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What is SMS Pumping: Plivo’s Quick Guide
Learn about SMS pumping, the risks it poses to businesses, how fraudsters generate fake traffic to exploit them, and how to prevent it.
In the digital age, SMS remains a cornerstone for user authentication, particularly through One-Time Passwords (OTPs). However, this reliance has made businesses vulnerable to a growing threat: SMS pumping fraud.
What is SMS pumping?
SMS pumping, also known as Artificially Inflated Traffic (AIT) or SMS toll fraud, is a fraudulent scheme where attackers exploit SMS-based services to generate large volumes of fake traffic. This is typically achieved by:
- Automated Bots: Using bots to flood online forms with fake OTP requests.
- Premium Rate Numbers: Directing these requests to phone numbers that incur higher charges, often controlled by the fraudsters or complicit telecom operators.
The perpetrators profit by receiving a share of the revenue generated from these inflated SMS charges, leaving businesses to bear the financial burden.
Real-World Impact: The Twitter Case
A notable example of SMS pumping's financial impact is Twitter (now X). In 2023, Elon Musk revealed that the platform was losing approximately $60 million annually due to SMS pumping fraud. The scheme involved over 390 telecom operators worldwide, who were either complicit or negligent in allowing the abuse of SMS services.
How does SMS pumping work?
The process typically unfolds as follows:
- Targeting Vulnerable Endpoints: Attackers identify websites or applications that send OTPs via SMS.
- Flooding with Requests: Bots submit numerous fake requests, often using disposable or premium-rate phone numbers.
- Revenue Generation: Each SMS sent to these numbers incurs a cost, which is shared with the fraudsters.
This leads to significant financial losses for businesses, as they pay for messages that serve no legitimate purpose.
Signs Your Business Might Be a Target
Be vigilant if you notice:
- Unusual Traffic Patterns: A sudden spike in OTP requests, especially from unfamiliar regions.
- Sequential Number Requests: Multiple OTP requests to consecutive phone numbers, indicating automated bot activity.
- Low Conversion Rates: A high number of OTPs sent but a low rate of successful authentications.
Preventive Measures: Safeguarding Your Business
To protect against SMS pumping fraud, consider implementing the following strategies:
- Rate Limiting: Restrict the number of OTP requests per user or IP address within a specified time frame.
- Bot Detection: Use CAPTCHA or other bot detection mechanisms to prevent automated submissions.
- Geo-Blocking: Limit OTP requests to regions where your user base is located.
- Traffic Monitoring: Regularly analyze traffic patterns to identify and mitigate suspicious activities.
Plivo’s Solutions to SMS Pumping
Recognizing the growing threat of SMS pumping, Plivo is proud to offer two innovative tools, free of charge, designed to protect your business from fraudulent SMS traffic:
- SMS Pumping Protection for OTP Traffic: This solution is specifically built to safeguard your SMS API endpoints that handle OTP traffic. By detecting and preventing fraudulent OTP requests, it helps ensure your messaging services remain both secure and cost-effective. Read more about SMS Pumping Protection here.
- Fraud Shield for Verify Applications: Designed for applications leveraging Plivo’s Verify API, Fraud Shield delivers advanced fraud detection by analyzing traffic patterns, identifying anomalies, and blocking suspicious activities. This ensures your verification processes stay protected from abuse. Read more about Fraud Shield here.
Learn more about Plivo’s tools for combating SMS pumping by requesting a trial.
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RCS Marketing 101: Your Complete Guide
Discover how RCS marketing delivers rich, branded messages that drive engagement for your business.
SMS marketing works, but let’s be honest: it feels a bit outdated compared to modern apps.
But what if you could send rich, interactive messages with branded content, images, buttons, and carousels straight to your customers’ native messaging apps?
Rich communication services (RCS) makes that possible.
If you’re ready to explore how RCS marketing can transform your engagement strategy, this guide will walk you through everything you need to know. Let’s get started.
What is RCS marketing?
RCS marketing uses rich communication services to send interactive, branded messages through a customer’s default messaging app. It’s a modern upgrade to SMS that lets businesses share images, buttons, carousels, and more — all without needing third-party apps.
A user on Reddit summed up this perfectly:
RCS lets you send messages that are visually branded with logos and colors while remaining interactive. This turns static updates into an app-like experience inside a message.
This shift is part of a broader industry move, led by Google and backed by major mobile carriers, to upgrade messaging infrastructure and make RCS the default standard on Android devices.
As support continues to grow, businesses are adopting RCS as part of their customer engagement strategy. Platforms like Plivo make that adoption easier with a reliable, enterprise-grade gateway to deliver rich, reliable RCS campaigns at scale.
RCS vs. SMS marketing: A quick comparison
Marketers today are looking for ways to deliver more interactive and visual communication, and RCS is clearly leading the way.
While SMS still works well for simple alerts, it lacks the creativity and engagement that RCS marketing offers.
Let’s take a quick look at RCS vs. SMS marketing.
4 key benefits of RCS marketing
RCS marketing makes messaging feel more natural for both you and your customers. And since you can see what’s working and what’s not, it’s easier to pivot your strategy and get better results.
Here are its four key benefits.
1. Improved user interaction
One of the biggest advantages of RCS marketing is how seamless it makes the experience for your customers. Instead of typing out replies or clicking a link to open a website, users can just tap a button right inside the message.
Want them to book a demo, check order status, or browse products? It’s all possible with just a tap.
Fewer steps mean less effort, and that leads to more people following through. In fact, individuals spend up to 37 seconds engaging with RCS messages, which is a lot longer than most other types of mobile messaging.
That extra time and interaction can make all the difference when you’re trying to convert interest into action.
2. Consistent brand experience
RCS marketing doesn’t just tell people who you are — it shows them.
Verified business profiles help people know they’re getting messages from the real brand. Every message shows your brand’s logo, name, colors, and a checkmark. These small details make it clear that the message is coming from a genuine source.
This consistency matters because 88% of people are more likely to buy from a brand they trust.
3. In-depth analytics
With RCS marketing, you can track open rates, button clicks, and how people interact with each part of your message.
You get clear visibility into what’s working and where users are dropping off.
This makes it much easier to measure the return on investment (ROI) and fine-tune your campaigns. The more you understand how people engage, the better you can shape your messaging for results.
4. Higher conversion potential
RCS marketing makes it easier for customers to take action — whether that’s browsing products, booking a service, or making a purchase — all within the message itself.
With fewer clicks and no need to switch apps, the path to conversion feels effortless. And when it’s that easy, more people follow through.
For example, EaseMyTrip used RCS to run a post-COVID travel survey. They added quick-tap answer options and followed up with a thank-you coupon. The campaign saw a 4x higher click-through rate than email, 10x more survey completions, and a 2.7% increase in conversion rate.
5 major use cases of RCS marketing
Here are five major use cases showing how brands are using RCS marketing effectively.
1. Product promotions
RCS makes product promotions feel more like browsing a store than reading a message. Brands can send image carousels that customers can swipe through to explore new arrivals, check product details, and see what’s available without leaving their messaging app.
2. Abandoned cart reminders
The average cart abandonment rate is over 70%, which means most shoppers never make it to the finish line. RCS marketing can help bring them back by making the reminder more engaging and easier to act on.
You can send a message that shows exactly what they left behind, along with a clear button to complete the purchase. It’s visual, straightforward, and the entire experience stays within their messaging app.
3. Appointment confirmations and reminders
A PhD thesis from Manchester Metropolitan University found that forgetfulness is the most common reason people skip their appointments.
RCS makes it easier for both businesses and customers to stay on the same page. You can send a message that shows the appointment details along with a simple calendar view. Add buttons to confirm, reschedule, or cancel — all within the chat.
4. Customer surveys and feedback
Getting feedback is important, but most customers lack the time or patience to complete lengthy forms. RCS marketing makes it easier by allowing brands to ask short, targeted questions and receive quick responses.
Plus, the rich features of RCS let you include images, ratings, or multiple-choice options, making feedback feel more like a conversation.
5. Customer support follow-ups
After a support request is resolved, following up shows customers you care and helps close the loop on their experience. But if the follow-up message gets buried in an email inbox or goes unnoticed, that opportunity to connect is lost.
With RCS marketing, you can send a quick message to check if everything’s working fine. You can include helpful buttons like “Change Password,” “Manage Account,” or “Talk to Support.”
RCS marketing myths and realities
Despite RCS marketing’s growing adoption and proven results, some common misconceptions still hold businesses back from trying it. Let’s look at a few of the biggest myths and what’s actually true.
Myth 1: RCS marketing is too expensive
At first glance, RCS business messaging can seem like a pricey upgrade. Rich visuals, tap-to-action buttons, and branded layouts look premium, so it’s easy to assume they come with a hefty cost.
But cost alone doesn’t tell the full story.
What you get in return matters more. RCS drives significantly stronger engagement with higher click-through rates, increased interactions, and better overall outcomes.
Take Club Comex, the loyalty program of North American paint brand Comex. They sent two rich and interactive RCS campaigns to their members and saw a 10x higher click-through rate, which helped increase revenue by 115%.
That’s the value side of the equation. Better targeting and richer content mean more people click, engage, and convert.
Myth 2: RCS marketing doesn’t reach enough users to be worth it
This concern made sense in the early days of RCS, when adoption was still catching up. But the landscape looks very different now.
In June 2024, the 12-month growth of RCS users reached 36.3%, showing faster uptake than other messaging channels. More Android devices support RCS by default, and it’s being rolled out across more networks globally. Even Apple has announced support, which means RCS is on track to reach a massive number of smartphone users worldwide.
With that kind of growth and widespread support, the hesitation around RCS is starting to fade. Brands can confidently invest in RCS marketing knowing it will connect with more customers than ever before.
Myth 3: RCS gets treated like spam and ends up ignored just like emails
Unlike email, RCS messages appear directly in the user’s primary messaging app alongside personal conversations. They include rich media and interactive elements, making them more engaging and less likely to be ignored.
This creates a more natural, conversational experience that drives higher open and response rates than traditional marketing channels.
Why choose Plivo for your RCS marketing needs
With RCS, you can turn simple messages into rich, branded conversations that feel more like chatting than broadcasting.
Plivo gives you the tools to make that shift without the hassle. From verified messaging to smart automation, everything works together to help you connect better and respond faster.
When combined with AI Agents and a unified customer data platform, RCS becomes more than just messaging. You can deliver personalized experiences at scale, automate everyday interactions, and keep conversations flowing without lifting a finger.
Here’s what you get with Plivo’s RCS API:
- Real-time personalization: AI Agents tailor conversations using customer profiles and behavior triggers to improve engagement and conversions.
- Multi-channel fallback: If RCS isn’t supported, messages automatically switch to SMS to ensure delivery and maintain consistent communication.
- Conversational automation: AI Agents handle FAQs, process orders, schedule deliveries, and route complex queries within RCS.
- All-in-one messaging platform: Manage RCS, SMS, WhatsApp, Voice, and more from a single dashboard.
- Reliable performance: 99.99% uptime and global infrastructure keep your campaigns running smoothly.
With Plivo’s no-code tools, you can quickly launch AI-powered RCS messaging across channels and deliver a consistent customer experience from day one.
See how you can launch your first RCS marketing campaign with Plivo by requesting a demo today!
WhatsApp Agent Setup: How to Launch AI-Powered Conversations at Scale
Learn how WhatsApp agent setup works using Plivo to launch AI-powered, no-code agents that handle support, sales, and engagement at scale.
Your customers are on WhatsApp but are your agents?
If you’re still relying on manual replies, scripted chatbots, or email follow-ups, you’re leaving response time and revenue on the table.
The smarter path? AI-powered WhatsApp agents. They’re full-service, no-code agents that can resolve issues, qualify leads, and send personalized offers 24/7.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through WhatsApp agent setup using Plivo and understand how these agents help you automate conversations that convert.
What is a WhatsApp AI agent?
A WhatsApp AI agent is an automation designed to operate over the WhatsApp Business API. Unlike scripted bots, agents are built to understand intent, pull in context from your internal systems, and complete business tasks like answering account-specific questions or initiating transactions.
Plivo’s WhatsApp AI agents can be trained to use your brand voice, integrated with your CRM or helpdesk, and customized to handle specific use cases, such as subscription renewals, cart recovery, refund processing, or customer onboarding.
They are accessible through a no-code interface and support a multilingual, omnichannel customer experience across WhatsApp, SMS, RCS, and voice.
What you need before setting up your agent
To go live with a WhatsApp agent, you need:
- A verified Meta Business Account
- An active WhatsApp Business Account (WABA) tied to a phone number
- Pre-approved message templates for outbound communication
- WhatsApp Business API access through a business solution provider (BSP) (Plivo offers this natively)
- A platform to design, train, and manage agents (Plivo Agent Studio)
Also read: How to Create WhatsApp Message Templates: A Complete Guide
Optional but recommended integrations:
- CRM (like Salesforce, HubSpot, or Zoho)
- Helpdesk (like Zendesk or Freshdesk)
- E-commerce or billing tools (Shopify, Stripe, etc.)
Step-by-step: How to set up a WhatsApp agent with Plivo
Follow this step-by-step guide for a smooth WhatsApp agent setup with Plivo.
Step #1: Choose your primary use case and define agent scope
Don’t build a generic bot. Start with why you’re automating. This could be handling support queries, sending order updates, re-engaging inactive customers, or managing subscription renewals.
Plivo provides a library of prebuilt AI agents for common use cases like cart recovery, lead qualification, appointment reminders, and product recommendations. You can choose to use one as-is or customize it to fit your business process. Each agent is compatible with WhatsApp and designed to operate across channels as needed.
Step #2: Build the agent using Plivo’s no-code platform
Since your API access is already set up, you can begin building your agent in Plivo’s Agent Studio. This is a visual, drag-and-drop builder where you create conversation flows using blocks that represent actions, responses, conditions, and triggers.
You can structure your flow to respond to specific keywords, match customer intent, route inquiries to different departments, or escalate to a live agent when needed. Each step in the journey can include media-rich responses like buttons, product carousels, quick replies, and file attachments.
Beyond logic design, you can also configure fallback rules for when the agent is unsure, and add human handoff conditions to ensure escalations happen smoothly with full context transferred to the live agent.
This step allows you to fully customize the agent’s tone, workflow, and logic to reflect how your brand communicates.4
Step #3: Train your agent with AI
Plivo supports integration with internal systems like your CRM, order management platform, inventory tools, or helpdesk. This means your agent can access real-time customer data, past orders, preferences, and policies to deliver personalized responses.
You can also connect your knowledge base, including FAQs, SOPs, product documentation, or policy articles. These resources train the agent to respond accurately and contextually, without needing scripted answers.
For natural language understanding, Plivo gives you the flexibility to choose the AI model that powers your agent.
Step #4: Test, launch, and monitor your agent
Once your flow is built and trained, run controlled tests:
- Check for flow accuracy and intent matching
- Review how it handles incomplete or unclear inputs
- Test human handoff and see if the agent transfers the full context
Plivo’s real-time dashboard lets you:
- Monitor delivery, engagement, and satisfaction metrics
- Track where users drop off in conversations
- Identify areas to improve agent logic or content
- Compare campaign and agent performance across channels
After launch, your agent keeps learning. As more customers interact, you’ll gather insight to improve how it responds or what paths it offers.
Plivo is purpose-built for WhatsApp AI agent deployment
Plivo’s platform is designed to help you move from idea to live AI-powered engagement without requiring engineering support or external consultants. When you use Plivo for WhatsApp agent setup, you get:
- Access to prebuilt agents for sales, support, and engagement
- Intuitive no-code builder (Agent Studio) that puts you in control
- Deep integration with your business systems for real-time, contextual replies
- Support for the best LLMs on the market, so your agent is trained with intelligence
- Built-in compliance with WhatsApp’s policies and global data laws
- Unified interface to manage messaging across WhatsApp, SMS, RCS, and Voice
- Enterprise-grade infrastructure with 99.99% uptime and expert onboarding support
Automate outcomes with WhatsApp agent setup in Plivo
Smart WhatsApp automation starts with smart setup. With Plivo's no-code platform, you can automate customer conversations, boost sales, and scale support — all without a development team.
Plivo offers the tools to build agents that reflect your brand, the infrastructure to scale securely, and the intelligence to adapt with your customer needs.
Whether you're trying to cut support wait times, recover abandoned carts, or drive upsells through personalized outreach, a well-built WhatsApp agent can make it happen, and Plivo makes it achievable.
Ready to get started? Request a free trial today!
The Definitive Guide to Automating WhatsApp for Business
Learn how WhatsApp automation can simplify customer communication and scale operations. Know about its key benefits and use cases. Get started today.
Remember when WhatsApp was just a simple messaging app? Launched in 2009, it was a tool for friends and family to stay in touch.
Fast-forward to today, and WhatsApp has become a global powerhouse with over 3 billion monthly active users. Businesses worldwide leverage WhatsApp to connect with customers, share updates, and provide support.
Many businesses struggle to keep up with the growing volume of customer messages on WhatsApp. Manually handling inquiries, sending updates, or following up on leads can quickly become overwhelming and inefficient.
This is where WhatsApp automation steps in.
By automating repetitive messaging tasks, businesses can reduce manual workload, respond faster, and deliver more personalized, timely communication.
In this article, we'll explore what WhatsApp automation is, why it's essential for modern businesses, and how you can implement it to improve customer engagement and operational workflows.
What is WhatsApp automation?
WhatsApp automation is the use of technology to automatically send and manage messages on the platform, especially for business and customer engagement purposes.
It doesn’t require human intervention for every interaction. As a result, businesses can handle customer inquiries, deliver updates, and engage with prospects efficiently.
With WhatsApp business automation, you can:
- Auto-respond to FAQs and reduce ticket volume.
- Reduce customer support load with proactive messaging.
- Route complex support queries to live agents only when needed.
- Send order confirmations and delivery updates automatically.
- Share return instructions based on customer actions.
- Run re-engagement campaigns with smart timing.
- Integrate with Shopify, Magento, and more for real-time updates.
- Trigger workflows from CRMs or e-commerce platforms.
- Keep messaging compliant with auto opt-outs and logs.
Here’s a breakdown of the three main types of automated messaging on WhatsApp:
Key benefits of WhatsApp automation
By automating routine tasks, WhatsApp can help your business stay responsive and consistent across customer touchpoints. Here’s how it can benefit your business:
Reduce manual workloads and response times
When you automate WhatsApp interactions, every department, from marketing to customer service, runs more smoothly.
By automating routine tasks like order updates, FAQs, and customer inquiries, businesses can significantly reduce the manual effort required.
This means your team spends less time on repetitive tasks and more time focusing on high-priority interactions.
Increases the scalability of customer interactions
As your business grows, the number of customer interactions increases. Automation allows you to scale communication efforts without hiring additional staff or losing the personal touch.
Whether you're dealing with 50 or 5,000 customers, automated responses ensure that each inquiry is handled swiftly and consistently.
Enhances customer experience through personalization
Automated WhatsApp messages can be personalized based on customer data, creating a more relevant and tailored experience.
From addressing customers by name to offering product recommendations based on past purchases, personalization makes customers feel valued. This leads to higher engagement rates and improved loyalty.
Cost-effectiveness compared to manual processes
WhatsApp automation eliminates the need for large customer support teams and reduces the time spent on repetitive tasks.
This saves on operational costs and also leads to a more efficient allocation of resources.
5 popular use cases of WhatsApp automation across industries
Businesses everywhere are finding new ways to use WhatsApp automation. Here are five popular examples:
1. Customer support
Automating common FAQs and routine inquiries on WhatsApp helps customers get instant answers anytime. This reduces the number of tickets support teams have to handle, letting them focus on more complex problems.
2. E-commerce operations
Order confirmations, shipping updates, and delivery notifications keep customers informed every step of the way. Automating returns and collecting feedback via WhatsApp speeds up these processes and improves customer satisfaction.
3.Marketing and lead nurturing
Automated lead follow-ups ensure timely, consistent engagement with prospects, boosting conversion chances. Also, you can use personalized re-engagement campaigns to help bring back inactive customers with offers or updates tailored to their interests.
4.Event management and invitations
Automated WhatsApp invites, updates, and follow-ups keep your audience informed and engaged, boosting the attendance rate. This helps you stay connected and make every event a success.
5.Appointment scheduling and reminders
Timely reminders help customers remember appointments, reducing cancellations and improving the overall experience. Automation makes scheduling easier and more efficient for both businesses and customers.
Step-by-step guide to implement WhatsApp automation for your business
To successfully implement WhatsApp automation, follow these key steps that cover planning, setup, and optimization.
Step 1: Define your use cases and goals
Start by identifying which business functions, such as order updates, customer support, or lead follow-ups, will benefit most from automation.
Set clear, measurable goals like:
- Reducing response times
- Lowering manual workload
- Boosting customer engagement
This will guide your automation strategy and help you track success.
Also, ensure compliance from the start. WhatsApp requires businesses to obtain explicit customer opt-in before sending messages. To stay compliant:
- Use clear, transparent language when requesting consent.
- Collect opt-ins through channels like website forms, checkout flows, or click-to-chat ads.
- Log and manage consent within your systems for audit readiness.
Data privacy and compliance are essential for building trust and maintaining long-term customer relationships.
Step 2: Choose the right WhatsApp business API provider
Select a platform that fits your specific needs. Look for features like:
- Robust CRM integrations
- Audience segmentation
- Flexible automation workflows
These capabilities simplify your communication and scale your efforts efficiently.
Make segmentation a priority, use tagging and grouping strategies to target the right customers with the right messages.
With smart tagging and grouping, you can:
- Deliver personalized messages
- Engage the right people at the right time
- Improve conversion and retention
Step 3: Set up your WhatsApp business account
You must set up a verified WhatsApp Business account to use WhatsApp for automated messaging. This includes:
- Registering your business name and details.
- Verifying a dedicated phone number.
- Getting approval from Meta to use the WhatsApp Business API.
This ensures that your business is recognized as a legitimate sender.
Your WhatsApp API provider will typically assist with onboarding, including submitting documentation and setting up the technical aspects.
Some platforms also offer pre-built tools to help you manage mobile number registration, display name approval, and message template submissions.
Step 4: Create and submit message templates
Start by designing message templates for everyday customer interactions, such as:
- Promotional messages (e.g., limited-time offers)
- Transactional updates (e.g., order confirmations, delivery alerts)
- Support messages (e.g., ticket updates or issue resolution)
Each template must follow WhatsApp’s formatting and content policies.
Once your templates are ready, submit them through your WhatsApp API provider for Meta’s approval. Only approved templates can be used for proactive messaging.
Step 5: Build automation workflows
Now that your account and templates are ready, it’s time to connect WhatsApp with the rest of your tech stack. Integrate with:
- CRM systems (to access customer data)
- Support tools (for query management)
- E-commerce platforms (to track orders and actions)
Use event-based triggers, like a new order, a cart abandonment, or a support ticket, to automatically send relevant messages.
Additionally, plan for human fallback. Automation can’t handle everything. Build intelligent workflows that escalate to a human agent when:
- A customer requests help
- The query is too complex
- Sentiment detection flags a negative experience
This keeps your support experience smooth, responsive, and frustration-free.
Step 6: Test, launch, and optimize
Start with a pilot campaign to ensure everything runs smoothly.
Track key metrics:
- Response time
- Open rate
- Conversion rate
Use these insights to refine your workflows, improve message content, and adjust targeting.
Best practices for WhatsApp automation
Following some proven best practices is essential to get the most out of WhatsApp automation. Here’s what you need to know:
Tips for optimizing messaging frequency and timing
To keep your audience interested, it's vital to message thoughtfully and strategically. Here are some quick tips:
- Avoid over-messaging to prevent unsubscribes.
- Use analytics to identify when your audience is most active and receptive.
- Space out messages to keep it natural.
- Monitor response rates and adjust based on customer behavior and feedback.
Leverage data analytics for campaign performance
By tracking metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and response times, you gain valuable insights into what works and what doesn’t. Use this data to refine your messaging, target relevant audience segments, and optimize timing.
Regularly reviewing analytics helps you make informed decisions that boost engagement and drive better results over time.
Compliance and customer privacy protection
To protect your customers and stay compliant, focus on these key areas:
Enhance customer communication with Plivo’s AI WhatsApp automation
The growing demand for instant, tailored communication on WhatsApp puts pressure on businesses to respond quickly. Customers expect fast, personalized replies around the clock, and doing this manually often leads to delays, inconsistent service, and missed opportunities.
Finding a way to scale these conversations efficiently is critical for businesses looking to stay competitive.
That’s where Plivo comes in, an industry-leading omnichannel platform that automates and personalizes WhatsApp conversations, delivering timely responses at scale.
By leveraging Plivo’s WhatsApp AI agents, businesses can manage a wide range of customer communication tasks, from pre-sales inquiries to post-purchase support, without increasing their team size.
Here’s how Plivo can enhance your customer communication:
- Brand-aligned AI agents: You can customize the AI agents to reflect your brand’s voice, tone, and style. This makes all customer interactions align with your brand’s identity and deliver a personalized experience.
- AI customer service agent: Plivo’s AI agents work around the clock, ensuring your customers receive timely responses, regardless of the time zone. These agents process orders, resolve support issues, and answer questions.
- Natural, human-like conversations: With AI agents, you can engage in context-aware conversations, mimicking human interactions. They remember customer preferences and history to provide relevant responses like a human agent would.
- Simple, volume-based pricing: Plivo charges a flat fee per conversation rather than per message, making costs predictable and scalable. Volume discounts are available to lower your total spend as your messaging needs grow.
- Built-in compliance: Plivo ensures compliance with GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, ISO 27001, and SOC 2 standards.
- Guaranteed message delivery with fallback options: The platform delivers billions of messages annually and uses SMS and voice fallback channels to ensure your customers always receive important communications.
- 24/7 availability: Plivo's AI agents provide instant, 24/7 assistance, answering questions, processing orders, and resolving customer issues.
- Multilingual support: With support for 70+ languages, Plivo’s AI agents can engage with customers globally and offer a multilingual customer service experience.
- E-commerce platform integrations: Integrate seamlessly with popular e-commerce platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and Magento to deliver a unified customer experience across all touchpoints.
With Plivo’s vast carrier network spanning over 220 countries, businesses can significantly cut SMS costs by up to 70% while achieving threefold returns on investment.
Many companies using Plivo CX have experienced remarkable results, earning an outstanding $71 for every dollar invested in their SMS marketing efforts.
Book a free demo today and see how Plivo’s AI WhatsApp agents can change your customer communication strategy.
Introducing Plivo Android SDK v2 (Beta)
Plivo's SMS API and Voice API enables businesses to communicate with their customers at global scale. Sign up for free now.
Plivo’s Android SDK v2 is now available in public beta. Android SDK v2 helps you make and receive calls in your Android applications. This new version of the SDK is backward-compatible with the older version.
What’s new in v2
Android SDK v2 includes major enhancements in architecture support, security, and stability.
Wider architecture support
The new SDK is fully compatible with all major mobile architectures:
- arm64-v8a
- armeabi
- armeabi-v7a
- mips
- mips64
- x86
- x86_64
Enhanced security
The new SDK uses an OpenSSL v1.0.2k encrypted connection for SIP signaling. This added layer of security eliminates the risk from man-in-the-middle attacks.
Enhanced stability
The new SDK promises improved performance and stability over older versions, thanks to numerous bug fixes and code optimizations made based on crash reports received from existing SDK users.
Getting started
We’ve created a few resources to help you get started building Android apps using the Plivo Android SDK v2. The SDK Reference page documents all the APIs that the SDK exposes. The step-by-step getting started guide should help get you live within minutes.
We’ve also developed a sample Android application that implements all the features of the SDK. The example app also showcases how to implement a background Keep Alive service to receive incoming calls even when your app is not running.
Download the SDK directly or from the Android SDK V2 documentation page.
What’s coming next?
The new Android SDK v2 is fully compatible to handle push notifications for incoming calls via Google Cloud Manager (GCM) and Firebase. We’re working on changes in our back-end stack to facilitate push notifications for incoming calls. Once these changes are rolled out, app users will be able to receive incoming calls even when the app’s background service isn’t running, thus saving bandwidth and battery usage.
Using a Jenkins Pipeline to Add Grafana Annotations for Release Monitoring
Plivo's SMS API and Voice API enables businesses to communicate with their customers at global scale. Sign up for free now.
For the Plivo tech team, DevOps is not just a more efficient way of building products, it’s a way of life. To make things more efficient, we’re always trying out new things to see what works and what doesn’t. Release process is one area where we see a lot of scope for innovation. Today we’re sharing one best practice that’s working well for us.
At Plivo, we use Jenkins as our CI/CD tool. Specifically, we use Jenkins Pipeline DSL to write build jobs as code. Using CI/CD, we deploy code several times a day across many microservices. To ensure that our services are performing optimally within the defined system parameters, we monitor a variety of metrics across releases immediately after the deployment, and annotate Grafana panels via Jenkins Pipeline.
Our CI/CD pipeline has multiple stages:
During the Deploy stage, we annotate Grafana panels via their annotate REST API using the POST /api/annotations API.
The pipeline code looks like this.
We use the Grafana API credentials (GRAFANA_APIKEY) from the Jenkins credentials store. The payload to the /api/annotations API is sent as a JSON object, as shown in this Grafana docs example.
{
"time":1507037197339,
"isRegion":true,
"timeEnd":1507180805056,
"tags":["tag1","tag2"],
"text":"Annotation Description"
}
<div class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code>{ "time":1507037197339, "isRegion":true, "timeEnd":1507180805056, "tags":["tag1","tag2"], "text":"Annotation Description"}</code></pre></div>
Once the annotations are sent to Grafana, we add them to the Grafana panels manually. We will use the optional dashboardId and panelId fields in the future to build dashboards on the fly with Grafana 5.0, removing the need to manually add annotations.
The code above produces Grafana annotation like this.
This Grafana panel for an imaginary service has an annotation between 12:16 and 12:22, which is the duration of the deployment, and it contains a description and tags. The description includes the version and the person responsible for the deployment as well as the approver for the release. The description and the tags are defined using variables earlier in our pipeline code.
Enterprise Connect 2018 Round-up from Plivo
Plivo's SMS API and Voice API enables businesses to communicate with their customers at global scale. Sign up for free now.
Plivo attended Enterprise Connect 2018 in Orlando last week. Here’s a quick roundup of the top trends we observed and the interesting conversations we had at the Plivo booth.
Hot trending topics
Migration to the cloud
If we had to single out one word that dominated most of the discussions at EC18, it would have to be “cloud.” According to recent Cloud Collaboration Survey, 80% of the businesses are considering migration to cloud in the next 24 months. We heard a lot of lively discussions around how a move to the cloud can have some major costs due to planning, infrastructure integrations, identity management, security reviews, procedure revisions, new devices and phones, system testing, rollout, and taxes. Presenters shared some tips and tricks on how to avoid the “gotchas” in a cloud migration. Everybody seemed to agree that cloudification of communication made business sense. For a company like Plivo, which was born in the cloud, this was music to our ears.
The rise and rise of communication APIs
The ability to integrate communications into applications, business processes, and workflows is an increasingly important requirement for many enterprises. The conference API track had an interesting session entitled “Why you should embrace the API movement.” The discussion there went beyond the obvious topic of voice and messaging APIs to prepackaged building blocks for integrating communication capabilities. There was talk around how much technology know-how and staff expertise affects the decision to use or not use CPaaS. Does prepackaged functionality come at the cost of flexibility? At Plivo, we had some answers to that in our booth. More on that in a moment.
The Year of WebRTC
WebRTC has existed for more than five years, but real-world adoption has been limited due to browser incompatibilities. The speakers at EC18 examined whether things were changing, and agreed that they were. Apple’s decision to add WebRTC support to Safari, plus efforts to develop a common open source video codec, have breathed new life into WebRTC for enterprise real-time communications. That matches our observation that Browser SDK, our web SDK with support for the Opus codec, has been gaining traction lately.
TADHack mini hackathon
The TADHack event is my favorite place at Enterprise Connect. At TADHack-mini Orlando 2018 there was a diverse group of people from across the Orlando developer and technology communities, Florida universities, Enterprise Connect attendees, and remote entrants. A huge shout-out to Myles McNamara (Twitter: @tripflex), who developed an entire third-party verification system using Plivo. We’re always proud and excited when developers use Plivo APIs to do amazing things.
Conversations at the Plivo booth
At our booth on the expo floor there was never a boring moment. We met tons of great people and had some lovely conversations. Four topics kept coming up:
“Save developers time”
Along with the move to the cloud, things like personalization, customization, and client-specific implementations continue to be critical to businesses. This puts a strain on developer resources and availability. There was a lot of conversation around how to reduce development cycle and save developers’ time while they’re creating complex advanced communication capabilities. Our preview of a new way of integrating communications was a huge hit and generated a lot of interest among technical and nontechnical people alike.
“Can you help us move to the cloud?”
Many of the people we talked to were thinking about a WebRTC implementation or had already started one. In a cloud-centric world, using WebRTC as the main voice endpoint makes sense. Rapid deployment, instant availability, and no hardware costs are huge drivers for this decision. We talked at length about our customers’ implementations and how Plivo is helping them differentiate and win based on call quality.
“What’s Plivo’s role in the contact center?”
In this rapidly changing industry, we’re seeing signs of shifting market dynamics. With some of the recent announcements of new entrants coming in from the cPaaS industry and competing with their erstwhile customers, there were discussions (and some trepidations) around the changing landscape. Customers wanted to know where we stand in the ecosystem. We made it clear that Plivo’s core business is to enable enterprises — including call centers — with innovations around integrating communications capability into their platform and business. We’re here to enable our call center customers, and not to compete with them. Our solution showcase for call centers was well-received.
“Quality”
Many of the attendees we talked to asked us about their SMS deliverability and voice quality pain points. Especially in international markets, these issues can be difficult to address with CPaaS providers that use aggregators and that lack direct relationships with carriers. Plivo’s direct relationships with 1,600+ carriers worldwide was pointed out as a huge differentiator. When we described Plivo’s market-leading quality-based routing technology, rather than least-cost routing, attendees were pleasantly surprised.
Final note
One of the final sessions of the conference was entitled “Is The Cloud Unavoidable?” The answer is a simple yes :)
Introducing the New Plivo Console
Plivo's SMS API and Voice API enables businesses to communicate with their customers at global scale. Sign up for free now.
Today we’re unveiling a new, redesigned Plivo console. The main objectives for the redesign were to organize account information better and make it easier to manage it, and to create a scalable user interface to accommodate future products and features.
We achieved these goals by introducing sections for products, accounts, and billing.
Product sections
The new console has a section for each product. Features and items relevant to a product are available in the menu sidebars on the left of each console page.
Accounts and billing sections
You can access accounts and billing pages from the settings menu in the top right corner.
The accounts section provides controls on account settings and subaccounts, and the billing section allows you to manage recharges, recharge options, usage bills, and payment receipts.
You can use the new Plivo console to perform all the tasks and actions available on the existing Plivo dashboard. Log in and let us know what you think.
Building IVR Hotline with Plivo
Plivo's SMS API and Voice API enables businesses to communicate with their customers at global scale. Sign up for free now.
Plivo is on a mission to simplify telecom, and developers are at the center of this endeavour. For a developer coming from other domains outside core telecom, creating an end-to-end working implementation of a voice-based application can be a daunting task. For a recent hackathon, Jordan Crawford from New Zealand decided to take up precisely this challenge. He decided to try combining web and telephony to create an IVR hotline system in less than 48 hours — and he succeeded! It’s fulfilling for us to see how developers from almost any domain can use Plivo APIs to add Voice and SMS capability to virtually any application.
We asked Jordan to share his experience working with Plivo.
| Ten percent of my work time is dedicated to professional development through two “Hackdays” a month. For my most recent Hackdays I wanted to combine old-school phone technology with modern web technologies. I thought of using Plivo, which lets you work with the phone network through a web API. |
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Why did I choose Plivo?
You can do a lot of things with Plivo, including:
- Sending and receiving SMS messages
- Receiving inbound calls and making outbound calls
- On a call you can:
- Convert text to speech
- Play audio by providing a URL to an MP3 file
- Accept digits from callers (“press 1 for sales” in phone menus)
We asked Jordan to share his experience working with Plivo.
Ten percent of my work time is dedicated to professional development through two “Hackdays” a month. For my most recent Hackdays I wanted to combine old-school phone technology with modern web technologies. I thought of using Plivo, which lets you work with the phone network through a web API.
Making something with Plivo
My initial plan was to implement a game of Hangman over SMS, especially considering I’d written a game of Hangman back on my devtrain. However, I quickly discovered that Plivo didn’t support receiving SMS messages in New Zealand, only sending them. Next, I thought I’d just make a phone call-based Hangman game, but without speech recognition support, it would be difficult to receive character inputs.
I put my thinking hat on and came up with the idea of implementing a simple number guessing game. This was a great place to start because the logic for such a game is simple, which allowed me to focus on the phone integration side. The game chooses a random number between 1 and 100 and asks the caller to guess the number by entering it on their dialpad.
The game gives feedback on whether the guess is correct or higher or lower than the actual number. If the guess is wrong, the caller can keep guessing until they get it correct.
How did I work with Plivo for calling?
Something I was unsure about initially was how you’d actually handle a call. I’d assumed that after a call was picked up that you’d need to deal with the audio stream yourself, but in fact, Plivo handles the entire audio stream for you.
When a call comes in, Plivo hits your API and provides a set of instructions in XML. Depending on the actions you ask for, you may need to define a callback URL for Plivo to hit later with more data — that is, a URL for it to hit for instructions after receiving digits from the caller.
It takes a little while to think about phone calls in terms of API requests, but this approach means that you can scale your phone system just like you scale your normal web APIs.
Implementation time
I used Node.js and Plivo’s Node SDK to build the hotline’s API. Plivo’s SDK handles all the XML instruction formatting for you, making implementation simple. A good reference for this was Plivo’s Getting Started with IVR guide, which introduces all the Plivo functionality I used for the project.
The game is pretty simple. It consists of two endpoints for Plivo to hit: one for when the call is made to welcome the caller (and prompt them to enter a guess) and the other as a callback for the caller’s guess.
Welcome route
When a call comes in, Plivo hits the / route with a GET request and the route returns the following XML to instruct Plivo:
This tells Plivo to speak a welcome message, then allow the caller to enter some digits with a defined callback URL. Plivo will ask the caller what their guess is and play music while the caller enters their digits.
If the GetDigits action fails (if the caller takes too long, for instance) then Plivo will speak the wrong input message.
Guess checking route
When the caller enters digits, Plivo hits the guess URL with a POST request. Plivo puts the entered digits in a Digits field in the request (if you’re testing this out for yourself in a tool like Postman, use the x-www-form-urlencoded format of POST body).
In addition to this, you may have noticed in the XML above, the game’s chosen random number is a query string parameter in the callback URL. This is because I’m lazy and I didn’t want to have to persist the chosen random number for a call in a database. Getting Plivo to pass this parameter around for us means we can easily scale up the number of app servers as required for the millions of simultaneous calls required by our booming number guessing hotline startup!
You can checkout the code for the guess route, but it yet again returns some XML for Plivo:
Once again, this makes use of GetDigits to prompt the caller for a further guess, making use of the same callback URL with the random number. If the caller gets the number correct, it returns a simple response. After this is spoken, Plivo has no more instructions so will just hang up on the caller.
You can check out all the code on GitHub.
Setting the hotline up on Plivo
When a call comes in, Plivo needs to hit a public API endpoint that we provide. This means we need to host our API somewhere on the internet.
If you aren’t comfortable with SSHing into a server to set up your app, Heroku is a good option that takes care of all the server management stuff for you. If you want to save a bit of money and don’t mind running the app server yourself, DigitalOcean or Vultr will work great. All these options use hourly (or in the case of Heroku, secondly) billing so it won’t cost you much to mess around with Plivo. This game might also be a good candidate for Serverless given the simplicity of our application code.
Next, buy a number through Plivo, then create an application with your server URL as the answer URL and assign your number to your application.
You should now be able to call up your number and enjoy the phone hotline built with fewer than 100 lines of JavaScript!
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Introducing Plivo Rate Limiting and Message Queueing
Plivo's SMS API and Voice API enables businesses to communicate with their customers at global scale. Sign up for free now.
Plivo now supports rate limiting and message queuing for outbound SMS — an intelligent queuing system that keeps you compliant by managing your messaging traffic based on local in-country regulations and best practices.
Many of our customers’ businesses require sending messages in bulk to customers and prospects. SMS messaging has been subjected to scrutiny in recent times due to potential spamming. Operators and regulatory bodies around the world have begun defining a preset limit on the number of messages that businesses can send out per minute from a given number. The business impact of this rate limiting ranges from reduced customer reach to poor delivery rates to potential blocking of service for noncompliance.
Plivo’s messaging platform solves this problem by delivering your messages to downstream operators based on the type of source number used and the destination country. We maintain a dedicated queue for each of your source numbers.
If you need to send messages using Plivo SMS API to a specific destination country at a throughput greater than what is available from a single source number, you can increase your overall capacity by simply distributing your traffic across a pool of Plivo numbers. The combination of Plivo smart queue together with the availability of a pool of number means that you achieve the throughput required for your business while staying within the recommended per-number rate limits.
We’ve written an article in our support portal that shows throttling limits for source number types and destination countries, and answers some frequently asked questions about message queuing and rate limits.
Plivo 2017 Year in Review
Plivo's SMS API and Voice API enables businesses to communicate with their customers at global scale. Sign up for free now.
At the beginning of 2017, we set ourselves a target to focus on developer delight and scale. As I look back at the past year, I am happy to say we achieved all of that and more:
- 3.2 Billion voice minutes and SMS messages combined
- 8 new SDKs released
- 3 new integrations
- Most advanced voice codec for best-in-class voice quality
- A completely revamped developer portal
- 50 new team members
- New and bigger office in San Francisco
- 25 new direct in-country telecom carriers for Voice and SMS across 43 countries
- Improved reliability, uptime, and support
We executed well to stay profitable for the fourth consecutive year and invested heavily in things that matter — our product and people.
Our biggest SDK release ever
If I had to pick a product update that mattered the most in 2017, it would be our new SDKs.
In October, we announced our biggest update so far: server-side SDK updates for Python, Ruby, Node.js, PHP, Go, .NET, and Java.
On the client side, we announced Browser SDK 2.0, the next version of our SDK for applications to integrate voice calling in the browser. With this update, you can now have visibility into call quality metrics, gather real-time user feedback, and have better flexibility to reduce CPU utilization, improve QoS, and configure an application based on user needs.
3 powerful integrations added
On the integration front, we started out with Integromat. The Plivo-Integromat integration lets you use Plivo’s capabilities in your Integromat scenarios to the fullest extent possible.
Just after that, we announced the integration of Plivo Connector for Microsoft Flow. With this connector, you can now integrate Plivo with 200+ connectors including the Office and Azure product suites.
We wrapped up our integrations for the year with the launch of Plivo for Zapier. You can now do so much more with Plivo by connecting it to the other applications you use, such as Slack, Gmail, and Google Sheets (and 750+ other applications on Zapier) to automate tasks in your workflow.
Best-in-class voice quality
Our focus on voice quality improvement got a big boost with our announcement of Opus codec support for our Browser SDK. Opis offers the world’s most advanced audio optimization, with reduced jitter, lower latency, and less packet loss. What does it mean for your business? With Plivo, you’re getting the best quality on your voice calls that’s technically possible today.
Bigger team and a bigger office
At Plivo, we believe in customer intimacy. Our high-touch customer engagement model has helped us stay connected with our clients. So, while adding customers and partners, we also continued expanding our team in key areas such as engineering, support, and customer success. We are now 140+ strong and hiring more.
Bigger teams need bigger homes. This year we moved into a brand new office in the heart of San Francisco on Mission Street. The area is bubbling with creative, passionate people from the coolest startups. We also announced our third global office in Dublin, Ireland, which is fast becoming Europe’s startup hub.
Expanded network and country coverage
In our business, direct carrier network connectivity has been one of our unique differentiators. This year we further expanded our carrier base to add 25 new in-country carriers across 43 countries.
Improved reliability and uptime
2017 was also a year of infrastructure scale-up for us. As we scaled the business, we invested in our infrastructure, which led to improved reliability and ensured an SLA of over 99.95% uptime for customers in the last 180 days. Our average response time per customer query came down by 50% with investments in people, processes, and tools. Improving reliability and predictability of the platform of is a continuous journey, and we will continue our investments in 2018.
If 2017 was interesting, I can promise you that 2018 will be nothing short of spectacular! Design, innovation, ease of use, and reliability will be central to everything we do this year. We will continue to listen to you, be personal in our approach, and reach out to you with our updates.
Venky
Introducing Plivo Server SDKs 4.0
Plivo's SMS API and Voice API enables businesses to communicate with their customers at global scale. Sign up for free now.
The latest versions of our server SDKs are now in general release. The new versions, which were released in beta more than two months ago, have consistent and guessable interfaces, better error handling than our old helper libraries, and excellent IDE support, so you don’t have to hop between documentation and code.
Each of the SDKs works with all latest version of the programming language it was written for. They handle JSON serialization and deserialization. Automatic pagination is available in the Python, Ruby, and Java SDKs so you don’t have to keep track of limits and offsets when requesting paginated responses.
What’s changed since beta
In the fall we released beta versions of server SDKs for Python, Ruby, Node.js, PHP, Go, Java, and .NET (C#). We’ve made some improvements since then.
Support for timeouts and proxies
The latest server SDKs provide for specifying timeouts and proxy settings to be used while making API requests. These settings can make your code more resource-efficient, as unused connections can be closed quickly.
Similarly, if you’re behind a proxy, you can now set the proxy settings when initializing a client so that all the connections go through the proxy.
Visit the Plivo API Reference and select a programming language in the code example pane to see how you can use timeout and proxy settings in that language.
Methods to verify X-Plivo-Signature-V2
To verify that the requests made to your server really originated from Plivo, you can generate a nonce-based signature and compare it with the X-Plivo-Signature-V2 header. Read more about validating requests and responses in our documentation, and visit the reference pages for validation in our Voice and Messaging API documentation. Select a programming language in the code example pane to see how you can use these methods in that language.
Language-specific SDK changes
We had to make a few changes since the beta launches to improve features and conform to best practices.
We modified .NET SDK to target .NET Standard 1.3 to use the cryptography package for signature validation. Since .NET Standard targets .NET Framework 4.6+ and .NET Core 1.0+, we had to drop support for .NET Framework 4.5.
We restructured the Go SDK to conform to best practices. You can find the SDK at github.com/plivo/plivo-go instead of github.com/plivo/plivo-go/plivo.
Get started
We’ve written getting started documentation for the server SDKs, along with Voice and Messaging API reference documentation. In the code examples on these pages, the new SDKs are referred to as “latest” and the older SDKs are “legacy.”
Deprecation
All new features will be added to these versions of the SDKs. The legacy versions will receive critical bug fixes and security patches until June 30, 2018, and none thereafter.
Announcing Zapier Integration
Plivo's SMS API and Voice API enables businesses to communicate with their customers at global scale. Sign up for free now.
We’re delighted to announce a new Plivo integration for Zapier, a SaaS platform that connects applications and automates workflows. You can now connect Plivo with Slack, Gmail, Google Sheets, and more than 3,000 other applications that Zapier supports.
We’ve written a getting started guide to walk you through what you need to know to use Plivo with Zapier (whose name rhymes with “happier”){: rel=”nofollow” }.
It’s easy to get started. Sign up for free.
Create your account and receive trial credits or get in touch with us.
