Branding in Ushur Engagements

Introduction

Ushur is an Intelligent Automation platform harnessing the power of AI and ML technology to digitally transform both backend processes and conversational interfaces. Ushur Platform can be used to manage many of your Customer Journeys In this document, we are using a fictitious company name “Happy Insurance” for illustration and showcase branding capabilities across different channels of engagement.

Channel of Engagement

One of the primary channels that can be utilized is SMS (Short Message Service), a texting messaging service.  This SMS channel is used for one-way notifications, two-way texting, and initiating Invisible App Link exchanges between Ushur - on behalf of your organization - and its customers.

Virtual Phone Numbers

When a Ushur Workflow is launched and a text message is sent to a customer’s phone number, this Application to Person (A2P) message goes from a virtual phone number that Ushur has procured (on behalf of your organization) to an actual customer’s phone number.  Illustrations below image-1 through image-3 are illustrations of this A2P message exchange.

A2P Message Exchanges

A contact on a mobile device with the Happy Insurance logo and an associated shortcode. This is expected to be created by an end-user with whom the Happy Insurance brand is made proximal by Ushur Engagement.

Inside view of the same contact with Happy Insurance logo, name, and the actual shortcode.

Image showing a notification message sent to the device. In this case, Happy Insurance is pushing a text message via Ushur.  The first image shows when Happy Insurance is not added as a contact by the user on the device. The second image is when Happy Insurance is added as a contact on the device.

Virtual Phone Numbers (continued…)

There are two types of virtual phone numbers - a long code and a short code.  A long code is like a regular phone number that is usually 10 digits (in many countries) long.  A shortcode is a 5-6 digit number.

A long code is for lesser traffic, low quality of service, and can be adversely affected under high volume traffic conditions leading to significant message delays.  The rate of admission is also low to the order of 1 message/sec.  It is not a highly reliable service but can certainly be used as a convenience to send messages to end users.

A shortcode on the other hand is a highly reliable service, not subject to carrier filtering, quality of service will be maintained even under severe traffic conditions and the admission rates are of the order of 100 messages/sec leading to high quality of service.

A long code is less expensive whereas a short code is very expensive.  The price usually varies based on whether these codes are randomly allocated or custom-defined.

Considering that short codes are also expensive they can be shared between multiple organizational units. For this document, we are using Ushur’s short code of 87487.

SMS, Texts, Datagrams & Conversations

The SMS channels over which text messages are sent are treated as datagrams, store & forward communications. The channel itself is agnostic of any notion of connection and the applications that are typically responsible for sending messages inherently do not know about the association between messages being sent to the customer’s phone number and the ones being received from the customer.

The SMS network has no awareness of two-way communication. It treats each message independently regardless of the direction.  The Ushur Platform has built within the correlation aspects whereby it can associate multiple message exchanges between a virtual phone number and a customer phone number and correlate them on a session basis enabling to power two-way conversations.

Notion of Dimensionality

The correlation of messages to a session is based on a pair of phone numbers, which is the virtual phone number from which the message is sent to the customer’s phone number on which the message is received and so for the reverse direction.  Based on this pair of information a session is identified.  This also means when we use SMS, texting messages between a virtual phone number and an actual phone number, only a single outstanding session can be identified.  The image-4 below illustrates two outstanding sessions on a customer’s mobile phone. As can be seen in the illustration when a customer responds to the latest message received, the earlier one is discarded.  So if Happy Insurance sends two customer journeys to the same customer phone number and both are active, only the last journey is active when the customer responds.  The previous journey cannot be associated any longer on the same associated channel of virtual phone number - customer phone number.

Simultaneous Conversations

The phone capture shows two engagements with Happy Insurance.  The first one is initiated by the enterprise and there is a waiting prompt requesting the customer to enter.  For any number of reasons, the customer may not yet have responded.  Meanwhile Happy Insurance has initiated another engagement as part of a survey to the same customer.  That one also has prompted the customer to enter some information.  Now here the prompt on this second engagement is the only one active on this SMS channel and the previous prompt on the prior engagement is no longer accessible. Anything the customer sends only gets processed on the latest engagement which here is the survey and not the prior engagement.

The Happy Insurance Brand

From an end-user experience perspective when they are engaging with Happy Insurance as a brand it is highly recommended that there is a single virtual phone number, a dedicated short-code of high quality of service be established for all customer journeys.  This way a Happy Insurance customer will likely add the short code (i.e. 87487) into their ‘Happy Insurance’ contacts on their mobile device. 

Ushur’s Brand Ambassador - The Invisible App

From the beginning Ushur team realized that from a user experience perspective they need to realize the enterprise brand without any compromise on the experience.  Ushur recommends that a brand use a single virtual number to engage with the same user across all the journeys. To break free from the SMS paradigm Ushur introduced the Invisible App (IA), an html5 based technology. This Invisible App provides a direct secure connection from the mobile device to the Ushur Instance that is executing the Workflow which originally initiated the engagement over the primary channel which in the context of our discussion is the SMS channel.

The Door to Invisible App - the IA Link

Every Ushur Workflow initiated has in itself an IA link that would allow a user to use that link to land on the Ushur’s IA to continue the workflow execution.  In essence the user is able to navigate on their journey via the IA starting from the primary channel, say the SMS.  A single journey that sends SMS texts to the user’s mobile device can also send an IA link from which the user can continue that journey on the IA (via the browser).

Below Image-5 shows multiple engagements like before except now with the IA Link on each of them.

This phone capture shows the earlier described two outstanding engagements except that here we have the IA Links for each of the engagements.  With the IA links the customer can still access these two outstanding engagements.

While earlier we saw the user can have only one outstanding engagement on SMS, now each of those engagements can be a journey with a unique IA link.  Clicking that IA link the user can continue on their journey.  Now there can be numerous journeys over that SMS channel, over the same short-code virtual number to that user’s phone number on their mobile device.   This door to the IA is now the door to any of the customer journeys. The white-labeled, fully customized IA is the brand ambassador carrying the enterprise brand to their customers on their various journeys.

A secured door - the IA Link

The IA Link is protected with multi-factor authentication (MFA) schemes that encompasses typical 2FA schemes via SMS & Email & other channels as well as the optionality of using biometric data. What makes it even more differentiated is that the entire MFA scheme is achieved via an Ushur workflow.  This means various other custom schemes like visual confirmation can be introduced by the enterprise as part of the MFA mechanism.  Further details on the security aspect of IA can be found in the Ushur GDPR-Compliant End-End Security document.

A dynamic portal via IA

Ushur provides an easy mechanism for a user to reach any of their customer journeys by providing a home button in the Invisible App. Image-6 below shows illustration of this built-in feature. There are several upcoming IA features on the roadmap that will make it easier for users to engage with their enterprises - for example, in the IA portal there can be clear indications of outstanding messages, expected responses, various ways to sort & filter their journeys and so on.

IA Renderings

The following illustrations show the Invisible App renderings and the breaking free from the dimensionality of SMS.  

Clicking on the IA Link for the claim status takes the customer to this IA view. Clicking on the IA link for the claim filing shows the prompt on the IA.

Feedback Engagement

Conversational Portal

Traversing to the home shows a dynamic Conversational Portal in IA.

The customer can select the hamburger icon and visit all the outstanding engagements as shown here.

The phone capture shows all the outstanding engagements between the customer and the Happy Insurance brand.  This view serves as a dynamic conversational portal.

Short-Code to Customer Journeys

Starting with a dedicated short-code over an SMS texting channel we see how Happy Insurance by leveraging the Ushur’s Invisible App has allowed their customers to be able to richly engage on their journeys.

Road Ahead

The Invisible App holding all the journeys is not limited only to the SMS channel but can be initiated on any primary channel such as an Email.  The rendering of the IA is also not limited only to mobile devices but can adapt and be displayed & used on a desktop device, large screen as well. While the IA might look like a web-page, the purpose of the IA is to present a rich medium, focused information and interaction that is executed over the Ushur’s Workflow created by the enterprise on the Ushur Platform. There are several enhancements in the pipeline for the Ushur’s flagship Invisible App, a brand ambassador. Stay tuned.