Progress for voice broadcast users: The CallFire Grill has announced that CallFire SMS now has the capacity for text replies.
Indeed, this is good news which should simplify many voice broadcast campaigns considerably. If your CallFire account is SMS-enabled (call 877-897-FIRE if it’s not), then the way it works is easy: Log on to your account, and scroll over to Inbox. There, you’ll notice not only your regular CallFire alerts, but also an option for “SMS Replies,” company officials explain.
More than one study has shown that people increasingly prefer texting to voice conversations. There are many reasons why this is so, but in a majority of cases the younger generation are those who are most comfortable with text.
What the CallFire feature means to end users is that you can manage texts you receive just as you would your email inbox. “You can converse with your contacts and see how they’re reacting to your promotions and campaigns,” company officials say, adding that if a contact replies STOP to unsubscribe from your text blasts, you’ll see DNC in your inbox, and that person will automatically be added to your account-wide ‘Do Not Contact list’.”
So it’s not going to become an intrusive, unwelcome thing, which granted is a legitimate concern for many businesses, who don’t want to be seen as “spammy” to their customers.
SMS works pretty well for customer surveys or polls, as CallFire officials note, so you easily receive important feedback on new products or on your business’s customer service department. Be sure that to enable SMS messaging for customers because the easier you make it for your customer to give you feedback, the more touchpoints you open up.
Earlier this month, TMCnet reported that The Central Library Consortium revealed that due to its work with CallFire, it can now offer an easy way for book lovers to renew their memberships to its libraries, by simply dialing a phone number. The service allows library users to see the current outstanding titles of books that have recently been checked out under their name, and even gives them the ability to renew any items they want.
In addition, this new service alerts them if anything they have requested is ready to be picked up at the library.
David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.Edited by Jamie Epstein