SMS And Call Forwarding
Transcript
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Hi, I’m Allie, our AI powered, training personality.
The most powerful advantage you can give your business is the power of text messaging. We all know, that nobody wants to be on the phone anymore. We all prefer to text. And when it comes to marketing for your business, the statistics are clear – SMS messaging outperforms email, every time! The problem is, that most small businesses still don’t have a way to communicate with their prospects and customers via text messaging. In this video, however, we’re going to change that, and get you texting with your prospects and customers right away. Step number one, is to purchase and set up a new number.
In the left-hand sidebar, we’ll navigate to the bottom and click on settings, and then we’ll click on phone numbers. Here’s where we can purchase a new number. Go ahead and click add number, choose your country, and then enter the desired area code, select a number that looks good to you and hit save. There we go – you now have your new number right here, but check this out: Currently there’s no forwarding number set – meaning if somebody calls this new number, it’s not going to forward and ring anywhere. Here’s a quick fix. First, click the pencil icon. Then, give your new number a name, like “Main Marketing Number”. Once you’ve named this number, you can set the number to which inbound calls will forward. Note, this forwarding number should be your main business number.Why? Because by using your main number, you’re going to ensure that some other cool features, like missed call text back, work correctly.
Next, we have a checkbox, where we can enable what gets passed along, to Caller ID. If we leave this box un-checked, the phone number of whoever is calling, gets passed along, to show in Caller Id. If we check this box, however, the system will pass the number we just purchased as the Caller ID number, which can be helpful as you’ll always know you’re about to answer a call from this account. Next we have another checkbox that enables us to activate or deactivate the Call-Connect feature. If this box is not checked, incoming calls will function as normal so that when you answer, the call immediately connects. If we check this box, however, you’ll hear a whisper message prompting you to push a button on your phone to accept the incoming call.
Now, you might be thinking “why would I want to do that?”- here’s why: Throughout the platform, we have the ability to automate off call statuses such as connected verses not connected, which enables us to do powerful things like automatically send a text message back to any inbound calls that go unanswered. We call that the Missed-Call Text-Back, which we’ll learn how to set up shortly. However, in order to do cool automations like that, the system needs to know if a call connected or not, and often times it can get confused, and think that a voicemail recording is actually a person. When that happens, the call is categorized as connected even though it really didn’t.
We can eliminate the possibility of confusion though, with this checkbox. If the receiver of the inbound call always has to press a key to connect, the system always knows whether or not a call was actually answered, which is why we recommend turning this on. The next field is the Whisper Message field, where we can control, the message that is played to the person who answers the call when the Call-Connect features are enabled. So we would put something like “Marketing call” so that you know you’re about to hop on a call from the system and that you need to press a key to connect.
Next, we have the ability to turn on call recording, which is incredibly powerful as not only will the system record calls but it will also publish the recording right into the conversation stream, of each contact, along with all the emails, text messages, Facebook messages, Instagram DM and more! If you turn this on, please be aware that most privacy laws require that you enter a whisper message that says something like “this call will be recorded for quality purposes” so that the caller is aware.
The last two settings are for time-outs, meaning; after how many seconds of ringing should a call be automatically dropped? Why would we want to cut a call short? Well, there are several scenarios such as maybe the redirect number you entered is your personal cell phone number and you don’t want new leads to hear your personal voicemail recording. You could set the inbound time out to something like 4 seconds, which would ensure that a call can never ring long enough, to hit your real voicemail. Or maybe you just want to send all inbound calls, straight to voicemail. In that case, we can set the inbound to 1 second, then hit update, then head to the Business Info tab and upload an mp3 file of the voicemail message, we want people to hear. You’ll probably want to leave the outbound time out empty so that any outbound calls you make ring like normal. Alright! now that you have a new number all set up, you’re ready to test it out!
From your phone, send a text message to your new number. For example, I’m sending myself a text that says “Hello there”. After you’ve sent the message, click the go back button in the left-hand column and then click conversations. You should see your reply sitting here in the unread column – click the reply, and it’ll open up the conversation stream. On the right-hand side, you’ve got the contact details. Notice how even though you don’t yet know this contact’s name or email address, a new contact was still created in the system via the phone number.
Congratulations, you’ve just text-enabled your small business, and now you can easily communicate with your customers and prospects. You can use this new number on your website and your marketing materials to show potential customers that your business is forward-thinking and ready to communicate via the most modern and preferred communication channel! Now that you’ve successfully enabled text messaging for your business, we’re going to learn about our next easy win – go ahead and dive into our next lesson, now!