SMS Best practice

Best Practices Overview

The following document covers best practices for how to interact successfully with customers over the SMS channel. These recommendations are learnings from a number of interactions Ushur has had while working with our customers as well as industry best practices.

With an ever-increasing rate of smartphone adoption, more customers are preferring to communicate using SMS. These best practices are designed to help enterprises enhance their customers’ experience and trust, thereby maximize customer outreach and loyalty.

There are various country and state-specific laws that govern enterprises’ interaction with consumers. In the United States, the FCC has laid down certain standards and laws under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) that enterprises and telemarketers are required to comply with. Additionally, each state may have their own rules in addition to the TCPA, such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).   The legal compliance requirements are covered in a separate document and should be reviewed accordingly.  Here in this document, however, we are focusing more on the aesthetic part of consumer outreach and how Ushur is uniquely positioned to help maximize this outreach for our customers. It helps enterprises see things through a consumer's perspective and helps enhance their SMS campaigns.

The best way to send even a single SMS message is through a Ushur.  The Ushur Platform is revolutionizing the way businesses allow their customers to engage so that even a single SMS message sent to the customer is never forgotten and can be continued in the future with 2-way messaging.

Identify Yourself

First and foremost, the customer must be able to recognize the sender. Otherwise, customers will hesitate to interact. Additionally, it is recommended to address the customer by their first name.  This fosters trust knowing the message originated from a known source, and is personalized.

 “[Happy Insurance] Hello Bob, we’d like to remind you of your upcoming appointment with agent Joe on Feb 5^th at 3:00 PM”

OR:
“Hello from Your Insurance! Alice, we’d like to remind you of your upcoming appointment with agent Joe on Feb 5th at 3:00 PM”

Greet and Keep it Friendly

It’s important to greet and keep a friendly tone. If the target demographic is known, then the greeting can be used appropriately.

Example

“[Happy Insurance] Dear Mrs. Smith…”

Clear and Unambiguous Message

The SMS messages generated should convey the message in a simple and easy-to-understand language. If abbreviations are used, ensure they are popular and well-known. Avoid custom company phraseology that might confuse the customer.

Overall, the content of the SMS must be informative and clearly define the benefit/value to the customer.

Call to Action

If the message expects a customer response, the message must contain a direct, clearly defined action that the customer should take.

For example, compare the messages:
“Hi, we need your driver’s license for your application”

and

“Hi Jane, please upload your driver’s license to complete your application using the following link.”

The second message clearly states why the person is being contacted, what they need to do, and the resources for them to take that action.

Frequency of Messages

From a customer engagement perspective, sending too many messages or sending them too frequently might result in customer fatigue and lead to reduced responses.  Information that has already been conveyed in an SMS should not be repeated unless it’s a reminder message.

Recommendation from SMS marketing experts is four to five messages a month. That frequency can increase up to ten if there is a really active engagement opportunity.  When users sign up to receive text messages, it makes sense to let them know how many messages they might receive in a month.

For example:

“[Happy Insurnace] Dear Alice, thank you for opting in to receive SMS notifications.  You may receive up to 5 messages a month.”

Please note, that this recommendation is only for marketing-type campaigns. Transactional messages are important to consumers, such as the status of claims/orders, appointments, etc., and do not fall under this category.

Care should also be taken that the same customers will not be sent the same messages in quick succession.  For example, if there are multiple updates to a customer’s account status within a short time, the system might send the same notification multiple times.

It is important to note that mobile service providers will not guarantee the order of messages when sent to the same recipient.  Additionally, their anti-spam and anti-DoS attack safeguards may cause similar messages to be dropped.

Ushur also recommends utilizing the Delay module to introduce a brief delay between messages. This provides a better experience, as opposed to receiving multiple messages at once before the customer has had a chance to read the first one.  

Special Characters and Special Phrases in SMS

Special attention must be paid to the presence of any special characters in the SMS. Special characters that need 2 bytes instead of one will cause the message to bloat and may result in fragmentation of the SMS.  Fragmentation results in messages going out in two incomplete parts.  Ensure the text encoding is GSM-7 for full compatibility with mobile operators.  Here’s a link that provides more information on the encoding aspects:
GSM 03.38 Encoding [Wikipedia.org]

Ushur recommends a message length of 140 characters. This is done in case any URLs or links can also be accommodated.  Ushur’s short URL API can be utilized to shorten the URLs so that they may fit within one single SMS message.  For longer messages, the Invisible App module can be used.

Include Disclaimer and Option to Opt Out

It is a good practice to forewarn users of any potential charges they may incur when interacting via SMS.  Even though most mobile carriers have made unlimited messaging the norm, there are still a few outliers that charge per SMS. It is an industry practice to include text such as “Standard SMS rates apply”.

TCPA Regulations require that the customer have the ability to opt out of receiving any further SMS messages. The message should include instructions on how to opt out as well as opt back in. Text such as “To opt out text the word STOP to 25930. Text START to opt back in”.  The opt-in/opt-out messages can be customized or personalized in Ushur workflow builder.

Ushur has robust toolsets and foolproof processes to handle users’ opt-in/opt-out preferences. For opted out users, the Ushur platform ensures that no messages are sent out under any circumstance.

The TCPA laws also stipulate certain times of the day when messages should not be sent to customers.  Ushur supports this feature through Do Not Disturb (DND) settings.  These settings and other TCPA related features are covered in the TCPA document linked below:
https://ushur.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/CS1/pages/218103833/TCPA+Compliance

Handle Unexpected Customer Responses

Customers sometimes reply with conversational text as though they are communicating to a human at the other end of the line.  For example, when customers are sent an option to approve (Press 1) or reject (Press 2), they may end up responding with, “I need more details” or “I never signed up for this”.

Ushur can help capture these unstructured/unexpected texts, analyze them by using our AI based Language Intelligence Service Architecture (LISA) and take intelligent actions. Depending on the sentiment (whether the customer is projecting a happy or a frustrated experience), they can be routed to a customer service agent if needed.

SMS-Based Survey Campaigns

If surveys are being sent out, be mindful of the number of questions. Keep the number of questions to a minimum. Keep open text type answers to a minimum.  The more input customers have to type on their mobile phone will only add to the friction and tediousness of typing on a mobile platform.

The customer experience can be vastly improved by using the Invisible App feature. The Invisible App provides a richer and easier-to-use interface for customers to interact with where they can click to select instead of typing.  Answering multiple choice questions, selecting a survey rating with a single click instead of typing can reduce the workload and provide a more frictionless experience.

Utilize Reminder Feature

With SMS interaction becoming more frequent, customers often forget or somehow miss responding to a notification.  The customer can be drawn back in with gentle reminders that can be set in the Ushur workflow builder without resending the entire workflow all over again.  If the customer has abandoned a workflow mid-stream, they can be drawn back in with a reminder and pick up where they left off.  That way we can maximize completion rates for SMS campaigns.

Add Silent Listener

This is a good practice to capture ad-hoc texts from the user. For more information about silent listeners refer to this article - Parallel Workflow Using the Start Invisible Module App.