Business Saves with SMS

According to a recent report in the Irish Times, mobile network O2 Ireland has said that the economic downturn has prompted a shift in mobile users' behaviour, with customers using less voice minutes, opting for text messaging instead. O2 customers sent 835 million texts in the final quarter of 2009 versus 738 million in the previous quarter, an increase of over 13%.

But its not just consumers who are realising that texting can save them money. Many businesses large and small are substituting expensive voice phone calls and letter post with SMS. Taking a straightforward comparison of the costs of SMS versus other forms of communication, estimated savings of up to €2.50 per communication can be realised by using SMS compared with the cost of making a call or posting a letter. Multiply this by the amount of notification calls or appointments letters that Irish and UK businesses send each month, which could be substituted with SMS, and the potential for widespread, significant cost savings are evident.

Many of Púca’s corporate customers have been able to re-engineer their business processes to incorporate SMS. For example, according to Simon Joly of UPC,  “the SMS solution from Púca replaces postal correspondence, which UPC previously had to send to the customers, and therefore greatly reduces our communications costs.” 

Call centre operations are amongst the key functional areas where the introduction of two-way SMS communication has helped drive efficiency. For example, Applus RTD, which operates the National Car Testing service in Ireland (NCT), handles over 500,000 test appointments each year. The company has integrated SMS with the booking and appointments process so that a significant proportion of appointments are now handled automatically through SMS. 

The immediacy and ‘cut-through’ capability of SMS leads to benefits beyond just the cost. For example, many companies are using SMS to send overdue payment reminders with obvious benefits in the current climate.

The extreme weather conditions last winter in Ireland and the UK illustrated the importance of speedy and reliable communication in times of crisis. Many of Púca’s clients were able to send important information to their customers and staff using our SMS platform. One example is waste disposal and recycling company AES who were able to send notification of changing bin collection times due to the adverse weather conditions.

Whilst much of the hype in the mobile industry is currently around iPhone and other smart phone applications, the simplicity, convenience and massive reach of SMS means it is unlikely to be displaced for some time yet. In fact, according to global research and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan,  text messaging will continue its dominance in the messaging arena for the foreseeable future and will evolve with the layering of extra functionality, such as contextual presence, location information, and integration as part of a converged messaging application.