Sending out SMS in an IVR?

[former_member315525]

Hello Experts,

we would like to know if it is possible or is there ANY option to send out SMS

in an IVR in any shape or form?

We would like to send out automated SMS when an caller leaves an IVR so to speak.

Any hint or link or explanation is appreciated.

To put it in other words: Is there a way to send an SMS out to an caller via an query in an IVR.
Caller has been waiting for 5minutes -> send out sms: "was your case solved? vote:Url/link. sorry for waiting so long!".

Thanks

[aldets]

Hi,

I haven't heared that the contact center itself can send out SMS', but you can integrate it to communicate with a different application that sends out SMS'.

For instance in the IVR you can call a function from the Customizer with pre-filled data and tell the external application to send it.

Sending an SMS after a certain amount of waited time, is a bit tricky. Waiting is done in a queue and queues can't do these kind of things. You can allways transfer the call after 5min or so to an IVR that does the sending and the IVR puts the call back into the queue.

Kind regards,

Alder

[former_member736352]

Hi Susanne,

the answer depends little on your onprem version. My answer is based on latest release, which is FP18 and likely not every feature described below are available on older release.

Sinch Contact Pro itself integrates with SMS channel which can be utilized for two way messaging (in and out or MO(mobile originated) and MT (mobile terminated) like telephony folks call them). If you use Communication Panel UI, then you can have conversational messaging nicely visualized and you can see previous conversations with the customers. More about SMS channel from help:
Messaging Services (sinch.com)

Then let's speak about the option to send out SMS from IVR. For that you need the SMS channel to be configured in the system and after that Sinch Contact Pro offers and interface to command SMS sending. Please see:
Sinch Contact Center Restful Contact Management Interface (CMI) -> Messages. The interface allows you to schedule even a time when SMS is send out. So, now problem with 5min delay. Then question how to utilize the interface with your IVR? There the answer is customizer like Alder mentioned. You need to teach IVR to speak restful language.

Now we have sent out an SMS but are we happy? If you expect that customer will answer and that will be routed to queue and agent, then we are happy. If you wish to do surveys with this, then would say no as reply from the customer is always routed to back to agent and classification will be always manual work.

To automate such a process flow I would propose using chatbot serving in queue, which could do classification of replies and insert the answers as script result into database via Integration Interfaces (TMI if I recall right) and you would see results in reporting as well. At cloud we plan to have similar interface over RI in next 22q2 release.

Would you like to takes the scenario even further and use social channels, for example WhatsApp or RCS or MMS. With WhatsApp you could use for example rich elements like buttons, images and etc. Also you could at IVR say that we are in rush, how about chatting with us via WhatsApp and not waiting in queue? Press 1 and we invite you to WhatsApp discussion. The same interface that can be used for SMS sending is working also with all supported social channels.

I'm happy to demonstrate above if you wish to see it live and discuss about the scenario. And I believe you know my email already, just use the one ending sinch.com. And with the customizer I can definitely give you contacts who can help and can also ask from Sinch consultation team if they have an example. Naturally we can help you with the SMS channel as well.

//Jukka

[former_member315525]

Hello,

maybe the last question was a bit too much.

We would highly appreciate just to get send an example file of that "customizer". (IVR)

Is there anyone who can send or link us one?
Thank you.

[aldets]

Hi Susanne,

I would say that Jukka provided an excellent answer which gives you many options in how to solve your issues.

Over all you need some sort of external application that can deliver the SMS. By my knowledge Sinch doesn't have the capability to send out SMS. What it will do is to tell the external application to send your preconfigured SMS.

How communication is done with this external app is purely up to you. Sending messages from Sinch to it, can be done from several places.

1. In the IVR - Basicly you can tell Sinch to communicate with this app from any point in the IVR.

2. If you are using Communication panel - from the Extension Area. Can be made to send it manually or even automatically.

3. More complicated solution - create your own custom scripts that trigger an event to talk to the app.

4. What ever you can imagine.

It all depends on how the external app accepts communications. If it's via API or direct insertion of data to database. Unfortunetly can't show any sample code because it all depends how messages should be sent to that application.

Kind regards,

Alder

[former_member315525]

Hello Mr. Adler,

thank you very much for your detailed explanation. If I may rephrase it to be 100% sure to understand it.
So it would only work if an external app would take over the sending. We can only send data regarding the caller in an IVR!?
One other scenario for one of our customers is to send out an survey via sms whenever a caller is a mobile number and it would check that by querying the callerid in a salesforce database.
So this is only possible with an external application?
It would really help us to go further in the planning process with your info.

I am refering to this thread:
https://answers.sap.com/questions/12980086/send-sms-text-to-abandoned-calls.html

where it is talked about an function to send out sms in a IVR after FP16. But I am not sure if those functions got implemented.

Can you give us an update on that?
Thank you!