Love ‘em or loathe ‘em, the mobile phone has become the personal communication medium of choice. We all have a mobile phone, and it’s never far away from our clutches. Whether it’s making or taking calls, sending or receiving texts, or surfing the Net, the mobile phone enables us to stay in touch with the rest of the world, wherever we happen to be. And whatever we do, we’re doing more of it. From the first text message sent by a Vodafone engineer in 1992, the good old SMS text message has become ubiquitous, with barely a day going by without most of us sending or receiving a message.
A few interesting SMS facts:
- There are more registered handsets in the UK than people
- Twice as many people have a mobile phone than have email
- 97 billion text messages were sent in the UK in 2009
- 441 million messages were sent on Christmas Day 2009
At Office Response we handle over 1 million calls per year and for the majority of these calls a message or information is passed onto our customers. Although most messages are relayed by email or call transfer we also use SMS to ensure customers receive information wherever they are. During the past year we have sent over 200,000 SMS messages as the demand for instant notification becomes an increasing priority for businesses.
One of the main changes in the use of text messaging is by organisations wishing to stay in touch with those that are important to them: hospitals contacting patients, businesses contacting customers, and councils contacting residents to name but a few.
This is the growth area of SMS. Businesses and public sector bodies are recognising the value of contacting their audience by text. Why?
- You can get a message in to the palm of a recipient’s hand
- And you can get it there in a few seconds
- As we all have a phone, anyone can be contacted
- It’s a low cost communication means
- It’s a two-way medium, enabling organisations to receive texts too
Who can benefit from using text messaging within their organisation? Well, pretty much everyone in some shape or form. Our customers that use SMS for message delivery and wider customer communications report:
- Increased revenue
- Reduce cost
- Improved service
- Improved Customer Satisfaction
A long standing customer of Office Responses telephone answering services is Text Anywhere Ltd. If you are thinking of sending messages to individuals or groups from an online service, create bulk SMS marketing campaigns, or send SMS messages from any email system, TextAnywhere has the business solution for you. You can visit them at www.textanywhere.net
Definately a useful thing to get set up. I quite like getting texts of info/confirmations and such. Though there is a fine line between impressive and spammy.