Using SMS Technology in Business
Customer Relationship Management
Marketing experts say that it is easier to make your existing clients spend more money, than to find new clients. This could be the reason why customer relationship management is becoming more important for many companies. With Ozeki SMS you can build a better relationship with your customers. Here is what you can do at a very low cost, simply by sending SMS messages:
- Ask your customers whether they are satisfied with your product after a couple of weeks they have purchased the product, and offer them another product or service.
- Send an SMS to your clients once in a while to find out their plans that are relevant for your business
- Send a greeting SMS message for Christmas, New Year's Eve, etc...
SMS greetings, notifications about special offers and customer surveys using SMS messages are used by many of our customers. For example Q. Travel, a travel agency in Budapest, asks its clients about whether they liked their last trip and recommends new travel opportunities.
Scheduled reminders and notifications
Scheduled SMS messaging can be very useful in businesses. Often it is required to remind people periodically, or to create notifications for future appointments and deadlines.
Ozeki provides an Outlook SMS plugin, that can be installed in Microsoft Outlook, that makes it possible to use the Outlook Calendar and the Outlook task reminder service, to send SMS messages. Whenever an Outlook notification window pops up a corresponding SMS can be sent out. This SMS can tell you when and where a certain meeting or appointment is going to take place.
Scheduled message sending can also be used to improve your relationship with customers. It is possible to send a greeting for their birthday automatically, or to send them some advertisements periodically.
Workflow Automation
The goal of workflow automation systems to create an infrastructure, where the "computer tells the people what to do and not vice versa". In other words the computer system of the company should manage the workflow and should make sure every employee gets the relevant information when needed. Most workflow automations systems use databases to store information related to the workflow. If the Ozeki Message Server mobile messaging platform is attached to this databse, the company's workflow management infrastructure can notify the employees about certain events and tasks when they become relevant using SMS messages. Database triggers and stored procedures are fit for this purpose.
With SQL queries it is possible to provide mobile information retrieval services in these systems.
As an example, think of a large supermarket, where the computer detects that the stocks are running low on one of the products. In this case the computer automatically sends an SMS to the supplier to ship some more, and to an employee, to make sure, the supplier will deliver the products. If the shipment does not arrive by the time it should, the computer can send an SMS to the manager to check what the problem is.
Improved marketing
The most successful companies in the world are marketing-driven. It means their success relies heavily on their marketing techniques. AS David Cameron points out:"Future of marketing lies in enabling costumers to talk to each other about your products. Why? Because they trust each other". The problem with this approach is that it is hard to find a way to connect customers who are interested in the same product. One idea is to set up an SMS chat system to enable customers to talk to each other about your products.
Wireless advertising
A large portion of Ozeki's income comes from companies who buy the Ozeki SMS platform to do advertising. The reason for this is simple: very often sending SMS messages is the most efficient way to get someone's attention. If the URL of a website is sent to a mobile phone, the owner of the phone will visit the site with a high probability.
Debt Collection
Companies often spend a lot of time and effort on collecting debts. A certain portion of the debt comes from customers, who forgot to pay their invoices on time. SMS is an efficient and polite way to remind somebody about an unpaid invoice. For example the Hungarian Electricity Supplier introduced a service in the spring of 2021, which notifies the customers using SMS messages in case they forget to pay their bill on time. The service is very successful. A few days after sending the messages out most of the bills are paid.
More information
- Using SMS Technology in Business
- SMS - E-mail forwarding
- Finance
- Schools
- Entertainment
- Application provider
- Forwarder
- SMS usage examples
- Linux PHP SMS
- Credit limits
- E-mail SMS Gateway