Text Messaging Featured Article

As the official first day of ITEXPO (News - Alert) comes to a close, one of the most exciting parts of the event, StartupCamp8, is taking off tonight. Led by a keynote from Jeff Bonforte, SVP of communications platform at Yahoo, who offered 12 insights on business innovation, StartupCamp is like the communications version of “Shark Tank.” Four companies pitch their ideas and solutions for five minutes and answer questions from a panel of judges in hopes of building their reputation and furthering their startup’s potential.

One of these companies was TextGen, a company that text-enables the same phone numbers used for voice. TextGen Principal Gary Pudles (News - Alert) began his five-minute pitch addressing the popularity of text, specifically the fact that more than 92 percent of all people ages 53 and younger text every day. Text messaging is even prominent among businesses and poses a problem in that employees receive texts but the business has no way of collecting data on those messages. Not only that, but text messaging is a channel that organizations are not taking full advantage of.

There are more than 70 million existing telephone numbers today, but less than one-tenth are text-enabled and used for business.

Imagine adding another channel for customers to interact with your organization the same way they would with your contact center. In today’s multichannel world, the key to success is delivering service and accessibility to customers wherever they are – and today, that means text messaging.

TextGen prides itself on being able to “make your number smarter.” It can text-enable your number and offer a cloud-based app to receive data and create a conversation between customers and your employees and business.

The app can do anything you can do by IVR, including interacting with a live agent.

“Big cries we hear at ITEXPO and at other industry events is that the value of the business number continues to go down,” Pudles explained. Thousands of businesses offer number-based services, and TextGen can partner with these companies to offer the app as an add-on.

Judges brought some immediate concerns to light. Does long code SMS have a future? Does text messaging even have a future? (Think about the growth of IP-enabled services like iMessage and WhatsApp.)

The beauty of TextGen is that it can text-enable any existing phone number. It has the ability to port just the text side and attach to the carrier network, so the voice owner always owns the number. That should have caught the attention of every SMB; you can now make your number text-enabled while still owning the number.

TextGen also works with keeping messages secure and private. In terms of data security, it puts the data server behind the firewall of the client while using cloud-based technology to send the text in.

Visit www.TextGen.com to learn more.