google-site-verification=rELuVVyS5Y8o0Ezst8ITY3su3PIT5khzDgo-anRp4o8 Is Text Messaging Important? ~ Tech Senser - Technology and General Guide

9 Dec 2014

Is Text Messaging Important?

Text messaging, also known as Short Messaging Service (SMS) and Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), is a capability that all reasonably modern mobile phones have. MMS is SMS paired with audio, video, or picture files, A study performed earlier this year by Ericsson tells us that across the world, the number of mobile subscribers reported is in the neighborhood of 4.5 billion users.

Three out of five human beings on the planet send text messages. According to the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington D.C., the average American checks their phone up to 150 times a day to see if they have gotten any new text or MMS messages. The same study showed that 29 percent of people couldn't live without their mobile phones.

SMS/MMS Beats Emails in Attention Gathering

Statistics in these reports also show that the chances of anyone opening a given SMS text message are 98 percent, even if the sender is unknown to them. They'll usually open that message within three minutes of its receipt.

And this is compared to an open rate of only 22 percent for marketing messages that are emailed out! "Open rate" is a metric used mostly by marketers to get an idea of how many users actually open the commercial emails that they send out. The measurement has now been expanded to include SMS and MMS messages.

In short, if your company has any kind of marketing campaign, you may enjoy a great deal of success partnering with a text messaging provider. It reaches an extremely engaged audience; it helps drive product awareness; it boosts brand conversation; it helps measure your ad value; and it's simply more effective than traditional tools.

Text Messaging
Image Credits: BGR

Another option for your company is to take your landline numbers and text-enable them. What this would do is take the same number your customers would use to call in to a contact center, and simply send it a text instead.

In essence, they would be texting your call center instead of calling it; you would need to set up that infrastructure, of course, but in many ways a texting gateway is more efficient than traditional call centers:

• One trained agent can work several conversations at the same time, thereby reducing customer irritation levels and wait times.
• Text conversations can be easily transitioned to a live agent, where required.
• Automatic responses can be configured for common questions or situations.
• An agent can gain some context for a call by viewing the history of an SMS conversation.

Some Interesting Facts about SMS

Many people in developed nations take SMS for granted, but in less advantaged areas, SMS is helping more and more people every day. Cell phones in developing areas are at the same time more inexpensive and in more widespread use than even the most basic of services we see and take for granted domestically, like electricity or brick-and-mortar banks.

It's a fact that 1.7 billion people on the planet possess a mobile phone, yet have no bank account; cell subscriptions outstrip bank accounts by about 75 percent in developing areas. Indeed, social activists and entrepreneurs alike have been able to take advantage of this fact in many outstanding ways.

• NATO was able to increase the salaries of Afghan police officers by 36 percent by using mobile phone technology.
• Former president of the Philippines Macapagel-Arroyo created incoming texting channels for 54 government agencies.
• HP refined a system to verify that medicine is genuine for Nigerians and Ghanaians and Nigerians.

It's quite clear that the ground related to text messaging is still very fertile for development, for established companies and entrepreneurs alike.



 Michelle Patterson

About the Author:

Michelle Patterson is excited with the new technologies that are threatening to change the way we stay in touch and communicate, particular in business. She works with companies that are introducing these technologies to make understanding them easy for regular people.