The world of landline texting is vast and customizable. Many business texting services offer a variety of features that can be added on to your landline texting capabilities. Subscriptions usually differ in price, and yep, you guessed it. The more you pay, the more features you get.
It can be difficult to discern, in this case, which features you actually need and which will be extraneous to your business’ requirements. In this article, we will review the basic features of landline texting, as well as the additional features you never knew you needed!
In case you need a refresher, through a business texting service, you can enable your landline to send and receive text messages. Technically, however, the landline itself is not receiving texts.
Instead, the texts are routed via the landline number to a web browser. From there, you can manage all messages and contacts.
The best part is that you don’t need to purchase any additional equipment or pay for installation. All you need is a landline phone number and a business texting service to start taking advantage of this tool!
With landline texting, you can:
- Send and receive SMS and MMS
- Auto reply
- Customize available templates
- Organize and segment your contact list
- Schedule messages
- And more
Any business texting service worth its salt will offer these features as part of its basic plan. However, what about additional features and integrations?
Read on to explore some more advanced landline texting features, as well as how they can benefit your business!
ITR (Interactive Text Response)
This term may sound pretty tech-y to some, but chances are that you are already more familiar with this feature than you realize.
Have you ever heard of IVR (Interactive Voice Response)? Even if you’ve never heard the term, you’ve most likely experienced this feature in real-time when calling a business. IVR is basically the ability to communicate with an automated system via voice cues and keypad inputs on your phone. IVR makes it possible for callers to respond to automated prompts when calling a business before being directed to the correct customer service representative.
ITR is basically the same, except through text instead of voice calls. ITR is a fantastic addition to any landline texting subscription because it can be used in many different ways, including customer service and gathering feedback.
For instance, ITR is perfect for conducting customer surveys. Let’s say you run a doctor’s office. Patient feedback is critical in the healthcare industry, but many people don’t feel comfortable giving negative feedback directly to their doctor. However, with ITR, you can conduct patient feedback surveys quickly and easily through text messages. Ask patients to rate various aspects of their experience on a scale of 1-5 and, and in just a few questions, you can gather valuable information to improve patient care.
API Access
If your business is already a well-oiled machine that utilizes a variety of other communication software, you may be hesitant to introduce a business texting service into the mix. After all, that’s one more communication platform employees will need to manage, in addition to live chat solutions, CRM systems, etc.
However, with API access through your business texting service, you can easily integrate landline texting into any existing software. API access will make the transition to landline texting simple and painless for your employees. It will also mitigate any decrease in productivity that usually accompanies the learning curve of a new system.
Website Contact Form-to-SMS
Most company websites contain a special page labeled “Contact Us.” (By the way, if yours doesn’t, you should get on that.) In the same vein as the issues discussed around API access, many business texting services contain features to help businesses integrate their landline texting into existing systems. This is one of those features.
This feature will enable any inquiries entered into your website contact form to arrive via text in your landline texting platform. This will enable your business to respond to website inquiries faster, providing better customer service and, hopefully, an increased ROI.
As simple as this is, this feature is not always available at every subscription level, so it’s something to take into consideration when researching your options and desired features within business texting services.
Recurring SMS
If your business sends out recurring texts to customers, it will certainly become redundant to continue scheduling and rescheduling those messages to go out when you need them to. With the recurring SMS feature, however, you can schedule messages once, as well as stipulate when you would like them to repeat.
Businesses can use this feature for customer birthday messages, weekly or monthly specials, payment reminders, etc. Recurring SMS can also be used to send repeat messages to staff members. You can send regular staff meeting reminders, updated schedule notifications, and annual training reminders.
Those are just a few examples of how businesses can use this landline texting feature; however, if you find yourself scheduling any type of mass text time and again, recurring SMS is a necessary addition to save yourself time and effort in the future.
Group Messaging
While most of this article has been focused on how different landline texting features can benefit your interactions with customers, we’ve only briefly touched on how they can benefit your business internally.
Group messaging is obviously great for sending out texts to large groups of customers, but let’s focus on how it can help streamline employee communications, as well. Landline texting has the potential to be a one-stop shop for company communications, with the right features.
If you run a retail store, for example, you can segment your employee contacts based on job title and send one message to groups of relevant recipients. That way, the cashiers aren’t getting texts that only apply to management and vice versa.
The ability to not only send one message to a group of people, but also to keep all internal communications centered in one place, can be a huge asset to any business.
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The work is only half done once you’ve set your mind to implementing landline texting as part of your business strategy. Combing through all your options for a business texting service, as well as their differing available features, is the next step. When shopping around, be sure to check for the features discussed here to get the most out of your landline texting! Luckily, our platform has all these features and more. We also offer a 14-day free trial for you to explore and decide if Text My Main Number is right for your business. Start your free trial today!
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