The Power of a Text Message: Unique Ways Businesses Are Using iSMS

From real estate firms to medical centres to retailers and beyond, businesses of all kinds are finding unique ways to implement their iSMS solution – and they’re all leading to great results, including increased revenue, excellent customer experiences, and efficiency cost-savings.

While iSMS works great on its own, it can also be integrated with other solutions (like VoIP phone systems or CRMs) to create fully automated, end-to-end processes. The options are endless, and they lead to some pretty cool results!

Below are some real examples of how businesses are using iSMS:

Handling Thousands of Phone Calls with iSMS and VoIP

An Auckland CBD medical centre has found a unique way to handle a flood of incoming phone calls by integrating its iSMS solution with its VoIP phone system.

Following the government’s recent announcement of a new pathway to NZ residency, the medical centre began receiving over 1,000 daily phone calls for immigration medicals. The call volume was unmanageable, especially as staff had to spend up to 30 minutes booking each appointment individually – on top of all its other regular appointments, phone calls, and admin.

To avoid losing the revenue from these new patients – whom would go elsewhere if unable to get through on the phone – the medical centre used a custom API to integrate its iSMS solution with its VoIP phones.

Now, when patients ring to book immigration medicals, they’re instructed to press ‘Option 2’ on the phone menu. They then hear a custom message explaining that the centre is experiencing high call volumes and can’t take the call. When the call ends, the custom API between the centre’s Cloud PBX and iSMS solution immediately sends a text message to the caller’s mobile that includes a link for them to book their immigration medical along with instructions on what they need. The text is received within minutes, often before the caller even hangs up the phone.

As a result, the centre can now not only respond to every call, but also saves a huge amount of time and money on staff resources and admin. At mere cents per SMS, it’s much more cost-effective than having staff manually answer the phones – and, most importantly, the caller’s expectations of having their call handled are met.

Additionally, real-time, automatic reporting on incoming calls and confirmation of sent SMS ensures that no calls are being missed, as callers that ring from a landline (rather than a mobile) and can’t receive texts are tagged so they can easily be filtered in the reporting, and staff manually return those calls.

Selling Million Dollar Homes… Via Text Message

K Real Estate in Motueka is unique in many ways; they’re a certified climate positive business, have a shared commission structure, are completely paperless, and don’t hold open homes. Yep, you read that right - a real estate company that doesn’t hold open homes.

Director Roar Kristofferson credits their iSMS solution with a huge portion of their success.

“One of the key things with iSMS is that the open rate is much, much higher than with emails,” says Roar. “People won’t wait until the evening to open a text, they’ll open it pretty much right away.”

The instant reach of iSMS is what allowed K Real Estate to launch a ‘VIP service’, whereby keen buyers can opt in to receive text alerts when the agency lists a property – even before it goes onto the market. “They’ll get a text often before we even have photos of the property,” explains Roar, “and if they want to learn more, they can reply via text and we’ll have a salesperson contact them. It’s a way for us to provide our agents with really specific and hyper-targeted, qualified leads."

“It’s something we’re getting amazing feedback on from buyers, and it has led to a number of sales already,” says Roar.

One buyer in Mapua had recently missed out on a property, but when K Real Estate listed another just down the road, that buyer – who had opted into the iSMS service – received a text before it even went to market. “They viewed it that day, went under contract that day, and it was sold within three or four days,” recounts Roar.

And what about that ‘no open homes’ thing? After analysing their data, Roar found that 95% of their sales came from private viewings, and they would reach that other 5% with iSMS to their database anyway. The personal, one to one communication enabled by iSMS means Roar and his team can work directly with the right buyers for the right properties, instead of spending time on traditional open homes.

Hear more of Roar’s insights on iSMS here.

Providing Excellent Service By Integrating iSMS with a CRM

One major NZ computer and tech retailer has integrated its iSMS solution with its CRM, providing a wide range of automated usages that all contribute to improving its customers’ experience and increasing revenue.

Custom APIs enable the retailer to send messages direct to customers’ mobiles for order and repair updates, as well as advising them when items are ready to be picked up in-store. Keeping customers up to date on their order’s progress every step of the way ensures customers are always informed and don’t need to contact the retailer for status updates.

Recently, to comply with social distancing requirements during lockdown periods, the retailer sent out messages with a timeslot for customers to arrive and wait outside the branch when collecting an order, and then another message when it was that customer’s individual turn to enter the store to pick up their item. This meant customers could be sure of their pickup times and avoid long queuing.

The retailer also uses iSMS to increase revenue by offering customers the option to sign up to receive texts when there are promotions

Don’t Just Dream It, Automate It!

While these specific examples are meant to get some ideas flowing for how you can use iSMS in your own business, they’re by no means the end of what can be achieved. iSMS can be integrated with any number of tools to bring about any number of outcomes – it all depends on what you’re looking to accomplish.

Don’t worry, you’re not meant to be an expert on how you can implement iSMS; that’s what Voyager is here for! It’s as easy as talking to one of our experts and explaining what problems you want to solve or what goals you want to reach, and we’ll take care of the rest.

Have a free, no-obligation chat with our dedicated business team at [email protected] or 0800 4 SPEED and see how you can put iSMS to work for you.