Have you used text messaging and mobile alerts to communicate with your customers?

I have implemented SMS notifications to our customers. It has proven to be very useful in getting urgent information out to people who need to know. To keep it effective you need to ensure that only the people who need to know the information receive it and that you only use the SMS system for urgent messages.

I haven't used it myself - not currently in a business which needs it. However, I've seen it used by several clients in a number of ways. About the only commonality is that it's appreciated more when it's entirely an opt-in service.

Make it available, but don't automatically add clients to the SendTo list, and let them add and subtract themselves from the list(s) as they feel appropriate, whether by an automated interface or by contacting you (the company) directly and requesting the change.

We had implemented a SMS notification system for our Financial Services company. There were dual objectives in this implementation:
[1] For Recievables:
-Reminding customers for payment due dates and guiding them to make sure that their should not miss the deadline.
-Notification of successful payment recieved with reciept details or payment failures
[2] For New customer acquisition: Informing customers at every step of mortgage approval process.
-Notification of the current stage of the process
-Informing customers for any documentation needs which need to be done by them before the approval could move to the next step

How did we do it?
Stage I: Identification of the processes which could require SMS notifications
Stage II: Identifying specific process steps where a state change needs to be passed on to customers
Stage III: Configuring the SMS gateway and enlisting key details to be mentioned in the message strings like customer id, application id, due date, amount due etc...

Risks:
[1] Wrong notifications due to data inconsistency errors or wrong strings reduce the effectiveness of the solution. While the correct solution enhance customer experience, but it has to potential to frustrate customers with erroneous notifications or too many messages.

Enhancements:
[1] Integrating into the Loan and Recievables systems used for workflow based messaging
[2] Offering customers an option to customize on which messages they wish to be notified with

Results/Expectations:
[1] Cost Reduction in chasing customers in person who missed their payments due to unawareness of the deadlines. Also saving them the late payment charge
[2] Improving loan approval SLAs by pre informing customers with documentation details and also reducing anxiety of loan approvals by keeping them informed in every stage of the approval process

I have used it and I only use it when someone is doing a launch that I am promoting or when I'm launching my own products. Very useful.

We use SMS to update our members when a new Integration Sync App is being built or comes online. Our members have relayed to us they would like to be reminded via a short txt about a feature or product than an email they have to search for in the deluge of data in their inbox.

~Clint
@cazoomi

Text messaging or mobile alerts can be extremely beneficial for those customers who never answer their phones. For the business of collections, it can be a powerful tool if utilized properly.

Make sure that your customers are not charged for the text messages. This is VERY important. Also, that hard to reach person might just make contact upon receiving the alert.