intelligent features that could help improve deliverability behind the scenes, such as:

• Invalid phone number resolution: With most providers, if a phone number is invalid due to a missing country code, the message will simply fail to be delivered. Plivo’s enhanced destination number validation feature rejects SMS requests if the destination number provided is not a valid phone number, so you neither have to pay for it nor are left wondering whether the message went through.
• If there’s a formatting issue with a number, Plivo might be able to solve it. For instance, if a number has spaces, leading zeros, or numbers in local formats, the platform will auto-format to the international E.164 format. And in cases where the country code is duplicated at the start of the number due to both the customer entering it and the company’s application prepending the country code, Plivo deduplicates the country code before submitting the message to the carrier. An API provider that lacks these features could cause an improperly formatted number to go undelivered.
• Smart character encoding: SMS messages that contain Unicode characters might not get delivered if the destination network doesn’t support those characters. Even if the message is delivered, if it’s not properly encoded, then the message might be garbled for the recipient.
• Plivo’s intelligent message system swaps Unicode characters for similar GSM characters when the recipient’s network requires that for the message to get delivered correctly. An API provider that lacks smart character encoding could cause delivery issues, or cause your message to get split into two messages, doubling what it costs you to send it.
• Real-time routing: Businesses benefit from more consistent delivery through Plivo’s real-time routing engine, which automatically optimizes message routes. Plivo uses test nodes that continually assess carrier quality in real time. That helps us deliver your SMS messages via the most reliable route. An API provider that lacks this type of real-time testing and analysis to find optimal routes could experience technical difficulties that derail your SMS messages.

Send SMS messages with confidence

You can avoid these issues and send SMS messages to customers with confidence. To achieve more consistent delivery and keep costs down, choose a highly reliable API platform and familiarize yourself with messaging regulations in your intended markets.

To learn more about how you can more reliably send SMS messages, get in touch with Plivo’s API experts.

Speech recognition has become increasingly pervasive in recent years. This technology helps businesses provide a better customer experience and reduce organizational costs.

You can now take advantage of automatic speech recognition (ASR) with Plivo’s GetInput XML, an easy way to configure engaging, voice-driven user experiences.

Plivo’s ASR technology eliminates the heavy lifting that’s often associated with building AI-driven voice interactions. Our ASR helps build responsive applications that act on partial recognition results as your customer speaks, and we’re able to make voice transcriptions available to your application in real time.

Here are some ways ASR can enhance your end user experience, as well as help your customer service agents work more efficiently.

• Conversational IVR: Upgrade a manual, traditional IVR menu to a speech-driven experience that gets callers the answers they seek faster. Conversational IVR can do more than just say “Press 1.”
• Voice search: Build virtual assistants that intelligently provide relevant information based on the user’s query.
• Surveys and form fills: Prompt users with questions and automatically capture and transcribe their answers to fill out forms and surveys.

How does it work?

Plivo routes user responses based on a speech or a digit-selection prompt. When collecting a user’s speech as input, Plivo transcribes and relays the spoken phrases to the specified action URL in real time. When collecting input through digit press, the digits entered by the user are relayed to the specified action URL. For more information, see our documentation.

How much does it cost?

The amount you’re charged for ASR is based on the duration of the analyzed speech. Charges are calculated as USD $0.02 per 15-second pulse (rounded up). For example, if speech was recognized for 35 seconds, the account would be billed for 45 seconds (15 * 3) of speech.

What are some key features of Plivo’s ASR functionality?

Extensive language support: Plivo supports speech recognition for 27 major languages and their regional variants.

Speech adaptation with hints: Improve speech recognition accuracy by providing a set of hint words and phrases expected from the speaker. This feature can improve transcription accuracy of proper nouns, homophones (one, won), and domain-specific words rarely used in everyday conversation.

Prebuilt models: Reduce the amount of time spent configuring an IVR system and select from a range of prebuilt models, depending on your use case.

Profanity filter: Keep your transcriptions clean, and identify and monitor the use of profanity. The profanity filter masks specific words in the transcriptions programmatically forwarded to your application.

Simultaneous input detection: Augment your existing IVR applications with speech by enabling the simultaneous detection of DTMF and speech input — in other words, you can now prompt, “Press 1 or say ‘yes’ to accept.”

Advanced end-of-speech detection: Automatically detect the end of the user’s speech. Advanced timeout controls help configure end of speech detection behavior.

Interim transcription results: Reduce response times by receiving transcription results in real time with each word spoken by the caller.

Getting started

Getting started with ASR is easy. Head over to our product guide for detailed references and code samples. All Plivo server SDKs come with helper functions to work with GetInput XML. Read our language-specific guides on getting started with Plivo Voice API.

Not using Plivo yet? Getting started takes just five minutes. Sign up today!

Short codes offer a clean, fast, and legally compliant option for sending high-volume, one-way application-to-person (A2P) communications. Before you consider them, however, you should understand the common use case for short codes; what makes short codes a powerful, fast, and reliable medium; and the requirements for short code approval.

Common uses cases for short codes

The regulation and logistics surrounding short code usage are complex. Companies sometimes jump into A2P messaging without a clear understanding of how they should use short codes rather than other number types.

One of the most common myths about short code usage is that it’s only effective for marketing campaigns. In fact, you can use short codes in a variety of high-impact transactional applications across different industries.

For example, restaurants and food delivery services use short codes to update customers on the status of their table, order, or food delivery. Hotel chains, airlines, and parking companies use short codes to remind their guests of upcoming reservations or to handle itinerary changes.

SaaS applications and data storage providers often use short codes and an SMS API to support two-factor authentication, which is a convenient, cost-effective way to keep sensitive customer information and data secure by leveraging SMS to provide the “something they have” layer of 2FA.

In the public sphere, schools use short codes to update parents and students about closures or announce events. Municipalities and safety agencies use short code SMS to deliver emergency alerts, such as sudden weather changes or AMBER alerts. Shipping services like FedEx, USPS, and UPS use short codes to update residents on package statuses, including delivery notifications or delays. Political organizations leverage short codes to support voting, polling, and surveys to gauge public opinion.

While short codes are a dynamic and an effective way to deliver a wide range of A2P communications, they’re not the best number type for all promotional or transactional messaging.

When not to use short codes

If you’re sending a low-volume promotional campaign — fewer than 10 messages per second — it’s more cost-effective to use a toll-free number enabled for SMS or number pooling over long codes. Plivo can help you select the most appropriate number format and optimize your campaigns so that you remain in compliance with the regulations for text messaging set by the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA).

What makes short codes powerful and reliable

SMS messages offer an immediate and powerful method for reaching customers. According to mobile research firm MobileSQUARED, 90% of people read their text messages within three minutes of receiving them.

When you combine this high read rate with the high-volume capabilities of A2P short code communications, you can reach more of your end users faster than you could with long codes or toll-free numbers. Plus, short codes are the only preapproved number type for sending promotional messages. This preapproval by the CTIA and Common Short Code Administration (CSCA) means short codes also have more consistent, reliable delivery rates than their long code or toll-free counterparts.

Similarly, short code communications are less likely to be blocked at the carrier level as spam because of their preapproved CTIA status. Before a company can use a short number, the CTIA reviews their program — a process that can take up to six weeks — to ensure that it meets the association’s guidelines.

Plivo can help you with the administrative legwork of getting approval, and advise you on how to compose short code campaigns so they have the best chance of getting approved. More on this later.

Rate limits on messaging via long codes makes them an inefficient way to send high-volume promotional or transactional messages, which often need to reach tens of thousands of recipients with time-sensitive information. While long code communications are limited to one message sent per four-second interval and up to 200 messages per day per number, short code messages can be sent out at the much faster rate of 50 messages per second.

Additionally, you can easily customize short code campaigns for different use cases, with campaign tracking for better deliverability.

Requirements for short code approval

Carriers must approve a short code and its content before rollout (and conduct audits at later dates). To gain approval, your short code must meet a few requirements.

A clear call to action (CTA)

A clear call to action doesn’t just encourage recipients to interact with the company sending the short code communication — it describes exactly what information customers will get if they sign up.

A clear CTA should include:

• The company and program name
• A program description, including how often recipients will get messages
• A link to the program’s terms and conditions
• Opt-in and opt-out instructions
• Instructions on contacting customer support
• Additional carrier cost disclosures for message and data rates

These requirements ensure that end users can recognize promotional and transactional messages.

An acceptable opt-in method

Before you can send promotional or transactional A2P messages to recipients, you need to get express written consent from end users. To do this, get opt-in via text message through a keyword, an online form, or an in-person, in-store signup.

Companies can get opt-in from customers in a number of ways:

• Online phone number entry
• A mobile-oriented message that includes the opt-in keyword
• In-store, point-of-sale signup
• Opt-in button on a mobile web page
• Interactive voice response (IVR) opt-in via phone call

To ensure you can prove compliance with the CTIA opt-in regulations, you should store customer records electronically.

Templatized content and message flow

For each short code program, you must submit a template of the content you plan to send for CTIA approval. Additionally, you must use one of the three approved message flows when sending communications to customers:

1. One-time messages: These transactional, nonrecurring messages are triggered when a recipient sends in a keyword, resulting in a single, immediate text message.
2. Recurring messages: These subscription-based communications require customers to opt in to receive multiple ongoing messages and dictate that businesses must include opt-out instructions in the first communication.
3. Two-factor authentication: These communications are used to verify the identity of the customer with a third-party service using a combination of two of the following: a password, a mobile phrase or authentication, or a fingerprint.

By ensuring every company complies with the above criteria, the CTIA can maintain a consistent user experience for recipients.

Terms and conditions

If you’re using short codes for transactional or promotional messaging, you must include the full terms and conditions for your programs on a web-accessible page. These terms and conditions pages can be shared between programs (unlike opt-ins) but must all contain the following information:

• Sponsor information and program description that tells the reader what the company does and what the program is for
• Call to action that includes opt-in instructions
• Statement of recurrence disclaimer for campaigns that are ongoing
• Additional carrier cost disclosure that includes the phrase “message and data rates may apply” or “Msg&DataRatesMayApply”
• Active keywords that are used to control the recipient’s involvement in the program (such as HELP or STOP)
• An explanation of opt-out mechanisms that explain how people can opt out of the program
• Customer support information in case recipients need additional information
• Link to the privacy policy that details how the company ensures the privacy of user information

By following these terms and compliance regulations, you ensure that program recipients understand what you’ll be sending them as part of your program and how to get more information if issues or questions arise.

The CTIA also forbids companies from doing a few things with short code campaigns:

• Using the same opt-in for multiple programs
• Affiliate marketing
• Using one short code for multiple use cases
• Selling or sharing user information
• Loan, debt consolidation, or other advertising for debt services
• Deceptive marketing
• Fraud or phishing scams
• Work from home, “secret shopping,” and similar job advertising

Additionally, the CTIA does not allow you to promote any content advertising sex, hate, alcohol, firearms, or tobacco (SHAFT) in approved short code programs.

Getting started with short codes

The SMS regulatory landscape is in constant flux, and keeping up with changing rules is a challenge even for seasoned professionals.

Compared to other SMS number types, such as long codes and toll-free numbers, short codes are the most heavily regulated, take the longest to get approval for, and have the most expensive rates.

To get started with short code messaging, companies first have to lease a five- to six-digit short code. Regulations require companies submit a lengthy short code application that discloses who they are and how they plan to use the number. Then they must navigate the complicated short code provisioning process, which involves getting approval from every carrier network in the US and/or Canada before they can launch a communications program over their new short code number.

Fortunately, Plivo does the heavy lifting of getting your short code program through all the regulatory hoops. Plivo provides both the high-quality carrier network and the industry expertise you need to achieve superior message deliverability. As the leading Twilio alternative, Plivo brings depth of knowledge and direct Tier 1 carrier relationships to the table, so you don’t have to stress over regulations or reliability.

Download our white paper on how to optimize SMS communication to learn how to create and execute better SMS campaigns, or contact one of our short code experts today to get started.