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Featured

Top 7 SMS OTP service providers to secure your customers | How to choose the right one?

May 22, 2024
7 mins

Choosing the right OTP provider requires defining your requirements and goals, vetting various providers, and understanding how well each solution works with your existing tech stack. 

At the most practical level, your SMS OTP service provider should give you all the features you need to deliver OTPs to your customers. 

Every SMS one-time passcode (OTP) service provider is different. 

Some providers offer a more extensive network of carrier partnerships, enabling you to send OTPs worldwide with better deliverability. Others focus on building a strong infrastructure to manage domestic OTP deliveries. 

OTP providers also vary in the availability and flexibility of APIs and SDKs for integration into existing systems, impacting the ability to customize and implement the OTP experience in your existing tech stack. 

Choosing the right OTP provider requires defining your requirements and goals, vetting various providers, and understanding how well each solution works with your existing tech stack. 

In this guide, we’ll explain the features you need to look for in an SMS OTP service provider, the top seven most popular SMS OTP service providers in the market, and how to choose the right one for your needs. 

What features should I look for in an SMS OTP service provider?

Consider eight features when choosing an SMS OTP service provider. 

  • Time-to-deploy 
  • SMS OTP conversion rates
  • Fraud detection
  • Security and compliance
  • Analytics and tracking
  • Integrations
  • Customer support
  • Price

1. Time-to-deploy 

Developers already have enough on their plates— and adding a complicated tool t that requires intensive onboarding and implementation is counterproductive to achieving your other development needs. 

When selecting an OTP provider, look for services that require minimal setup. This will allow your team to start sending OTPs with little to no downtime. 

Your SMS OTP service provider should also provide clear documentation and SDKs that make it straightforward for developers to integrate OTP with your platforms, significantly reducing the time and resources needed for deployment.

2. SMS OTP conversion rates 

One of the most frustrating experiences a customer can have is receiving a delayed OTP, or worse, not receiving an OTP at all. Delayed or undelivered OTPs can cause anxiety, potentially leading the customer to abandon the transaction or lose trust in your brand. 

Verify that an SMS OTP provider has high delivery rates to ensure that your customers can receive and act upon OTP messages.

3. Fraud detection

In international markets, OTPs in SMS and voice channels are particularly susceptible to SMS Pumping fraud. 

Advanced fraud detection should include dynamic risk assessment algorithms that adapt to emerging threats and unusual patterns. 

4. Security and compliance

When assessing the security and compliance of an OTP service provider, there are two key aspects you need to consider: data encryption and regulatory compliance. 

End-to-end encryption ensures that an OTP is encrypted at the origin and only decrypts at the receiver’s device. This protects the OTP message from being intercepted or read by hackers. To verify the robustness of the encryption, look for an OTP service provider that uses recognized standards like AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) with a suitable key length (e.g., 256-bit).  

Additionally, look for OTP service providers that adhere to data protection regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) as they are mandatory for different countries. 

5. Analytics and tracking

Choose an SMS OTP service provider that offers detailed analytics and tracking. Real-time insights into OTP delivery rates and failures help identify issues as they arise. 

Custom reports with a trend analysis of KPIs, such as success rates of OTP deliveries across different regions, can highlight areas for improvement, whether in technology or carrier partnerships. You can also leverage these reports to make strategic decisions and draw behavioral insights. 

6. Integrations

Even the most robust OTP provider must play well with your existing tech stack. Think about which platforms you need your OTP tool to communicate with. Does this OTP solution fit your long-term technological needs? 

Plivo, for example, integrates with most popular tools including Zapier, Microsoft Power Automate, Integromat, Pipedream, Integrately, GitHub Actions, EngageBay, and more. 

7. Customer support

Look for an SMS OTP service provider that is available 24/7. This level or service translates to immediate assistance, minimized downtime, and enhanced reliability. Having multiple support channels, such as email, phone, web-based chatbots, and SMS, will also provide more convenience, accessibility, and personalization for your company. 

8. Price

There’s no getting around pricing. Look for an OTP service provider with clear, straightforward pricing. Most OTP providers offer multiple pricing plans; look for one designed to scale with your business as you grow. Check out Plivo’s pricing.

The 7 best SMS OTP service providers for security and reliability

Here are our top seven picks for the best OTP service providers. Read a detailed analysis of why we chose these platforms below. 

1. Plivo 

Key features

  • Turnkey single-API solution: All you need to do is integrate using a single API with Plivo and it’ll take care of the heavy lifting. For instance, Plivo keeps numbers ready for usage, so customers do not need to purchase any numbers separately. Bottom line: Plivo customers can conveniently use a secure solution without worrying about compliance issues. 
  • Multichannel support: Plivo supports both SMS and voice OTP to ensure businesses have the flexibility they need to authenticate users. 
  • High deliverability: Verify API enjoys specialized routes from carriers that are not available with the SMS API. It also uses intelligent routing to identify optimal routes and number types for enhanced conversions. Plivo also ensures sender ID and template compliance to ensure carriers do not fail them due to compliance issues.   
  • Built-in fraud control: Plivo’s Fraud Shield includes an autopilot mode to help you monitor your messaging patterns, build thresholds for each country, and automatically send alerts with irregular patterns. 

You can fine-tune and override messaging throughput thresholds for each country and access an in-built reporting to evaluate your cost savings from preventing fraud attacks using Fraud Shield. 

  • Support: Premium 24-hour support, comprehensive documentation, seven global points of presence, and 99.99% uptime SLAs are available. 
  • No additional costs: Plivo has straightforward pricing plans where you only pay for what you use. There are no charges for authentication, regulatory compliance, fraud shield, and SMS verification, making it an ideal solution for those on a modest budget. 

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Pros 

  • Supports SMS OTP delivery in 220+ countries 
  • High deliverability rates, minimizing SMS failures
  • Customizable OTP templates for a personalized user experience
  • Detailed analytics for tracking OTP success rates
  • Robust security features protect data integrity
  • Comprehensive API and documentation support ease of integration
  • Scalable solutions cater to businesses of all sizes
  • 99.99% uptime SLAs available with 24-hour support 

Cons

  • The vast array of features can be overwhelming for new users.

Most suitable for Companies that need a scalable, customizable SMS OTP solution with extensive integration capabilities, security, and reliability. G2 rating: 4.5 stars, 724 reviews 

2. Twilio

G2 rating: 4.2 stars, 467 reviews

Key features

  • Multichannel authentication support: Twilio provides APIs that enable you to send OTPs through SMS, passkeys, WhatsApp, email, voice, and TOTP (authenticator apps like Authy and Google Authenticator), going beyond traditional email and website communication.
  • Fraud monitoring: Twilio uses one API endpoint to validate users and detect fraud. It also lets you customize geo-permissions, rate limits, and other fraud controls. 

Pros 

  • Wide range of additional communication channels available
  • Extensive API for custom integrations and workflow automation
  • Fraud detection and security features to protect customer data
  • Real-time analytics dashboard to monitor and optimize OTP deliveries
  • Global reach with localized number support

Cons

  • Steeper learning curve due to platform complexity
  • Pricing can become expensive as usage scales.

Most suitable forTech-savvy businesses and developers seeking a robust, customizable OTP solution.

3. Authkey.io 

G2 rating: 4.8 stars, 6 reviews  

Key features

  • Multichannel support: Authkey.io supports SMS, email, and voice OTP. 
  • Live analytics: It gives detailed analytics about OTP delivery, failure, and latency reports. 

Pros 

  • Cost-effective solution for businesses on a tight budget
  • User-friendly platform ideal for those new to OTP services
  • API support for straightforward integration
  • Quick and easy setup with minimal configuration required
  • Responsive customer support team

Cons

  • Limited advanced features for complex implementations
  • Somewhat restricted global coverage compared to larger providers

Most suitable forStartups and small to medium businesses looking for an affordable, reliable OTP service with basic features.

4. Exotel

G2 rating: 4.3 stars, 80 reviews

Key features

  • Real-time analytics: Exotel provides real-time analytics and delivery reports, allowing businesses to track the status of each OTP code sent. 
  • Customizable OTP timers and lengths: Exotel allows users to customize the length of the OTPs and set timers for how long an OTP is valid. 

Pros 

  • Simple and intuitive user interface
  • A reporting dashboard with conversational AI 
  • An extensive reach in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) and Southeast Asia (SEA) 
  • High delivery speed for OTPs

Cons

  • Limited global presence 

Most suitable forBusinesses primarily operating in APAC & SEA, as they have an extensive network in this region.

5. SMSCountry

G2 rating: 4.8 stars, 2 reviews  

Key features

  • Quick integration: SMSCountry allows you to send OTPs directly from anywhere with an easily integrable SMS API that supports several applications through SDK, XML, Web, and HTTP-API plug-ins.
  • Compliance and security: The OTP provider is powered by 100+ direct-to-carrier connections in 180+ countries, enabling users to send OTPs internationally. 

Pros 

  • Easy to use and integrate, reducing time to market
  • Supports 180+ countries
  • Cost-effective for businesses mindful of budget constraints
  • Real-time delivery reports for tracking OTP status
  • Dedicated account management and 24/7 customer support

Cons

  • Limited functionality for advanced customization needs
  • Fewer global direct carrier connections may affect delivery in certain regions.
  • No option to add team members from the dashboard

Most suitable for SMBs seeking a reliable, no-frills basic OTP service that's both affordable and easy to implement.

6. MSG91

G2 rating: 3.9 stars, 47 reviews  

Key features

  • Built-in IP security: The OTP service provider comes with in-built IP data security that ensures the flow is halted when an unusual login is attempted to prevent potential fraud activities. 
  • Multichannel support: MSG91 supports multiple channels including SMS, email, Voice, and Whatsapp. 

Pros 

  • Robust APIs for flexible OTP service integration
  • Comprehensive analytics for insights into OTP performance
  • Global coverage ensuring worldwide OTP delivery
  • Advanced data security protocols for customer data protection
  • Scalable pricing model that accommodates growing businesses
  • Exceptional uptime and reliability track record

Cons

  • Pricing transparency could be improved for clearer budget planning.
  • The platform's extensive features present a learning curve.
  • Limited reports—only offers a pre-selected timeframe for accessing reports. 

Most suitable forBusinesses that need multichannel support with other basic functionalities of an OTP provider.

7. TeleSign

G2 rating: 4.5 stars, 4 reviews 

Key features

  • Global coverage: Telesign’s verification API can authenticate customers across 230 countries and over 80 languages. 
  • Dynamic routing: The OTP provider’s API intelligently routes messages using the most effective routing available to provide high-speed delivery. 

Pros 

  • Extensive global network for reliable OTP delivery across different regions
  • Support for a wide range of languages and localizations
  • Developer-friendly APIs and SDKs for easy integration

Cons

  • Inflexible pricing plans with plenty of friction in free trials 
  • Significant delay in receiving OTPs 
  • Lacks accurate number validation 
  • Doesn’t support its entire list of countries and numbers 

Most suitable for Startups and small businesses needing a simple, budget-friendly OTP solution.

How to choose an SMS OTP service provider?

There is a wide range of SMS OTP service providers on the market right now—but how do you decide which one meets your needs best? 

If choosing an OTP provider feels daunting, here are six steps to help: 

Step 1: Determine your OTP requirements and goals

Before diving into the selection process, get clear on your specific needs for an OTP service. Consider things like the data security level of your application, the volume of OTPs you'll need to dispatch, and whether you anticipate significant growth as this will require a scalable solution. 

Step 2: Look at key features

Jot down a list of the must-have and nice-to-have features you need from your OTP provider, like high deliverability rates, speed of OTP delivery, the ability to customize your OTP messages, and authentication flows. 

Step 3: Research the best OTP service providers

Begin your search by compiling a list of potential OTP providers. Read online reviews, testimonials, and case studies to explore each provider's reputation. 

Step 4: Set your OTP provider budget

Seek out pricing plans that offer transparency and don't hide fees in the fine print. Consider how the pricing structure fits your expected volume of OTP messages and whether the provider offers the scalability you need without increasing costs.

Step 5: Check for integration support

Look for providers that offer robust support for integration, including SDKs, APIs, and comprehensive documentation. These tools and resources will significantly smooth the integration process and reduce the time to deployment.

Step 6: Test, analyze, and report on ROI

Once you’ve set up your new OTP system, take measures to determine its return on investment. The goal is to have an efficient tool with a positive ROI. 

The bottom line is that regardless of which OTP service provider you choose, it must deliver on your goals. It should give you complete control and flexibility over how, when, and where you want to send OTPs.  

Get started with Plivo today

Choosing the right SMS OTP service provider involves considering key factors. Start by understanding your business’s needs and goals, listing out specific of your must-have and nice-to-have features like customization, global presence, and customer support. 

Think Plivo might be the perfect OTP SMS service provider for your needs? Find out today with a trial

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Apr 14, 2025
5 mins

Support Agents: Who Are They, and What Do They Do?

Support agents serve as a middle ground between your company and its customers. Let’s see some steps to hire the best and build a functional team.

Needless to say, ​customer support is a vital organ for business success, directly affecting customer satisfaction, loyalty, and revenue. In fact, a study notes that in 2024, poor customer experiences cost organizations worldwide an estimated $3.7 trillion, marking a 19% increase from the previous year.

Customers often switch companies if they don't receive good customer service, regardless of product satisfaction. Conversely, they are often willing to go out of their way to do business with a company that offers better service. 

Support agents for eCommerce companies

Support agents are at the forefront of delivering these sensitive experiences, making their role crucial in fostering customer relationships and driving business growth.​

In this article, we’ll explain who they are, what they do, the essential skills needed to become one, and some steps to build your support team with the best support agents.

Who are support agents (and who are they not)?

A support agent is a trained representative of your company primarily tasked with resolving customers' complaints, answering inquiries, and providing usage guidance on your company’s products and services.

Beyond handling tickets, they also provide emotional support by ensuring customers feel heard, valued, and reassured throughout the interaction. This, in turn, strengthens customer trust and loyalty.

Support agents play a vital role in enhancing customer satisfaction—which indirectly drives ROI through repeat purchases—but they are not sales representatives or marketers. Marketers and sales reps acquire customers and sell. 

On the other hand, support agents retain these customers and boost repeat purchases through efficient assistance.

4 primary responsibilities of a support agent

A support agent's primary responsibilities include serving as the first point of contact, handling queries, providing proactive support, and gathering essential feedback.

1. Serving as a brand's first-line contact

When things go wrong, customers become frustrated and demand to speak with anyone—even the CEO. Your support agents step in to act as the first line of defense, de-escalate situations, and provide solutions professionally. 

They also represent your brand through every empathic response, ensuring customers leave with a positive experience and a lasting impression of excellent service.

2. Handling customer inquiries

Customer support agents handle all customer inquiries. Depending on the technicality of the query, they might sometimes involve a specialist or higher executive. 

For instance, if a customer has a dispute over billing that involves policy exceptions, your agent might need to coordinate with or escalate to a higher executive for approval.

3. Providing proactive support

Support agents detect customer needs ahead of time and promptly contact them even before they log a complaint. This helps reduce inbound tickets and boosts customer satisfaction. 

As an omnichannel customer support platform, Plivo CX’s proactive service enables your support team to provide a more refined and automated proactive support.

Image showing Plivo CX's proactive service tool
Reduce inbound tickets by proactively addressing customers’ needs

4. Gathering feedback to optimize product offerings and marketing

Your support agents are the most valuable source of feedback since they interact with customers daily. They can help you gather recurring concerns, pain points, and suggestions that drive meaningful product improvements. 

Plivo CX’s metrics tool automates this feedback collection process and ensures your agents focus on core tasks instead.

Image showing Plivo CX's Metrics and Reporting tool
Automate CSAT feedback collection to optimize product offerings

Essential soft skills of a good support agent

Being a support agent involves not only resolving queries but also understanding and communicating with customers on a personal level. This is why certain soft skills, beyond technical competency, are essential when recruiting one.

Active listening and empathy

Active listening involves paying close attention to every word and emotion communicated rather than focusing solely on the problem. 

Unsurprisingly, active listeners excel at expressing empathy since they’re more likely to understand how customers feel better. This deeper connection allows them to communicate effectively, provide reassurance, and de-escalate tense situations.

Good communication skills

A good support agent must convey their points concisely while considering the appropriate tone. 

They know when to avoid passive-aggressive words such as “actually, ought to,” colloquialisms, and slang to maintain clarity.

Comparison between negative and positive communication tone
Good support agents adopt a positive communication tone to address customer complaints

Adaptability

Different customers present with different complaints, personalities, and communication styles. Some are patient and easy to communicate with, whereas some are aggressive and impatient. 

So, a one-size-fits-all approach won’t work, and that’s why an ideal support agent must be able to adapt to each high and low while maintaining efficient support delivery.

Problem-solving skills

Customer support playbooks are valuable, but not every customer complaint will fit neatly into predefined solutions. Situations like this require your support agent to think outside the box while staying within your company’s guardrails. 

A good support agent must be able to devise quick solutions to new problems and escalate as soon as possible when necessary.

6 steps to hire the right support agent and build a functional support team

Your support team can either make or mar your business. Hiring the right agent and building a functional team is, therefore, essential. Let’s see how to do that.

1. Define your staffing needs and ideal agent

You can figure out how many support agents to hire based on your historical ticket volume, scale of business expansion, and anticipated growth in the next quarters. This ensures you don’t over-hire and bloat your expenses or under-hire and cripple your support delivery. 

Plivo CX’s reporting and metrics tool provides a comprehensive ticket summary, which helps you determine your historical ticket volume.

Image showing Plivo CX's Metrics and Reporting tool
Use your historical ticket volume to determine staffing needs

Simultaneously, you need to define who your ideal agent is—that is, the skills they should preferably possess, availability, technical proficiency, lingual capacities, and experience. You can diversify your recruitment process if you’re catering to multilingual audiences.

Once you’ve identified your staffing needs and ideal candidate profile, you can post your job listing on your company’s career page and on popular job boards like LinkedIn to attract qualified applicants.

2. Prioritize agents with empathy and problem-solving skills

You need a team of agents who can dialogue with different kinds of customers, resonate with them emotionally, and make them feel heard while providing adequate support. That’s why you should prioritize agents with empathy.

Also, look for agents with strong problem-solving skills—someone who can think quickly on their feet and provide solutions to out-of-the-script problems.

Tools like TestGorilla and Testify help you assess your applicant’s skills and ability to address different scenarios. For a more tailored assessment, present candidates with real scenarios or past customer complaints from your database and ask them to resolve the issue.

3. Test for relevant technical competency

Technical competency is your support agent’s ability to resolve customers’ technical queries. This could include troubleshooting software issues and providing answers to product-specific technical queries.

Usually, your agents don’t need to be tech geeks or specialists for L1 tickets. An entry-level customer support agent with the necessary soft skills can do a great job here.

However, it’s a different ball game for agents managing L2 and L3 tickets. They should have the necessary expertise to manage complex and product-related technical issues like specialists. 

This primarily hinges on their hard skills portfolio, which you need to consider when hiring. Provide real-world scenarios to assess these skills and ensure they genuinely have what it takes to be your ideal agents.

4. Provide comprehensive agent training

From the onboarding stage, you need to identify the gaps in your hires’ competencies and design individualized or group training to boost their efficiency. Training can include soft skills, lingual capacity, and upskilling hard skills for more proficiency.

Agent training is not a one-time process. Plivo CX’s coaching tools help your agents leverage past interactions with customers to continuously refine their delivery—how to respond or handle similar situations when they arise again.

Image showing Plivo CX's coaching tools
Provide continuous training with Plivo CX’s coaching tools

5. Equip your support agents with AI-powered tools

Gartner notes that more than 80% are either using or planning to integrate AI-powered chatbots in 2025. Advanced chatbots are essential because they can handle the majority of L1 tickets, thus freeing up your agents to do other complex tasks.

An example is Plivo CX’s openAI-powered AI chatbot, which can leverage your database in real time to make decisions, autonomously handle refund requests, modify orders, and make personalized recommendations.

Image showing Plivo CX's AI chatbot in action
Enhance customer support with AI-driven multilingual chatbots

Your team also needs an omnichannel platform that centralizes all communication channels into a single dashboard. This allows agents to access everything they need without constantly switching tabs, ultimately improving response time and efficiency.

An example is Plivo CX’s unified agent desktop designed to eliminate data silos, unify all incoming customer requests, and integrate with homegrown systems, CRM, ERP, helpdesk, and more.

Image showing Plivo CX's UAD in action
Centralize customer support with unified agent desktop

6. Establish KPIs and reasonable expectations

Establish KPIs, such as first response time, average resolution time, and first contact resolution, to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of your support agents. 

Customer Satisfaction Scores (CSATs) will help determine whether customers are getting the help they need and how they need it.

Plivo CX’s agent metrics and reporting tool enables you to monitor and measure your support agent’s performance while exposing gaps that need filling.

Image showing Plivo CX's Metrics and Reporting tool in action
Monitor and measure agent’s performance to identify areas for improvement

You also need to set individualized, SMART expectations and goals for your support agents. Ensure each agent does not handle more tickets—whether in quantity or complexity—than they can. This will reduce the incidence of customer service burnout and enhance the quality of your support delivery.

Scale your customer support operations with Plivo CX

Hiring the right support agent is just one part of building a functional customer support team. You also need to provide them with the right tools to enhance their efficiency and effectiveness.

That’s where Plivo CX comes in. 

As an omnichannel platform designed to streamline support delivery, Plivo CX offers a unified agent desktop to centralize your support channels, multilingual AI-powered voice support, and OpenAI-powered chatbots to slash your ticket queue.

We also offer: 

  • Seamless integrations: Connect Plivo CX with your existing tools, including CRM, ERP, helpdesk, and more.
  • Data-driven optimization: Track real-time analytics and generate custom reports to gain insights into customer interactions and agent performance.
  • AI-enhanced efficiency: Prioritize urgent tickets, ensure brand consistency, and adapt quickly to changes with AI-powered support.
  • Rich communication: Enhance interactions with multimedia support, including images, videos, and documents.
  • Increased productivity: Streamline workflows with message templates, internal notes, and skills-based routing.
  • Comprehensive features: Leverage call recording, IVR, multi-language support, and robust security features for a complete solution.

Book a demo today and start building a world-class support team with Plivo CX.

Apr 3, 2025
5 mins

The Power of Multilingual Customer Support: 7 Must-Know Strategies

Multilingual customer support enhances user experience and expands global reach. Let’s explore its benefits and best practices for implementation.

It’s ten minutes past 2 pm. A new high-value customer submits a technical complaint—but, in Spanish. The problem? None of your service reps speak Spanish. 

Now, you have only two options.

First, you say, “Thank you for reaching out. We currently accept queries only in English. Please resend your message in English so we can assist you. Thank you for your understanding!

Or, you scramble from Google’s translator to other free versions of online interpreters, which might give you an inaccurate response. 

Whichever you choose, your customer will likely not find it encouraging. Your inability to efficiently serve customers in their native language passes a message; that they’re not a valued part of your brand. 

According to Hyken’s report, 65% of consumers want to be treated valuably. Failure to deliver this expectation results in a poor support experience, increased churn rates, and a negative brand reputation.

To avoid such outcomes, you need to implement multilingual customer support, and this article will show you how to do that.

What is multilingual customer support?

Multilingual customer support is the ability to provide consistent, high-quality assistance in multiple languages to your customers while accounting for geographical, cultural, and contextual differences that influence communication.

As your business scales, there is also an increasing need to serve a diverse market audience. This mandates your support team to be capable of sustaining interactions with individuals of different languages outside your native business borders.

Even within your business borders, you’re bound to interact with customers of different linguistic needs. According to the United States Census record, the number of residents who utilize other languages besides English has nearly tripled in the last decade. 

So, you must be ready to cater to this diversity once necessary.

Benefits of multilingual customer support

Multilingual support increases customer satisfaction, boosts retention, and ensures you can tap into diverse markets for more opportunities. Here’s how it does that:

Improved customer satisfaction

According to Unbabel’s 2021 multilingual CX report, one in three global consumers cite a lack of multilingual support as their top concern in localized customer experience. 

Uni- or bilingual provisions lead to frustration since your customers can’t express themselves the way they want, and this culminates in a bad customer experience. 

On the other hand, providing multilingual support can enhance customer satisfaction and boost your customers’ LTV. This explains why 64% say they will pay more for a service or product if the brand offers a multilingual support service.

Higher customer retention

57% of global consumers see it as a bias when a brand fails to offer multilingual support. Two in three will also switch to another brand if their current brand does not offer broader language support.

But what happens if you fill up this communication gap? 73% of respondents in Unbabel’s survey say they will remain loyal. 

This means multilingual provisions can help you retain your existing customers and also gain an edge over your competitors in attracting new ones. 

Interestingly, 40% of consumers will likely overlook poor customer service many times if it is offered in their native language. This gives you enough time to address issues plaguing your support delivery before customers bounce.

Broader reach and competitive advantage

Scaling your business often requires crossing borders and serving new audiences. Multilingual support ensures you can easily resolve the issues coming up in these regions, eliminate communication barriers, and rapidly build a robust brand reputation.

Also, multilingual support can serve as the spearhead of your competitive advantage in new markets. That’s because your potential customers will likely choose you over competitors who do not offer multilingual support, all things being equal. So, you can make it a focus of your marketing strategy.

7 must-know strategies to implement multilingual support

One in four consumers say they will not spend more than $500 on brands offering limited language support. You can avoid this by implementing a sturdy multilingual support system. 

Let’s go through how you can do that. 

1. Be upfront about your available language options

First, inform your customers and audience about your current capacity. Include the languages you support on your website, applications, social media profiles, and customer support pages. 

Image showing OpenPlanet’s response to a customer query
Be upfront with the languages you support

This helps to manage customer expectations and reduce frustrations pending the time you make provisions for multiple languages.

2. Embrace diversity in recruitment

The most direct approach to creating a multilingual support system is to recruit multilingual customer service reps. These reps are especially crucial for managing L2 and L3 tiers of requests that AI might not be able to handle.

Ensure you have at least one native or non-native representative for each region you serve. You can also organize language training for your existing service reps instead of overhauling the entire team. 

This reduces your employee acquisition cost and helps you work with people already in tandem with your support operations.

3. Use AI chatbots to provide multilingual support

Advanced AI chatbots use ML and NLP to analyze user inputs such as complaints and provide appropriate responses while leveraging customer data. This is like having an inbuilt translation system, making them a good fit for handling multilingual L1 requests regardless of the language.

As an omnichannel platform designed to scale your support team, Plivo CX offers an OpenAI-powered chatbot capable of handling multilingual tickets and addressing your customers in the language they choose.

Image showing Plivo CX's AI chatbot in action
Enhance customer support with AI-driven multilingual chatbots

4. Integrate multilingual voice support 

According to a 2024 report from Statista, 54% of customers prefer to resolve issues via phone calls over other digital channels and email. To cater to this group, you need to integrate multilingual voice support technology.

An example is Plivo CX’s voice software, which prompts your customers to choose their preferred language from over 27 supported languages right on the call.

With an integrated programmable IVR, your callers can self-select options for quicker routing, shorter wait times, and faster resolution.

Image showing Plivo CX's voice software
Eliminate communication barrier with multilingual voice support

5. Offer language preferences in self-service options

Self-service options include FAQs, knowledge bases, chatbots, AI-powered virtual assistants, and community forums. Your customers must be able to choose their preferred language of interaction on all of these platforms in order to cater to their needs.

Additionally, ensure that automated responses, IVR systems, and in-app customer support are available in multiple languages.

 Image showing Plivo CX's IVR software in action
Offer language preferences on voice IVRs

6. Train support agents in cultural sensitivity

Multilingual support should cater to lingua-cultural nuances that affect communication. Otherwise, you risk irking your customers. 

For instance, there are certain words or expressions that might be normal in American English but seen as aggressive in British English.

One example is the word “sure.” To an American, it’s simply a means of acknowledgment. But it could come off as passive-aggressive to a non-American. 

Train your support reps to understand these nuances and avoid them when speaking with individuals of different cultural backgrounds.

7. Localize knowledge base and FAQs  

Language location refers to adapting your website content to a visitor’s regional language based on factors like their browser settings, IP address, or geographical location. 

o do this, you first need to translate your knowledge base and FAQs into the different languages you support. You can do this manually or with AI. Then let your web development team handle the transitioning.

This method spares customers the hassle of manually selecting their preferred language. However, you should still offer a visible option on your support pages for them to adjust language preferences if needed.

Deliver modern multilingual support with Plivo CX

Language differences stifle quality support delivery and effective communication. 

To help you, Plivo CX offers a multilingual omnichannel support system through its Unified Agent Desktop, OpenAI-powered agentic chatbot, and inclusive voice support to help you overcome these challenges.

We also offer: 

  • Seamless integrations: Connect Plivo CX with your existing tools, including CRM, ERP, helpdesk, and more.
  • Data-driven optimization: Track real-time analytics and generate custom reports to gain insights into customer interactions and agent performance.
  • AI-enhanced efficiency: Prioritize urgent tickets, ensure brand consistency, and adapt quickly to changes with AI-powered support.
  • Rich communication: Enhance interactions with multimedia support, including images, videos, and documents.
  • Increased productivity: Streamline workflows with message templates, internal notes, and skills-based routing.
  • Comprehensive features: Leverage call recording, IVR, multi-language support, and robust security features for a complete solution.

Book a demo now!

Apr 3, 2025
5 mins

SMS Lead Generation: Everything You Need to Get Started

Struggling with SMS lead generation? Learn how Plivo CX's AI-powered SMS marketing helps e-commerce brands drive conversions, automate campaigns & boost ROI.

Let’s be real—getting leads isn’t the problem. Getting them to engage? That’s the real challenge. You can have the best offer, but if your message is not seen, it won’t get results.

The good news is that SMS is breaking through the noise. In fact, 76.2% of consumers say SMS is more effective at generating actions that lead to a purchase than email.

Why? Because texts land directly in your customer’s hands—no spam filters, no distractions, just instant, personal communication.

SMS lead generation is quickly becoming a cornerstone of modern marketing. In this article, we’ll dive into why SMS lead generation is rapidly becoming a must-have for businesses looking to engage, convert, and grow their customer base.

Why SMS is an effective lead generation tool

SMS marketing is a powerful tool for lead generation. It helps businesses build and nurture a qualified audience directly through SMS. Here are some key advantages that make SMS so effective for lead generation: 

High open rates & immediate attention

Text messages are almost always read – often within minutes. Studies confirm SMS open rates around 98%, higher than email​. The immediate visibility means your lead-gen offers (coupons, event invites, etc.) get seen right away, capturing customer attention in real time.

💡 Pro tip: Time your SMS campaigns strategically—sending messages when customers are most active can increase engagement and conversions.

Direct & personal communication

SMS creates a direct and personal connection between brands and potential customers. With the ability to personalize messages based on customer preferences, past interactions, or purchase history, SMS helps brands build stronger relationships and trust. 

Example: "Hi [Name], your favorite moisturizer is back in stock! Shop now before it’s gone: [link]."

💡Pro tip: Use first names, purchase history, or location-based offers to make SMS messages feel even more relevant and personal. 

Real-time engagement 

SMS enables businesses to engage with customers instantly. This makes SMS a preferred medium for promotions, updates, and limited-time offers. It allows for two-way conversations, where businesses can answer questions and send timely reminders when a lead is most interested. 

💡 Pro tip: Use SMS for flash sales or time-sensitive deals—customers are more likely to act quickly when they receive an offer with a clear deadline.

Cost-effective marketing

SMS campaigns are a cost-effective way to engage potential customers and increase sales. With message costs ranging from $0.015 to $0.050 per SMS, businesses can reach large audiences without significant money spent. 

Despite the low cost, SMS generates high response rates and a strong return on investment, making it an excellent text message lead generation tool for lead nurturing, promotions, and customer retention. For budget-conscious marketers, SMS offers maximum impact with minimal expense.

Example 1: A boutique clothing store replaces printed discount flyers with SMS promo codes, saving on printing costs while directly reaching active shoppers.

Example 2: Instead of investing in costly retargeting ads, a home décor brand uses SMS flash sale alerts to attract customers for exclusive discounts and limited-time offers

Automation & scalability 

With SMS automation, businesses can send messages to thousands of customers efficiently. Automated workflows allow brands to set up welcome messages, abandoned cart reminders, or follow-ups without manual effort. 

Whether you’re targeting a small segment or a nationwide audience, SMS can scale to meet your needs​

💡 Pro tip: Set up an automated drip campaign to send SMS messages over time. This helps to guide potential customers toward a purchase.

Together, these advantages explain why more businesses are leveraging SMS for lead generation. 

Proven SMS techniques for lead generation

You know SMS works—but how do you use it to drive more leads? Here are some tested strategies that top brands rely on to turn texts into conversions.

Offer exclusive content or discounts

People love getting something extra, especially when it feels exclusive. By offering discounts, special deals, or early access to new products via SMS, you create an immediate incentive for customers to respond.

Make sure your offer is time-sensitive to create urgency, which further motivates recipients to act quickly. Phrases like “For you only,” or “Exclusive offer just for our subscribers” can make recipients feel valued and increase the chances of conversion.

Image showing an SMS message offering an exclusive discount with a limited-time offer.
Source

Create compelling CTAs for immediate action 

Create your SMS messages with a clear, strong call-to-action (CTA) that urges instant response. Since texts are typically read quickly and have a character limit, use that brief moment to spark action.

Pro tip: Use action-oriented language like “Claim your offer now,” “Get started today,” or “Shop while stocks last” to prompt immediate responses.

SMS message with a strong call-to-action prompting immediate action.
Source

Lead generation through SMS thrives when your CTA is clear, direct, and compels the recipient to act fast.

Use opt-in keywords and shortcodes 

Simplify the process of joining your SMS list through keywords and shortcodes. For instance, you might advert JOIN to 12345 for updates. This text-to-subscribe approach makes opt-ins instant. A customer sends a one-word text and is automatically added to your campaign. 

Example:

A fitness apparel brand wants to grow its SMS list. They advertise:
“Text FIT to 56789 for 15% off your first order and exclusive updates!”

By texting “FIT” to 56789, customers are instantly added to the SMS list. This quick, frictionless opt-in process allows leads to sign up easily with just one text.

Pro tip: Make sure to choose an easy-to-remember keyword related to your campaign (e.g., text SALE, VIP, DEMO, etc.).

Segment your audience for targeted campaigns

One-size-fits-all messaging yields mediocre results. Instead, segment your SMS leads based on factors like demographics, purchasing behavior, and engagement history.

Example:

An online clothing store wants to send targeted offers. They segment their audience into two groups: frequent shoppers and seasonal browsers.

  • Frequent shoppers: Receive exclusive offers like “Thanks for being a loyal customer! Enjoy 25% off your next order.”
  • Seasonal browsers: Receive a message like “Welcome back! Get 15% off your next purchase, just for you.”

Businesses that segment their SMS campaigns see higher conversion because the messaging is more personalized and on-point​. 

Utilize SMS automation for timely follow-ups 

Don’t rely on manual texting, set up automated SMS workflows that send follow-up messages, reminders, or abandoned cart notifications. These automated texts can remind customers about products they’ve left behind, share additional offers, or provide updates on the status of their orders. 

SMS automation ensures no customer is left unattended and helps move prospects down the funnel with well-timed nudges.

Example:

An online home goods store uses SMS automation to follow up with leads.

  • Welcome message: As soon as a customer subscribes, they receive an immediate “Welcome! Get 10% off your first order. Shop now!”
  • Follow-up offer: If the customer hasn’t made a purchase within two days, they receive a reminder: “Still thinking it over? Here’s 15% off your first order!”

By implementing these techniques, you can steadily grow your list of SMS leads and keep them actively engaged. 

Best practices for SMS lead generation

While SMS is powerful, success largely depends on how you use it. Here are some best practices to ensure your SMS lead generation campaigns are effective and well-received:

Personalize and be relevant 

Treat SMS leads like individuals, not numbers on a list. Use personalization wherever possible—greet recipients by name and tailor messages to their interests or past interactions. 

For example, if you know a customer’s preferred product category, mention it. Personalization shows that your texts are for them, which improves response rates. 

In this SMS (image below), they address the customer by name (Elizabeth) and highlight their status as a “Platinum Comfort Crew member.” Personal touches like this make the recipient feel special and valued.

Screenshot showing a personalized SMS, offering first access to a sale.
Source

Optimal timing and frequency 

A staggering 90% of consumers respond to a text within 30 minutes, which underscores the importance of reaching your audience at the right moment. 

To maximize engagement, aim to send texts between 10 AM and 8 PM, avoiding early mornings before 8 AM, late evenings after 9 PM, Mondays, and rush hours. Mid-afternoon often works best. 

When it comes to frequency, it’s all about balance. Nearly 60% of smartphone users opt out of a brand’s messages when they feel overwhelmed by too many updates. 

Pro tip: Space out your messages and keep them meaningful—aim for one or two valuable texts per week to avoid overwhelming your audience and maintain engagement.

Keep messages concise and clear 

SMS has a character limit, which means you must communicate your message clearly and concisely. Your text should get to the point quickly, without any unnecessary fluff. 

Focus on one core message in each SMS, whether it's an offer, update, or reminder. Use short, direct language, and avoid long sentences or paragraphs.

Screenshot showing a clear SMS with a direct call to action
Source

For example, instead of saying, “We have a new collection of products that we think you might like, and it’s available on our website,” say, “New collection just dropped! Shop now and get 10% off!”

If more detail is needed, include a link to a mobile-friendly landing page for the lead to learn more. 

Track and analyze performance 

Treat SMS campaigns like any other marketing effort – track the results and adjust the strategy accordingly. Monitor key metrics such as open rate, click-through rate, response rate, and conversion rate. 

Also, pay attention to unsubscribe rates after each SMS campaign. Analyzing these data points will tell you what’s working and what isn’t. You can experiment with A/B testing for different CTAs, message lengths, or timing to see what drives the best results

For instance, you may find that messages sent on Friday evenings receive higher engagement or that one offer generates more conversions than another. Use this insight to refine your approach, perhaps adjusting send times, wording, or segment targeting. 

The role of SMS marketing automation in lead generation

Automation simplifies lead generation by handling manual tasks, ensuring no lead slips through the cracks. With SMS marketing automation, businesses can send the right message to the right lead at the right time—without manual effort for each interaction. This makes capturing and nurturing leads easier, faster, and more efficient.

Here’s why SMS automation is so important and how it works:

Key benefits of SMS marketing automation

Instant follow-ups: Automatically send a welcome message as soon as a lead opts in, keeping them engaged from the start.

Personalized offers: Use customer data to send relevant offers, product recommendations, and reminders tailored to their interests.

Higher conversion rates: Schedule automated follow-ups to nurture leads, recover abandoned carts, or re-engage inactive customers.

Timely touchpoints: Ensure leads receive timely updates, promotions, and reminders without manual effort.

Scalable communication: With the right SMS lead generation tool, you can manage high volumes of leads with automated workflows. This frees up your team while maintaining consistent outreach.

As a robust omnichannel customer engagement tool, Plivo CX checks all the boxes for a reliable and efficient SMS lead generation platform. 

With its user-friendly interface and powerful analytics tools, Plivo CX optimizes your SMS marketing for maximum impact and streamlines your lead generation and conversion process with automation.

As a testament to its efficiency, Deckers Brands found Plivo's queuing system to be a game-changer. Jacob Martine, project manager at Deckers Brands, states, 

"With fewer worries about rate limits and batch sizes, our developers face less burden. If we need to send 50,000 messages, we simply send them all—Plivo handles the rest, delivering without us worrying about the process."

Drive more leads with SMS marketing powered by Plivo CX

E-commerce managers face a tough challenge—reaching customers at the right time is harder than ever. Manual campaign management takes too long, and generic messages don’t drive conversions. Without automation and personalization, it’s easy to miss opportunities to connect with potential buyers

Plivo CX is an all-in-one customer engagement platform designed to maximize SMS lead generation results. It brings together real-time delivery, intelligent automation, and data-driven insights so businesses can capture and convert more leads via SMS. 

Here’s how Plivo CX can get more leads by elevating your SMS marketing:

  • Powerful audience targeting: Build highly focused campaigns by syncing your e-commerce platform data or importing contacts. With the Audiences feature, segment audiences based on purchase behavior, engagement data, and demographics to send highly personalized SMS campaigns.
Image showing Plivo CX’s customer segmentation dashboard
Target customers with precision using Plivo CX’s advanced segmentation tools.
  • Multi-channel engagement:  Connect with your customers on their preferred channels—whether it's SMS, MMS, or Email. This increases the chances of meaningful interactions and conversions.
  • AI-powered SMS personalization: Use the Copywriter AI to generate compelling, data-driven SMS messages instantly. Fine-tune your messages to resonate with your audience instantly.
 Image showing AI-generated SMS message template.
Create high-impact personalized SMS with AI-powered suggestions.
  • Send messages at the ideal time: Automate and schedule messages to align with optimal timings across different time zones, ensuring they reach customers when they are most likely to engage, maximizing impact.
Image displaying an SMS at different times.
Automate and schedule SMS to deliver across different time zones.
  • E-commerce integrations: Effortlessly connect with e-commerce platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and Magento to personalize and send SMS directly from your e-commerce platforms.
  • Track conversions & optimize ROI: Gain valuable insights into what resonates with your audience and continuously optimize your campaigns for maximum ROI. 
Image showing campaign performance dashboard with tracking metrics.
Track campaign performance and optimize for better ROI.

With Plivo CX’s robust global messaging network covering 220+ countries, businesses can scale their SMS marketing effortlessly, reducing costs by up to 70% while tripling ROI.

Plivo CX users generate an average of $71 for every $1 spent, making it a must-have for data-driven, high-impact SMS campaigns.

Don’t let missed opportunities hold your business back—start driving more leads and conversions today with Plivo CX. 

Schedule a free demo now!

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Aug 28, 2023
5 mins

Keeping Your Data Safe: Our Ongoing Commitment to Security

Renewed SOC 2 Type 2 & PCI DSS compliance: Your data's safety is our unwavering commitment. Discover Contacto's ongoing dedication to security.

Security
Compliance

Keeping Your Data Safe: Our Ongoing Commitment to Security

We know security is top of mind for many people today. At Contacto, protecting your information is our highest priority. We want to earn your trust when it comes to keeping your data safe. We’re pleased to share that we’ve renewed our SOC 2 Type 2 certification, which incorporates controls relevant to HIPAA compliance. We’ve also renewed our PCI DSS certification to keep payment information secure.

Validating our security practices

SOC 2 Type 2 Certification

As a Contact center as a service (CCaaS), maintaining trust means stringent security controls on sensitive customer information. This year we renewed our SOC 2 Type 2 certification, which validates our security processes to meet strict industry standards over time. Specific areas covered include:

  • Regular communication of changes to customers
  • Robust internal access control to production environments
  • Thorough system monitoring and ongoing risk assessments
  • Reliable disaster recovery, data backup measures, and system availability
  • Responsive system and security monitoring and incident response processes
  • Effective employee onboarding and termination processes

These controls continue to evolve as we maintain the privacy and security of customer data and perfect our security systems.

HIPAA Compliance: A Shared Responsibility

For healthcare clients, we provide HIPAA business associate agreements (BAA) to ensure the safeguarding of sensitive patient information in line with healthcare regulations. While our SOC 2 report encompasses controls pertinent to HIPAA, achieving full compliance is a shared responsibility, necessitating both Contacto and our clients to diligently uphold their respective roles.

PCI DSS Compliance: A Shared Responsibility

For customers processing credit card payments, we comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) to protect sensitive payment data through encryption, access controls, and regular external auditing. Customers must also use our systems properly when processing payments to maintain PCI compliance.

Security as an ongoing effort

While compliance certifications are important, we don’t view security as just a box to check. Our team is dedicated to continuously strengthening protections through more advanced systems, employee training, and industry best practices. We’ll keep you updated on our progress.

We’re proud of our team’s hard work over the past year, and we’ll continue striving toward more robust security measures and accreditations in the future.

You can read more about our renewed SOC 2 Type 2, PCI  compliance, our security measures, and how we’re continually protecting your data on our security page.

Your security is always our top priority. We appreciate your trust in us.

Aug 28, 2023
5 mins

A Tour of the Plivo Console: Phone Numbers

A menu-by-menu look at renting and managing phone numbers via the Plivo console.

Console
Phone Numbers

We’ve just about concluded our top-to-bottom tour of the Plivo console. The only major area we haven’t visited is Phone Numbers, the sixth icon on the main console menu. Clicking on that number-sign icon brings up a list of numbers rented by your account along with a button that allows you to rent more.

Eagle-eyed readers will note that the button you click to rent numbers says Buy Number. Tomato, tomahto — you get the exclusive use of the number, for which you pay a monthly fee that varies by country.

Clicking on any individual number on the list brings up a screen with detailed information about it, beyond the summary displayed on the list screen.

Renting a number

Clicking the Buy Number button takes you to a screen where you can search for the kind of number you want in any of the countries in which Plivo rents phone numbers.

When you’ve ticked the selection criteria and clicked Search, Plivo displays a list of numbers that meet your criteria. Next to each is a Buy Number button that you can use to add the number to your roster of active numbers.

The first list displayed on the Phone Numbers screen is all the active numbers rented to your account. Other available lists show pending, unrented, and port-in numbers.

  • Some countries regulate phone numbers and require that information be submitted to a regulatory authority before they can be rented. Such numbers are marked pending until a compliance application is submitted and accepted. You can fill out a compliance application by clicking on the appropriate menu item under Phone Numbers.
  • Unrented numbers are, as you’d expect, ones which you no longer rent.
  • You can port a phone number from another provider in to Plivo. Numbers in the port-in process appear on this list.

All three lists let you click on a number to see additional information about it.

The Rental Summary page shows an itemized list of all phone numbers you’re renting.

Bring your own carrier, bring your own number

Another menu item lets you bring your own carrier. You can also bring your own number to Plivo. With this feature, you can specify numbers rented from external carriers. After you bring them to Plivo, you can use them just like numbers you rent from us — for example in PHLO workflows.

The only item under Phone Numbers that we haven’t touched on yet is Sender ID. Not all countries use sender IDs; the US and Canada are two that don’t. Among the countries that do use them, regulations concerning sender IDs vary. You can whitelist your account for sender IDs from this menu.

Console tour: complete

If you found this post helpful, you should take a look at the other stops on our console tour: the SMS, Voice, Number Lookup, and Zentrunk menus.

The console menu contains a few additional choices we haven’t stopped on. You can click on Documentation, Support, Billing, and Account and poke around yourself. You can also click on PHLO to get a look at our Plivo High-Level Objects visual design studio, which we’ve documented elsewhere.

Aug 25, 2023
5 mins

Boost Your Business Efficiency with Automated Text Messaging Solutions

Discover how automated text messaging can transform your business communication. This guide covers benefits from boosting customer engagement to streamlining internal comms.

SMS

In today’s fast-paced business environment, effective communication is key to staying ahead of the competition. One powerful tool that businesses can leverage is automated text messaging solutions, which provide a seamless and efficient way to communicate with customers, employees, and suppliers, leading to improved productivity and customer satisfaction.

What is text message automation?

Text message automation allows businesses to send personalized messages to individual or bulk recipients without manually typing and sending each message. SMS automation is ideal for sending appointment reminders or promos and discounts, boosting customer engagement, and sending shipping or delivery notifications.

Imagine this: You're hosting a limited-time offer to members of your loyalty program. The message is written and ready to go — but during a busy morning schedule, the “sale starting now” alert text never gets sent. SMS automation eliminates this communication gap. Plus, SMS automation is usually integrated with existing SMS solutions, adding convenience without additional costs.

Benefits of using automated text messaging for business

There are numerous benefits to incorporating automated text messaging into your business operations.

1. Instant and direct audience reach

Automated text messaging lets you reach your target audience instantly and directly. With the majority of people having a mobile phone within arm’s reach at all times, text messages have a much higher open and response rate compared to other communication channels such as email and phone calls. This ensures that your message gets noticed and acted upon promptly.

2. Time and resource efficiency

Automated text messaging solutions enable businesses to save valuable time and resources. Instead of manually sending individual messages, these solutions automate the process, allowing you to send bulk messages to multiple recipients simultaneously. This not only streamlines your communication efforts but also frees up your staff to focus on other important tasks.

3. Enhanced customer engagement and loyalty

Automated text messaging can enhance customer engagement and loyalty. By sending personalized messages, such as appointment reminders, order confirmations, and exclusive offers, you can create a more personalized and tailored experience for your customers. This not only strengthens your relationship with them but also increases the likelihood of repeat business and word-of-mouth referrals.

How does automated text messaging work?

Automated text messaging solutions operate through user-friendly platforms that integrate with your existing systems. These platforms use application programming interfaces (API) to connect with your customer database, allowing you to automate the sending of text messages based on predefined triggers or events.

For example, you can set up a trigger to send a text message to customers who have abandoned their online shopping cart, reminding them to complete their purchases. The automated text messaging solution would automatically pull the customer’s contact information and send a personalized message, increasing the chances of conversion.

Key features of automated text messaging solutions

When choosing an automated text messaging solution for your business, consider the key features that will best meet your needs. Some of the essential features to look for include:

  • SMS automation: The ability to automate the sending of text messages based on triggers or events, saving time and ensuring timely communication.
  • Personalization: The option to personalize messages with recipient information, making the communication more relevant and engaging.
  • Message templates: Predefined templates that can be customized and reused, simplifying the message creation process.
  • Scheduling: The ability to schedule messages to be sent at specific times or dates, ensuring messages are delivered at the most opportune moments.
  • Contact management: The capability to manage and segment your contact list, allowing you to target specific groups with relevant messages.
  • Reporting and analytics: Comprehensive reporting and analytics that provide insights into message delivery, open rates, click-through rates, and other key metrics.

By considering these features, you can select an automated text messaging solution that aligns with your business goals and maximizes efficiency.

Examples of using text message automation for business communications

Automated text messaging can be a powerful tool for businesses to streamline communication, engage customers, and provide timely information. Here are some examples of automated text messaging for different business purposes:

  • Appointment reminders: “Hi [customer name], this is [business name]. Just a reminder that your appointment with us is scheduled for [date] at [time]. Please reply ’C’ to confirm or ’R’ to reschedule.”
  • Order updates: “Hello! Your order #[order number] is confirmed. It will be shipped within the next 24 hours. You’ll receive a tracking number soon.”
  • Promotions and discounts: “🎉 Special Offer Alert! 🎉 Enjoy 20% off your next purchase at [business name]. Use code: SAVE20. Valid until [expiration date]. Happy shopping!”
  • Feedback requests: “Hi [customer name]. We hope you enjoy your recent purchase. Help us improve by taking a quick survey: [survey link]. Your feedback means a lot to us!“
  • Abandoned cart recovery: “Oops! It looks like you left items in your cart at [business name]. Complete your purchase now and get 10% off. Click [link] to return.”
  • Event notifications: “Hello! Our upcoming workshop on [topic] is just around the corner. Secure your spot by registering here: [registration link]. See you there!”
  • Membership renewal reminders: “Hi [member name]. Your membership with us will expire on [expiration date]. Renew now to continue enjoying exclusive benefits and discounts.”
  • Product updates and releases: “Exciting news! We’ve just launched our latest product — [product name]. Explore its amazing features and place your order today.”
  • Personalized recommendations: “ [Customer name], based on your preferences, we think you’ll love [recommended product]. Check it out here: [product link].”
  • Weather-related alerts: “Attention travelers: Due to inclement weather, flights departing from [airport] are experiencing delays. Please check with your airline for more details.”
  • Subscription renewal notices: “Hello [subscriber name]. Your subscription to [service name] is set to renew on [renewal date]. To cancel or make changes, visit [subscription management link].”
  • Loyalty program updates: “🎁 Great news! You’ve earned 100 points with [business name] loyalty program. Redeem them for discounts or rewards on your next visit.”

The key to successful automated text messaging is to ensure the messages are relevant, personalized, and provide value to the recipients. Additionally, always offer an easy way for customers to opt out or manage their preferences for receiving these messages.

Implementing automated text messaging in your business

To successfully implement automated text messaging in your business, have a clear strategy and plan in place. Start by identifying the specific use cases where text messaging can add value to your operations, such as appointment reminders, order updates, or customer surveys.

Next, ensure that your customer database is up to date and properly segmented. This allows you to target the right audience with relevant messages, increasing the chances of engagement and conversion.

Integrate your chosen automated text messaging solution with your existing systems, such as your customer relationship management (CRM) or ecommerce platform. This enables seamless data synchronization and ensures that messages are triggered and sent in a timely manner.

Finally, regularly evaluate and analyze the performance of your text messaging campaigns. Use the reporting and analytics provided by your automated text messaging solution to gain insights into customer behavior and engagement. This will enable you to refine your strategies and optimize your messaging for better results.

Best practices for automated text messaging

To make the most of automated text messaging for your business, consider the following best practices:

1. Obtain consent

Ensure that you have obtained proper consent from recipients before sending any text messages. This not only complies with legal regulations but also respects the privacy of your customers.

2. Keep messages concise

Text messages have a character limit, so keep your messages concise and to the point. Use clear and simple language to convey your message effectively.

3. Timing is key

Be mindful of the timing of your messages. Avoid sending messages too early in the morning or too late at night, as this may lead to annoyance or disruption.

4. Test and optimize

Continuously test and optimize your text messaging campaigns to improve performance. Experiment with different message content, timing, and personalization to find what resonates best with your audience.

5. Monitor feedback

Encourage recipients to provide feedback or reply to your messages. This will help you gauge customer satisfaction and identify areas for improvement.

Choosing the right automated text messaging solution for your business

With numerous automated text messaging solutions available in the market, it is important to choose the one that best fits your business needs. Consider the following factors when selecting a solution:

1. Ease of use

Look for a user-friendly platform that lets you easily navigate and manage your text messaging campaigns.

2. Integration capabilities

Ensure that the solution integrates seamlessly with your existing systems, such as CRM or ecommerce platforms, to enable efficient data synchronization.

3. Scalability

Choose a solution that can scale with your business as it grows, accommodating increased messaging volumes and expanding functionality.

4. Customer support

Evaluate the level of customer support provided by the solution provider. Responsive and knowledgeable support can be invaluable in resolving any issues or challenges.

5. Security and compliance

Prioritize solutions that prioritize data security and comply with relevant regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

By considering these factors, you can make an informed decision and select an automated text messaging solution that meets your business requirements.

Integrating automated text messaging with other business tools

  • To further enhance the effectiveness of automated text messaging, consider integrating it with other business tools. For example, you can integrate your text messaging solution with your CRM system to ensure that customer data is synchronized and up to date.
  • You can also integrate text messaging with your email marketing platform to create a seamless multichannel communication strategy. By combining the power of text messages and emails, you can reach your audience through their preferred communication channel and increase engagement.
  • Additionally, consider integrating text messaging with your customer feedback or survey tools. This will enable you to gather valuable insights and feedback from your customers in real time, helping you make informed business decisions and improve customer satisfaction.

The future of automated text messaging for businesses with Plivo APIs

As technology continues to advance, automated text messaging solutions will play an increasingly important role in business communication. By leveraging these solutions, businesses can streamline their operations, enhance customer engagement, and boost overall efficiency.

To stay ahead in today’s competitive landscape, it is essential for businesses to adopt automated text messaging as part of their communication strategy. By choosing the right solution, implementing best practices, and integrating with other business tools, you can unlock the full potential of automated text messaging and take your business to new heights.

Discover how automated text messaging can transform your business communication. Contact us today for a free consultation and see how our solution can benefit your organization.

Aug 24, 2023
5 mins

Cloud vs. Traditional Contact Centers

Chatbots help businesses automate their customer service motion and reduce time to ticket resolution. Learn about chatbots and how to implement them in this blog.

Contact Center

Cloud contact centers are revolutionizing how businesses serve customers, offering enhanced flexibility, scalability, and cost-efficiency compared to on-premise contact center solutions.

Read on to explore the differences between cloud and on-premise contact centers, cloud benefits, and to determine if cloud technology is the right fit for your business.

What is a Cloud Contact Center?

A cloud contact center is a centralized online platform hosted by a third-party service provider, accessible over the internet, which manages both inbound and outbound customer interactions across various communication channels.

Unlike traditional on-premise contact centers, cloud contact centers enable agents to access the system from anywhere with an internet connection, while the vendor handles system administration and maintenance.

What is a Traditional On-Premise Contact Center?

A traditional on-premise contact center relies on physical infrastructure located within a business’s premises. It involves owning and managing the hardware, software, and networking components required for customer interactions.

With traditional, on-premise contact centers, agents are required to work from the designated facility, limiting flexibility and scalability.

Key Differences: Cloud vs. Traditional Contact Centers

The main difference between cloud and traditional contact centers comes down to where they reside — in the cloud or on-site.

However, this distinction has far-reaching implications that shape the overall efficiency, scalability, and adaptability of these contact center models.

Benefits of Using a Cloud Contact Center:

  1. Anywhere, Anytime Accessibility: Cloud contact centers allow agents to work remotely, enhancing flexibility and job satisfaction while reducing overhead costs associated with maintaining a physical facility.
  2. Predictable Costs: Monthly subscription models of cloud contact centers facilitate accurate financial forecasts, eliminating unexpected expenses for hardware repairs or upgrades.
  3. Scalability: Cloud-based solutions offer the flexibility to expand or contract resources as needed, allowing businesses to accommodate fluctuating demands without substantial investments.
  4. Omnichannel Approach: Cloud contact centers seamlessly integrate multiple communication channels, providing agents with a holistic view of customer interactions and enabling efficient problem resolution.
  5. Quick Deployment: Cloud solutions are rapidly deployed without the need for extensive installation, resulting in shorter setup times compared to traditional counterparts.
  6. Stress-Free IT: Third-party providers manage maintenance, updates, and integrations, freeing up internal resources for core customer service tasks.

Considerations for Traditional Contact Centers:

  1. Sunk Cost Fallacy: Businesses heavily invested in on-premise systems may resist change due to sunk costs. However, focusing solely on past investments overlooks the benefits of modern cloud technology.
  2. Control and Security: Some businesses prioritize on-premise setups for data security and customization control. However, cloud contact centers are enhancing security measures and customization options.

Choosing the Right Contact Center Solution for Your Business

Choosing between cloud and traditional contact centers hinges on your business’s unique requirements, goals, and constraints. Here are some scenarios where a cloud contact center could be the optimal choice:

  1. Rapid Scalability: If your business is poised for growth and needs to swiftly expand its customer support operations, a cloud contact center offers agility and scalability.
  2. Flexibility: For businesses that need to adapt quickly to changing customer demands and industry trends, the cloud’s flexibility allows for swift adjustments.
  3. Limited Resources: Smaller businesses with restricted time, internal resources, and IT expertise can benefit from the ease of deployment and maintenance offered by cloud solutions.
  4. Multichannel Approach: If your business intends to engage customers through various channels, a cloud contact center’s omnichannel capabilities streamline communication and problem-solving.
  5. Advanced Features: Cloud contact centers provide access to cutting-edge technologies, from AI-powered chatbots to sophisticated analytics, enabling enhanced customer experiences.

Conclusion

The evolution of contact centers from traditional on-premise setups to cloud-based solutions signifies a transformation in customer service. Cloud contact centers offer unprecedented flexibility, scalability, and cost-efficiency, empowering agents to provide exceptional experiences regardless of their physical location.

If you’re ready to transition to a cloud contact center and position your customer service operations for success in the digital age, Contacto makes automation and omnichannel communication simple.

Set up some time with us to share your business needs and get started with a free trial.

Aug 24, 2023
5 mins

Plivo Renews PCI DSS Certification to Keep Your Cardholder Data Secure

PCI certification: Plivo renews PCI DSS compliance certification, which means your payments to Plivo are secured and protected.

Compliance
Security

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is the gold standard for information security for organizations that handle credit and debit card payments. Plivo is certified for PCI DSS compliance and has renewed its compliance.

What does PCI DSS cover?

PCI DSS covers security requirements regarding storage and transmission of data, access control, and other factors, including:

  • Use of firewalls and antivirus software
  • Data encryption, leveraging end-to-end encryption with the robust AES-256 (Advanced Encryption Standard) protocol
  • Passwords
  • Multifactor authentication
  • Specified roles and responsibilities for each requirement

PCI DSS comprises a set of requirements instituted and regulated by the PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC), a consortium of card brands including Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover. All organizations that process, store, or transmit payment card data must comply with PCI DSS requirements or risk losing their ability to process these payments.

Plivo is PCI DSS certified

Plivo is certified for PCI DSS Level 1, which applies to organizations that process more than six million credit or debit card transactions annually. We undergo an internal audit once a year, conducted by an authorized PCI auditor, and submit to a PCI scan by an approved scanning vendor once a quarter.

Plivo doesn’t accept payments directly — a cloud-based payment platform handles all of our transactions. However, while using a third-party provider cuts down on our risk exposure and reduces the scope of detail necessary to validate compliance, we still need to be PCI DSS compliant.

Plivo has renewed its PCI DSS compliance, ensuring your cardholder data remains secure.

PCI DSS compliance requires everyone’s attention

As a communications platform as a service (CPaaS), cardholder data security is of utmost importance at Plivo. Having achieved PCI DSS compliance, we’re committed to ensuring an unparalleled level of safety. Our platform is designed to accommodate payment-related workflows through voice or message APIs.

However, PCI DSS compliance is a shared responsibility. While Plivo ensures elements like data encryption both in transit and at rest, and redaction of specific details in logs, corroborated by audit reports from independent third parties, our customers have their own set of responsibilities. They must ensure the security of their authentication credentials, use the Plivo console securely, and ensure that their applications’ instructions are compliant. This collaborative approach helps us maintain a platform that’s secure for every user.

Become an enterprise customer

PCI DSS compliance is just one Plivo feature that will appeal to large organizations. We’ve rolled several other features into an enterprise package that has numerous benefits for large organizations. Tell us about your needs and we’ll have an expert get in touch with you.

Aug 23, 2023
5 mins

Plivo Renews HIPAA Compliance to Support Healthcare Customers

Plivo can sign a HIPAA business associate agreement (BAA) for customers who sign up for an enterprise package.

Compliance
Healthcare

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) protect the privacy and security of patients’ medical information, known as protected health information (PHI), in the United States. Healthcare organizations must follow HIPAA’s Privacy and Security Rules for handling PHI, and can work with business associates that also protect PHI.

At Plivo, we understand the importance of securing PHI. For eligible customers, Plivo can sign a HIPAA business associate agreement (BAA) as part of our Enterprise package. The BAA contractually obligates us to properly safeguard PHI in alignment with HIPAA standards.

Plivo has renewed our HIPAA compliance for 2023, reaffirming our commitment to healthcare customers. HIPAA compliance is also covered in our latest SOC 2 Type 2 audit report.

Plivo implements various controls to keep data secure, including:

  • Encryption of data in transit and at rest using strong protocols like AES-256
  • Access controls and personnel policies to protect systems handling PHI
  • Redaction of PHI details from logs and audits
  • Independent third-party auditors routinely verify our HIPAA compliance controls.

However, HIPAA compliance is a shared responsibility between Plivo and our customers. While we provide the compliant platform and infrastructure, customers must also use Plivo in a compliant manner, including:

  • Securing their Plivo account credentials
  • Ensuring PHI is only accessed in secure environments
  • Making sure their application instructions to Plivo align with HIPAA rules

For healthcare organizations that need to comply with HIPAA and HITECH, Plivo provides the capabilities and assurances to securely build communication workflows. Contact our sales team to learn more about HIPAA compliance with Plivo.

Aug 18, 2023
5 mins

Plivo Named to 2023 Inc. 5000 List of America’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies

Plivo secures its spot on the prestigious 2023 Inc. 5000 list of America's Fastest-Growing Private Companies.

Company

Austin, TX — August 18, 2023 Inc. has included Plivo in the 2023 Inc. 5000, the magazine’s annual list of the fastest-growing private companies in America. The prestigious ranking provides a data-driven look at the most successful companies within the economy’s most dynamic segment — its independent, entrepreneurial businesses.

“As Plivo enters its twelfth year, we’re thrilled to join such an amazing group of companies,” said Venky Balasubramanian, co-founder and CEO at Plivo. “Plivo started in 2011 as an open source project on GitHub with a mission to simplify customer engagement. We’ve gone from acceptance into Y Combinator’s 2012 batch, to becoming profitable in 2016, to launching SaaS solutions for customer service and sales teams in 2022. The Inc. 5000 honor is another exciting milestone on our journey.”

“Running a business has only gotten harder since the end of the pandemic,” says Inc. editor-in-chief Scott Omelianuk. “To make the Inc. 5000 — with the fast growth that requires — is truly an accomplishment. Inc. is thrilled to honor the companies that are building our future.”

About Plivo

Plivo is a customer engagement platform that enables businesses to connect, engage and interact with their customers in over 190 countries. Thousands of businesses like IBM, Workday, Nutanix, and Gojek rely on Plivo to deliver better customer experiences globally.

More about Inc. and the Inc. 5000

Methodology

Companies on the 2023 Inc. 5000 are ranked according to percentage revenue growth from 2019 to 2022. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by March 31, 2019. They must be U.S.-based, privately held, for-profit, and independent—not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies—as of December 31, 2022. (Since then, some on the list may have gone public or been acquired.) The minimum revenue required for 2019 is $100,000; the minimum for 2022 is $2 million. As always, Inc. reserves the right to decline applicants for subjective reasons. Growth rates used to determine company rankings were calculated to four decimal places.

About Inc.

Inc. Business Media is the leading multimedia brand for entrepreneurs. Through its journalism, Inc. aims to inform, educate, and elevate the profile of our community: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters who are creating our future. Inc.’s award-winning work reaches more than 50 million people across a variety of channels, including events, print, digital, video, podcasts, newsletters, and social media. Its proprietary Inc. 5000 list, produced every year since 1982, analyzes company data to rank the fastest-growing privately held businesses in the United States. The recognition that comes with inclusion on this and other prestigious Inc. lists, such as Female Founders and Power Partners, gives the founders of top businesses the opportunity to engage with an exclusive community of their peers, and credibility that helps them drive sales and recruit talent. For more information, visit www.inc.com.

Aug 15, 2023
5 mins

How to Use Plivo’s SMS API with ChatGPT

ChatGPT for messaging: Learn how to integrate Plivo's SMS API with ChatGPT. Unleash the power of AI-driven messaging & enhance your customer communication with Plivo’s SMS API.

SMS API

Have you jumped on the ChatGPT bandwagon yet? We’ve been brainstorming how OpenAI’s AI-adjacent natural language processing tool might help Plivo customers. Ideas have ranged from applications as simple as a natural language autoresponder to an application that runs a script based on voice or SMS input to a more complex use case such as an SMS chatbot emulation. (We’d be interested in hearing about anything you’ve already built, or that you’re thinking about.)

Plivo and ChatGPT can interact in two ways — think of them as “to” and “from.” A Plivo action (such as an incoming call or text message) could be a trigger to invoke ChatGPT. For instance, someone might text a question with an #askChatGPT hashtag. Plivo could use ChatGPT APIs to pass that query to ChatGPT and return the answer to the person who initiated the query.

Another use case, for data going in the other direction, would have someone invoke something from ChatGPT that triggers a Plivo action. For instance, you could go to the OpenAI’s Playground page and ask ChatGPT to text everyone in a list a weather report for their area.

ChatGPT can’t use Plivo APIs to call Plivo directly. Any application that wants to allow ChatGPT to use its APIs has to write an OpenAI plugin — and plugins are just leaking out in beta form, so a Plivo plugin won’t be available by the time you read this.

However, Plivo partners with Zapier, an application integration tool, and Zapier is developing a plugin for ChatGPT that lets Playground users call zaps — and it’s easy to write a zap that triggers a Plivo action. How well can three very different platforms work together?

We thought a post that walks you through how to send messages through Plivo to ChatGPT, and from ChatGPT to recipients via Plivo, would be valuable. We start with having a Plivo action invoke ChatGPT.

→ From Plivo to ChatGPT in code →

To see how a Plivo action could trigger ChatGPT, we wanted to write a little proof-of-concept code that takes the text of any SMS message that comes in on a specific number, calls OpenAI’s API with that text, and replies to the SMS with ChatGPT’s answer.

And in the spirit of keeping things simple, we thought we’d give ChatGPT a chance to write the code for us. We gave it a prompt:

Using the Plivo Python SDK, write Python code to send the text of an incoming SMS message to ChatGPT and return the reply from ChatGPT to the number that sent the first text.

And it returned this code.

# Import Plivo and ChatGPT

import plivo
from chatgpt import ChatGPT

# Create an instance of ChatGPT
chatgpt = ChatGPT()

# Define function to process incoming message, send to ChatGPT, and return response
def process_incoming_message(incoming_message, incoming_number):
  # Send incoming message to ChatGPT
  chatgpt_response = chatgpt.send_text(incoming_message)

  # Send response from ChatGPT back to sender
  client = plivo.RestClient()
  client.messages.create(
    src='',
    dst=incoming_number,
    text=chatgpt_response
  )

That’s a decent starting point, but ChatGPT isn’t going to take any developers’ jobs just yet. It’s a very simple use case — but sometimes that’s all you need. However, in this case, one fatal flaw is the lack of a ChatGPT module with APIs that let you make queries.

Plivo CTO Mike Ricordeau took the concept and made it scalable. His sms_bot.py code, using Python and Flask, is available online, so you can clone it and play with it. Follow the instructions in the README file.

Before you deploy the application, you must expose it at a public URL. To do that, we recommend using ngrok. Make sure to specify to ngrok the same port on which the sms_bot.py application is running. Ngrok will return a forwarding IP address you can use.

Once you’ve obtained a forwarding address from ngrok, visit the Plivo console and add a Plivo application. Specify the address, postpended with “/sms,” for the Message URL.

Next, pick one of your active phone numbers and associate it with the application you just created. In the Application Type drop-down, choose XML Application, and under Plivo Application choose the name of the Plivo application you added.

Now the application should be live and available. You can try it by texting a message to the phone number you used. Plivo should receive the question and POST the request to the Message URL, and ngrok forwards it to the Python application, which connects to OpenAI and asks the question. OpenAI gives the answer. The Python application then returns a Message XML element with the response, which is sent to the user’s phone number. The entire “transaction” took about four seconds from when I tapped Send to when I received a response.

← To Plivo from ChatGPT via Zapier ←

Suppose, instead, you want to have ChatGPT call Plivo to send a text message.

As we said, ChatGPT can’t use Plivo APIs directly. Fortunately, Plivo partner Zapier is a member of the OpenAI ChatGPT plugin program. As we mentioned, Zapier is an application integration tool that lets anyone connect disparate web applications together in a workflow. Anyone with a ChatGPT Plus account can use Zapier to perform an action from ChatGPT that calls Plivo.

To try it out for SMS API integration you first have to set things up. Sign up for a ChatGPT Plus subscription — it costs $20 a month — and you’ll need a Zapier account too. From the ChatGPT home screen click on your account name in the bottom left corner, then Settings > Data Controls, and enable 2FA. The page displays a QR code that you have to scan with an authenticator application running on a smartphone. The app should display a six-digit number for you to copy into the authentication dialog.

Once you’ve enabled 2FA, click on GPT-4 at the top of the ChatGPT home screen and choose Plugins from the drop-down menu. From the Plug-in store, find Zapier and click Install. Your browser will open a new window and Zapier will prompt you to connect; click Allow.

After you’ve enabled the Zapier plugin you can go back to the main ChatGPT window and ask a question. When you have an answer, you can say something like “Send that via Zapier and Plivo.” The first time you do that, ChatGPT will give you a link to click on that brings up a page where to enable an action.

We’ve written documentation on how to use Zapier with Plivo, sans ChatGPT; it talks about the available options. If you’re one of those free spirits who prefers trying things to reading doc pages, you can type “Plivo” into the Action field to see what actions are available. (Or you can type any string and use any platform that Zapier integrates with.) Complete the form, then click Enable action. At some point you’ll have to specify your Plivo Auth ID and Auth Token to authenticate your account within Zapier.

Those are all the steps — sounds easy, no? But some of this software is new and not completely debugged. We had problems connecting our Plivo phone numbers to Zapier through the plugin screen. Also, see the “Have AI guess a value” prompt in the screenshot above? We tried doing that for our source number, since we were using a test account that had only a single active number. AI failed to guess the value.

Prompt engineering

At this point you’ve created an action that ChatGPT can use by calling the Zapier plugin. Now you have to write a good prompt that not only retrieves the information you want but also lets ChatGPT know what to do with it. We found things worked best when we used a phrase like “send a text using Plivo.” ChatGPT “knew” that it could access Plivo via Zapier, as in this example.

When we clicked the link, we found that ChatGPT had filled in the source and destination numbers properly. However, the text we asked it to generate wasn’t what we were looking for; instead of a polite reminder that payment was due, the body of the text was “Recipient’s phone number.” AI works in mysterious ways.

There’s clearly a mismatch somewhere in the communication between ChatGPT and Zapier. We took a second try, telling ChatGPT to send the text to a specific destination phone number, but that didn’t help.

When we clicked Run, ChatGPT/Zapier/Plivo sent the text perfectly, and it arrived almost instantly, so the good news is that all of the pieces were able to communicate.

As if it weren’t enough to automate all it did so far, ChatGPT wasn’t finished. It continued …

Sadly, when we clicked on the link, there wasn’t much there but the title of the new Zap. If we had wanted to use it we would have had to fill in all the fields, as if we were starting from scratch.

A work in progress

From this experience, we judged ChatGPT’s integration with Zapier to be a work in progress — as one might expect for such new software. We wouldn’t rely on it for SMS automation. Still, it’s clear we have a base on which companies can build. Ask us what we think again in six months.

The takeaway for now is that you can incorporate ChatGPT into workflows with Plivo — but don’t expect perfection.

Aug 3, 2023
5 mins

What is a Chatbot? 10 Benefits of Chatbots for Enhanced Customer Service

Chatbots help businesses automate their customer service motion and reduce time to ticket resolution. Learn about chatbots and how to implement them in this blog.

Chatbots

Chatbots have been making waves in the customer service industry, providing a range of advantages that can enhance the customer experience by reducing customer friction, increasing revenue, and alleviating pressure on human agents.

From providing 24/7 availability to offering personalized recommendations, chatbots have the potential to revolutionize the way businesses interact with their customers.

What is a Chatbot?

Put simply, a chatbot is a computer program designed to quickly respond to and assist customers with their questions. Whenever a customer initiates contact through a communication channel, a chatbot will attempt to identify and resolve the customer’s issue by offering solutions to common problems.

Modern chatbots like Contacto’s can even be configured to trigger customized workflows dynamically based on customer responses, enhancing your business’ ability to gather relevant information from your customers before they connect with an agent.

Benefits of Chatbots

We’ve compiled 10 benefits of chatbots, and tips for how you can use automation to enhance the customer service experience, while also alleviating pressure on customer service agents, increasing revenue, and creating repeat business:

  1. 24/7 Availability: Chatbots can provide 24/7 availability to customers, which is not always possible with human agents. This means customers can receive immediate assistance, regardless of the time of day or night. This can increase customer satisfaction and reduce the likelihood of negative reviews or customer churn due to unaddressed concerns.
  2. Quick Response Times: Chatbots are capable of responding to customer inquiries in seconds, providing instant answers and minimizing the waiting time for customers. This can reduce frustration and increase overall customer satisfaction, while also freeing up customer service agents to handle more complex issues.
  3. Cost-Effective: Chatbots can help companies save on labor costs, as they can handle a large volume of customer inquiries simultaneously. This can allow companies to allocate their resources more efficiently and effectively, while also reducing the need to hire additional staff to handle customer service inquiries.
  4. Reduced Pressure on Human Agents: Chatbots can handle routine inquiries, allowing human agents to focus on more complex issues. This can reduce burnout and turnover among customer service agents, while also increasing the likelihood of positive customer interactions.
  5. Improved Context for Issue Resolution: Chatbots can gather information from customers and provide context to customer service agents before the customer is transferred to a human agent. This can help agents provide more efficient and effective solutions, as they will have a better understanding of the customer’s issue before the interaction begins.
  6. Increased Revenue: Chatbots can increase customer engagement by providing answers to questions that prospective customers may have while evaluating your product. This can increase revenue and customer loyalty, while also improving the overall customer experience.
  7. Multilingual Support: Chatbots can provide support in multiple languages, making it easier for companies to expand into international markets. This can increase customer satisfaction and reduce language barriers for customers.
  8. Consistent and Accurate Responses: Chatbots can provide consistent and accurate responses to customer inquiries, reducing the likelihood of miscommunications or misunderstandings. This can increase customer confidence in the company and its products or services.
  9. Improved Data Collection: Chatbots can gather customer data and provide insights into customer behavior, preferences, and pain points. This can help companies improve their products or services, as well as their overall customer service strategy.
  10. Creating Repeat Business: A positive customer service experience, facilitated in part by chatbots, can create repeat business and increase customer loyalty. Customers who have had a positive interaction with a chatbot are more likely to return to a company for future purchases or services.

So we ask the question again: what is a chatbot? A chatbot is a useful self-service tool that is evolving the modern customer service experience by providing 24/7 availability, reducing the pressure on your human agents, and decreasing the time to ticket resolution for your customers.

The Importance of Self-Service in Customer Support

In our recent Leadership Talk on the Modern State of Customer Support, Plivo’s head of support Renu Yadav highlighted the importance of self-service tools:

“Self-service options are a great way to reduce the number of queries coming to support agents and allow them to focus on more complex problems. I also think that it is important to build an extensive FAQ section so that customers can easily find answers to common questions.

I also think that chatbots and AI can be valuable tools for customer support. They can provide instant, 24/7 support for simple inquiries or issues, and they can also gather initial information before escalating more complex issues to human agents.”

How PlivoCX’s Chatbot can automate your customer service

PlivoCX’s modern chatbot leverages advanced automation technology to enhance the customer service experience for businesses of all sizes. With features like 24/7 availability, quick response times, and multilingual support, Contacto’s chatbot is an excellent example of the potential that this technology can bring to your business.

By embracing chatbot technology in your contact center, companies can provide better customer service, reduce costs, and increase revenue, all while freeing up their human agents to focus on more complex tasks.

With the rapid advancements in AI technology, chatbots are only going to become more sophisticated and capable of handling even more tasks, making them an essential tool for any modern business looking to stay ahead of the competition.

So why wait? Start exploring the benefits of chatbots today and see how they can revolutionize your customer service experience.

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