One of the most sophisticated features of the Upland Mobile Messaging platform is the ability to communicate with individual mobile subscribers in one-on-one conversations. Instead of using text messaging as a one-way channel to blast information, our platform gives brands and organizations the opportunity to engage in truly conversational exchanges with anyone on their mobile list.
The value of two-way text messaging
Offer immediate customer support and attention
The quality of your customer service depends largely on how quickly you can address a person’s needs.
With Mobile Upland Mobile Messaging, your customers can immediately connect with agents and begin a conversation. Text messaging encourages customers efficient communications and eliminates common issues such as mishearing an agent’s response or having to write down a piece of information while on the phone. Customers can also do other activities while waiting for an agent’s response, giving them more flexibility and freedom than being kept on hold.
Respond to incoming messages rapidly and easily
Not everyone stays “on-script” in a text message campaign.
From open questions to simple thank-yous to accidental butt texts, any automated SMS campaign is likely to receive unsolicited messages. With Upland Mobile Messaging, your agents can respond to every incoming message individually. The mobile subscriber experiences the conversation just like any other text message thread on their phone, while your agents can view and respond to all messages using our web-based platform.
Answer inquiries from your subscribers in real-time
One of the best applications of text messaging is the ability to answer questions from anyone at anytime in a private setting.
Whether you’re a government agency, a public college, or a healthcare organization, responding to questions in a timely manner is very important. Upland Mobile Messaging allows your organization to interact with individuals personally in one-to-one SMS conversations, eliminating the need for long recorded audio messages and bad publicity from social media posts. You can also invite people to text in questions during a pre-scheduled Q&A session and respond to each one in real-time via SMS.
An overview of Upland Mobile Messaging’s two-way messaging features
Upland Mobile Messaging offers several ways for agents to respond to incoming text messages, whether they are customer concerns, off-script messages, or invited questions.
Agent View
Agent View allows your organization to easily respond to incoming messages outside of your automated campaigns. Our dashboard allows any number of agents to respond to outstanding profiles in the message queue simultaneously.
To respond to a subscriber, agents can compose a message directly or select a pre-written response from a drop-down menu. These canned responses are customizable and can also be tagged and filtered by campaign for easy access. Agents can also view additional information about the subscriber on the same screen, including any campaigns that subscriber is a member of and recent messages sent and received. Finally, agents also have the option to remove the message from their queue, select “no response needed,” or opt the subscriber out of the campaign. If no action is taken within five minutes, the message is automatically returned to the queue.
Other advanced Agent View features include the ability to filter all messages by campaign, set up email notifications, select multiple profiles to perform bulk actions, and view statistics for each agent for admin users.
Chat sessions
When an incoming text message requires more than a simple response from an agent, Upland Mobile Messaging offers the option to start an SMS “chat” session that allows an agent to continue exchanging messages with that subscriber within a private chat window.
When an incoming text message requires more than a simple response from an agent, Upland Mobile Messaging offers the option to start an SMS “chat” session that allows an agent to continue exchanging messages with that subscriber within a private chat window.
Once a chat is initiated, any further messages from the subscriber are removed from the Agent View queue so that they can continue to communicate with the same agent throughout the duration of the session. Agents can also initiate a chat session with a subscriber at any time. Opening a chat window also offers agents the flexibility to navigate to other pages within the Upland Mobile Messaging platform while chatting with one or more mobile subscribers. An audible notification and flashing chat box also alert agents of a new incoming message in a chat session if they navigate away from the Upland Mobile Messaging platform.
Ultimately, Upland Mobile Messaging allows you to easily answer questions, receive comments, or simply talk to your mobile subscribers outside of an automated text message campaign.
Four examples of successful two-way SMS programs
Many Upland Mobile Messaging customers use our two-way text messaging features to engage with their mobile subscribers one-on-one. Here are a few great examples:
Bowling Green State University uses live text-messaging chats to help answer questions from students and parents about the college admissions process, freshman orientation, financial aid, and other student concerns.
DoSomething.org runs several text messaging campaigns to engage teens, but members don’t always follow the script. When this happens, DoSomething.org team members jump in and engage with those people one-on-one to see how they can help.
Nickelodeon used text messaging during the 2015 Kid’s Choice Awards to send celebrity selfies and behind-the-scenes updates to subscribers. To keep up the idea that teens were texting with a real KCA Insider, Nickelodeon used Agent View to respond to incoming text messages throughout the show to keep teens engaged.
TxTina, part of Talking Sex Together, is a free teenage pregnancy prevention program in Iowa that engage teens in one-on-one conversations over SMS. On the first and third Friday or every month, Iowa teens can text in their questions about sexual health and relationships and TxTina will answer them instantly, accurately, and anonymously.