As we all know, SMS messaging is a powerful way to deliver the personal touch that sets you and your business apart from your competition.

So what are the key areas buyers are exploring today? Here’s what we learned at Dreamforce ’19.

SMS for Salesforce Key Interest Areas

SMS Compliance

One of the top questions at Dreamforce this year was ‘How to effectively manage SMS for Salesforce compliance?’

Compliance can feel complicated. The differences in global legal and carrier regulations and requirements are so varied. And the potential risk is high for many business customers that are evaluating effective SMS messaging options.

That’s why we created our Compliance Kit, a series of three guides that explain how SMS for Salesforce  works (carrier side), global regulations (legal aspects) and a Buyers’ Guide that offers recommendations on best practices and questions you should be asking. It’s a great way to jumpstart your compliance knowledge. Our gift to you, just click here to download.

We also recently released Converse Compliance, a powerful GDPR compliant solution that’s integrated within Converse. Clickable Wizards guide you to configure compliance based on your specific requirements. You’ll easily manage opt-ins using a consent matrix, track a full 360˚ conversation and audit history, manage opt-outs and assure that you meet your local regulations, including TCPA, CASL, CCPA and more.

If you’d like to know more about compliance, please reach out to us. Our compliance experts are here to answer any and all questions you might have.

How to Deliver a Personal Touch Across the Buying Journey

One of the challenges for most SMS for Salesforce solutions is that there seems to be no way to see the full history of messaging conversations across the buying journey.

• When a Lead interacts with marketing, those messages are available in the record.
• When the lead is transformed to an Opportunity – those messages are no longer available and reps can’t see prior conversations to gather a context for the opportunity’s needs. They start all over again defining and refining what’s relevant to the opportunity. That’s not exactly a personal touch.
• When the Opportunity becomes a Contact and Account, the previous messages are locked in the Opportunity object. Service reps and account managers can’t review the previous conversations to know what was promised, find potential opportunities for upsell, or review what was discussed to accelerate service resolutions.

The problem is that you’ve prevented your reps from providing the personal touch that makes your audience feel special.

Can you imagine how strongly you could differentiate your business with full-context messaging that assures your reps are always relevant?

That’s why we created Full-Context Conversations within Converse. You get a 360̊ history of every interaction between anyone in your company and that record,

• Conversations are aggregated across standard and custom Salesforce objects.
• Individual conversations are threaded to include inbound, automated and 1:1 messages in the same thread, on the same topic.
• Related conversations with that same record, whether they be marketing, sales, service or others are all available within the record for a quick review.
• Unlike the transactional nature of other SMS for Salesforce solutions, every message with Converse remains constantly available to all permissioned users. So you always have the full-context of the account.

Learn more about Full Context Conversational Messaging here.

What is Native SMS for Salesforce?

So many people claim that their solution is “native” but what does that really mean? Well, it depends. Most who claim “native” are actually claiming to use the basic APIs of Salesforce. That’s a great start. But there’s much more to being a native on Salesforce.

• Data management: SMS data should be stored seamlessly within Salesforce, managed and protected via Salesforce permissions and data tools. No one wants to manage multiple databases, and you shouldn’t.
• Object integrations: Native solutions should work with standard and custom objects. They should be able to auto propagate all object information, and any informational objects within that object. Conversations should be seamless across all objects to empower full-context conversations that are always available.
• Configuration and integration: Should be guided by simple wizards that eliminate the need to write unwieldy scripts and code just to install your solution. Wizards should auto generate components for Salesforce, including all SMS messaging integration and setup.
• Seamless Desks and Inboxes: User interfaces should offer a variety of options to match different users’ needs. There should be a single component that can be dynamically configured, via Wizard, and then easily dropped into Salesforce consoles. You should be  able to select which style of Inbox or desk you want for each user, console type etc.
• Omnichannel and routing: Routing SMS messages is no different than routing phone calls. Or, at least, it shouldn’t be. Messaging solutions need to seamlessly integrate with current Omnichannel routing rules. Also, a complete messaging solution will seamlessly integrate all messaging channels for your users and buyers. No one cares whether a message was sent via SMS, MMS, Facebook or Whats App. Messages from all should be aggregated, threaded and displayed as a single, full-context conversation, regardless of the underlying channel.
• Process Builder and Workflows. While we all know the potential problems with Process Builders, support for this sophisticated tool is key to any native Salesforce integration. Automated messaging is a critical aspect of any messaging strategy. You get better profiling information  and therefore improve your personal touch. You dramatically reduce the amount of time spent on tedious tasks, so your teams focus on your audience, not your technology. The opportunities with automated campaigns and auto-reponses alone are limitless.

If you want to learn more about native Salesforce capabilities, click here.

The Bottom Line

The key areas buyers are exploring today for SMS messaging revolve around compliance, delivering a personal touch and using SMS with Salesforce.

By choosing a solution that ensures compliance and is native on Salesforce, you can begin to deliver the personal touch that sets you and your business apart from your competition. And with Full Context Conversational Messaging you’ll give your reps every opportunity to ensure excellent customer buying experiences.

If you haven’t yet adopted business text messaging for your team and want to learn more, schedule a demo and we’d be happy to share our expertise with you, answer questions and show you what text messaging can do for your business results.