Businesses need to interact with their consumers using TEXTing

The time has come that every business, no matter whether it is small or big, needs to have mobile presence. Starting of this century it was a web presence that everybody was going for, now it needs to extend to mobile presence. The “Third Screen” is becoming a part of the life in many countries and in many countries that is the “Only screen” people have. Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, recently said, “There are over one billion people with Internet access on the planet but there are more than four billion people with mobile phones and Twitter can work on all of them because even the simplest of these devices feature SMS.” This statement is an eye opener statement!

TEXTing can be used to accept questions and concerns about the products, services. It can be used in Customer Service applications. It can really be used to create one-on-one dialog between you and your customer.
 
TEXTing is still a relatively uncluttered and spam-free channel. I think governing bodies have also learnt from “e-mail spamming” experience to keep this medium relatively clean. It is individual business’ and applications provider’s responsibility to keep it clean as well; and give more value to the end-users. If all of us can keep this moral responsibility in mind and use this medium, then I think we have a win-win situation here.

Hummingbytes has a suite of hosted products to take advantage of this. Businesses can use SMS based customer service module to answer end-users questions and concerns. They can use alerting module to keep customers updated. They can also use Hummingbytes communication cloud to integrate the communication in their own business processes. Most importantly the whole suite is based on Short code and adheres to anti-spam guidelines.

Not many of us are aware that these applications can really be very cost-effective. These applications can also have very high ROI. The solutions need to be a part of business’ overall strategy and most importantly should be designed methodically.

Schools can improve communication with parents using TEXT messaging

Now TEXT messaging is becoming mainstream among adults too. If you have seen the Verizon commercial where parents are busy TEXTing and updating Twitter and Facebook, you will realize that TEXT messaging is not just for the youngsters anymore. I think this is a right time for communities like schools to start taking advantage of this phenomenon.

It is time for schools to reduce the paper work of communication and Go Green. Some schools are adapting to e-mail communication but frankly I would rather get early dismissal alert from my kids’ school on my cell phone than in the e-mail box where I get around 150-200 e-mails everyday. The point I am trying to make here is that even if schools are trying to go on e-mail communication, TEXTing has its own place in school-parents communication and properly designed system can use both the mediums properly to make sure that there is no communication gap between parents and schools.

Most parents have a cell phone and would not mind to receive important announcements from the schools via TEXT / SMS. It is convenient for parents and it would reduce expenses for schools such as phone bills, photocopying, printing and mailing. It would also reduce staff workload by freeing up time that would otherwise be spent on preparing communications by school administrators or teachers. Weather alerts, 11th hour changes like cancellations, change of venue are some of the good candidates. Even parents can send a TEXT about their child’s absentee.

TEXTing is becoming ubiquitous among adults as well. Why not use this medium for more than just changing your Facebook status to ”I am sitting on the sofa”?

Patient recruitment and its challenges

Patient recruitment is the process of recruiting patients for a clinical study. CROs (Clinical Research Organizations) generally outsource a patient recruitment company do the job of getting patients. The recruitment company employ diverse mechanisms to advertise the study they are conducting. Most companies also have their own database from there they can cull the required numbers and sell it to the CROs. But at the heart of all this is the recruitment company to patient communication. How can the recruitment company be in constant contact with the patients?

Some of the challenges faced by patient recruitment companies are:

• Awareness : Patients seldom know the details of a clinical study. The side effect, the duration, the medical phase and other details. They need to be informed about the study through various mechanisms. Websites, Self driven voice solutions, Emails etc.
• Easy opt in  : Once the patient knows that a study is being conducted, the opt-in has to be easy. Asking them to go to a website to register might not work all the time. They might forget once they move away from the advertisement.
• Study Reminders: Even after opting in, the patient is still not ready for the clinical study. A series of tests have to be done on the patient which will require the patient to come to see the clinician at regular intervals. So reminding the patient to see the clinician is crucial to get the patient ready for the study.
• Change in ailments : Patients often develop new ailments and old ones are sometimes cured. Keeping abreast of all the patients in a recruitment database is going to be a hard task. But giving patients an easy way to self manage their ailments is easy.

What are the solutions ?

• Awareness: Setup a voice solution that reacts to spoken words and phrases and describes a particular study being conducted. It should also read out the duration, phase of the medical study and side effects of any medication that needs to be taken.
• Easy opt-in : A simple TEXT based solution that immediately opts-in the patients for a study being conducted can be put up along with the TV / Poster ads. Patients TEXT in a keyword and the system opts them in immediately.
• Study Reminders : Regular VOICE or TEXT reminders should be pre-scheduled in the system to remind the patients of their next doctor’s / clinician’s visit. The system should also allow cancellation of appointment and re-scheduling appointments.
• Change in ailments : An easy TEXT based solution should allow patients to add or remove ailments from their record. Or a voice based solution to let patients hear all their ailments so far recorded and remove ailments immediately by saying “remove” and  add news ones using Speech recognition.

There are more communication challenges that a patient recruitment company faces. The more channels of communication that are opened the easier it is for both parties to connect.

Questions Or Comments ?

Ever see those small printed section on the back of your chips packet, or candy bar or chewing gum ? “Questions or Comments” and then followed by a Toll free number ? Have you ever called to complain about the product or give comments ? And why would you if you have to talk to someone on the other end while you are enjoying your chips or candy ?

But would you TEXT your comments ? I guess most people will be inclined to do so. And let us sweeten the deal, you send your comments and you get a discount coupon !! How about that ? Now I am sure most people will be willing to send their comments in. Coupons and its redemption is another story and worth a new blog. But here are the advantages of collecting consumer product comments via TEXT.

1. You can collect phone numbers and the comments in plain text. Such text can be analyzed to find certain words that most people use. Eg : Too sweet. Too salty. Very dry. This gives an indicator as to what your consumers want.

2. Using the phone numbers you can do geographic analysis. People from NY are more critical than people from Texas. Maybe it is because your NY distributor is not doing enough to ensure product quality and packaging ?

3. You can reply one on one !! If your consumer has issues, attend to it !! This is the best way to connect directly via TEXT. Send them notes on how you are trying to improve and send them coupons for their next purchase.

TEXTing is ubiquitous and consumer product companies should capitalize on the above noted facts.

VXML standards or No standards

VXML or no standards ? I would lean towards standards but a simpler standard. For starters, VXML is the language used by voice solution providers to connect with a voice gateway provider just like IE, FireFox, Chrome are browsers for IIS, PHP, Apache web servers. Now VXML as the name stands is a XML standard with 3 versions ratified by W3C (the third version to be release next year) since its inception in 1999.  The main reason VXML gateways exists is to provide an easy way to switch from one provider to another without breaking solutions or re-writing voice solutions. Very much like changing utilities from one to another provider.

Now, I have worked with VXML gateways (Voxeo, VoiceGenie, NMSsolutions) and also worked with voice solution providers. Then I moved on to architect the HummingBytes VXML gateway, developed it and deployed it for voice solution providers to use. After being in all shoes I think I can confidently assert that standards are good, but making it easy will go a long way in making sure that the standard is enforced.

Now, coming to the part of switching from one gateway to another, the only ones who can make the switch are the voice solution providers. They can move freely from one gateway to another (albeit with some custom code modification so their core technology). End clients who are stuck with voice solution providers still cannot move from one provider to another. Reason being interfacing with the VXML gateway takes a lot more than writing a few lines of code. To communicate via VXML one has to build a sub-system which takes code written in a higher level language like C, PHP, C#, Java and translates it to VXML payloads. Building this subsystem is cost prohibitive. That is why you have smaller gateway players who come out with innovative XML language that completely throws out standards and makes it own wild west standard.

Now, here is another interesting fact the voice solution providers do. They use a sub set of the VXML language capabilities and push logical transitions, state transitions to higher level languages. So now you have a vast and rich language and only 10 percent of the language gets used. And now W3C is going to add SCXML (State Control XML) into the VXML 3.0 standard !!! So now you can do more with an XML language that no is going to use. What the W3C committee expects is developers to develop using XML, but no one codes in XML. XML is only used for the lowermost handshake between systems.

My recommendations :

1. Make the VXML language simple. Do not make it very complex and then have a compliance test to pass so that one can be certified VXML 3.0 complaint. Without a VXML compliance certification you are not considered a serious vendor. Only the big companies who have large development teams can create a compliant gateway and only they are in the business. The smaller ones create their own standard !!

2. Create components which generate simple VXML payloads which can then be easily distributed. If you want more people directly talking in VXML then simple components that you buy off the shelf is good.

TEXT your congressman

As simple as that sounds. That is the idea. TEXT your congressman. Anytime you want and where ever you want. Find a pot hole that needs fixing TEXT it to the congressman, need a new street light in your area TEXT the congressman. These are things that needs attention and your appointed government worker will be more than happy to know what needs to be done in the city.

How does one TEXT the congressman ? Citizens text their concern to a US short code with the first work SEND followed by their city name. They can they have as many as 100 characters to fill in their complain. Example TEXT messages are “Please put up signs near the washington hospital to stop people from honking”. “I would like to visit you to discuss community park enhancement”. The TEXT gets routed through HB servers and the system finds the appropriate congressman based on the city entered. Then it creates a nice, courteous email and send it to the congressman.

The congressman gets the email and decides he wants to reply !! Well that is also supported. All the congressman has to do is enter his reply and click on SEND. Every email has a unique code that is affixed on it. This unique code is used to match the person who sent the TEXT and a reply is created and sent to the originator. There you have connected with your congressman and you have been heard !!

Simple, elegant and very practical. Who is going to remember the congressman’s email address or phone and then call him when you are in the middle of the road with your leg stuck in a pot hole. You can of course TEXT !!!

Patient Recruitment System

HummingBytes has been working with a Patient recruitment company for one of their pharmaceutical studies. We send appointment reminders to patients involved in the study being conducted. The appointments reminders can be sent by VOICE, SMS or EMAIL and it can be scheduled for future date and time.

Here is how it works. The patient (who is part of the study) opts-in for the preferred mechanism by calling into a voice application (IVR) or sending a TEXT message to our short code, or opting in via email. There are multiple mechanisms provided so that the patient chosses the best fit and uses it. All the applications were built using HummingBytes IIG.  (IIG comes with a rapid development environment and capability to deploy applications to the IIG cloud).  All the patient information along with their preferred contact mechanism is collected under the client’s account as client contacts. 

Now the patient recruitment company starts scheduling appointment reminders to the patients. There are 2 ways to schedule alerts. Web API or Web SaaS webpage. The web front end offers a simple intuitive interface to select a list of patients and send them alerts in their preferred mechanism. Variable can be  set to customize each alert. The web APIs and web based products are secure and safe, so no information is compromised.

Once the alerts are scheduled a detailed report shows how the alerting is going on. This information can then be downloaded for further analysis. Visit hummingbytes and learn more about the Alerting System.

Mobile CRM

Imagine a CRM solution with which you can reach your customers Anytime, Anywhere. Mobile phones are ubiquitous gadgets. Everyone carries one nowadays. If you can reach your customers and answer their concerns / questions on a media they carry with them all the time, then you have essentially built a strong customer service system for your customers.

Hummingbytes specializes in Mobile CRM solutions. Our Mobile CRM suite is a set of innovative products, that help you achieve one important thing. Effective customer communication.

It is a web based product that lets you be in touch with your customer’s needs at the click of a button. You can see the concerns your customers have, send them answers, essential information, advice, discount coupons all from the ease of your desktop. SMS, VOICE and EMAIL are the supported channels for customer-business interaction. This single portal reveals a lot about your customers and lets you deliver the information your customers are seeking.

Business Verticals

A sample of how Mobile CRM can be effectively used to support different verticals is enlisted.

• Health Care

Health advice via SMS, Medication alerts, Addiction help and awareness.

• Retail (Shops and Outlets)

Mobile coupons, Marketing messages, customer retention programs.

• Education System

Parent-Teacher relationships, inclement weather alerts.

• Media

Classified Ads placement, Interactive marketplace.

• Banking & Finance

Daily stock updates, Funds performance alerts.

Gathering restaurant reviews

Do you own a restaurant ? Own a pizza or sandwich shop ? We can help you gather reviews of your food.  Real reviews from real patrons. They will tell you how well you run your restaurant business.  Just ask them to TEXT (SMS) in their comments to a short code.  Then we will provide you with a portal to go and check on the comments. You can also reply to them via TEXT with a thank you note and even send them invitations for a discounted or free meal in the future.

Our Mobile CRM offering is a simple concept. Let your customers reach out to you with their concerns and you can reply to them from the ease of your desk. You can find out why your patrons did not like certain things at your restaurant, and take corrective action. In this economy or any economy it is not worth losing a single customer. And imagine the very notion of being in touch with your customers at all times.

You can even send mobile coupons to get repeat customers. Give them 15 % to 20 % discount coupons on their Mobile phones which they can show and get a discounted meal. This will build your business and a steady stream of clients will show up every month.

Visit Hummingbytes Mobile CRM to see how we can help you. Call 508 361 2494 / 508 380 6169 for a one-on-one consultation and sign up.

Customer Service Help on SMS

Lately I got my car serviced at a local dealership. It was a 120 K tune up , check up etc .. etc. Everything was looking good, till a month later I took it for a drive to NY from Boston.  Halfway through I heard this dull drone from my engine. I stopped looked under the hood and found nothing unusual. Damn ! The service place did something wrong was my first thought. So I decided to look at my service card and call them up to ask them about it.

I called the toll free number and they put me on hold.  It went to a call center for my local car dealership.  I waited for around 20 minutes on the line and then got tired. I hungup. Then I looked at the service card for alternate numbers to call, and I found this line printed

 “TEXT in your car questions to 35350 with the keyword CARQ”

I immediately texted in my question “Did 120 K service last month at XYZ dealership.  Now car is giving dull drone on engine.  I am on highway CT 15 going South,  Need help”. After waiting for 3 minutes I got my response “Got your servicing details. Apologies for the bad servicing. Please take the care to service station at exit 104. They have been informed about your car.” !!!

I went to the exit 104, which was only a 15 mile ride. Went to the service station and they found a piece of wire gauze stuck on the oil stick.  They said that if the wire gauze had gone in to the engine block, it would have been very difficult to remove. Wow !! I was amazed at the speed with which I was able to TEXT in my problem, get an answer, have someone look at the car in less than 1 hour.  Impressive ! The support apparently used my cell number to find out from the dealership I went,  got my 120 K servicing details, got my car details and informed the service station on CT 15 about it !!! All done without explaining to support about my visit to the dealership, the car year and make I owned etc etc…