I was happy to address my BNI Chapter with an extended presentation on SmartNote and the type of customers we are looking for. In short - I encouraged the group to ask people they deal with to ‘text me the details’. Texting customers details is a great customer service measure and one that many of our customers are getting kudos for. At the end of the presentation I received an unexpected testimonial. Aidan Kerin of Connolly Gaw told a little story about how he generated €20,000 worth of sales commission by simply texting his existing customers about ways he could offer to reinvest their SSIA’s.

Performance Upgrades

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The volume of messages flowing through the SmartNote platform has dramatically increased over the past couple of months. With greater volumes - it has been necessary to ramp up our capacity and fallback solutions. We have implemented a number of software and hardware upgrades recently to ensure quality of service in delivery.

According to SMS Text news and Comreg we seem to prefer to text rather than talk here in Ireland.

The ComReg report, entitled ComReg Trends Survey Wave1, found that the average mobile user make five calls a day but sends seven text messages. Unsurprisingly, younger users are more prone to sending texts with the report finding that those in the 15-24 age group were the most prolific senders of text messages, averaging over eight per day. Men appear to be more talkative than women, based on the survey’s findings, as their average of six voice calls per day is higher than their female counterparts.

For membership organisations, keeping people up to date is something that used to involve paper-cuts and trips to the post office. Now you can do it all from the comfort of your office chair. The IMO are the latest such member organisation to sign up to SmartNote for keeping members better informed. After previously using a competitive offering and finding the quality of delivery to be lacking, we are now happy to welcome them onboard as customers.

Almost. Doctors in Islington say using text messaging is six times more effective than traditional ways of contacting patients to get them to stop smoking. Surgeries using the iPLATO SMS system have reported patient response rates of 30% (against 5% using letters) for messages asking patients to text back their current smoking status – those who indicate that they are still smokers and trying to quit are then invited to stop-smoking clinics.. Read the full story here

This is a truly fantastic use for text messaging. Something I would love to get involved with here in Ireland. This has to be one of those ‘why didn’t I think of that’ stories.

No, I’m not talking about a shotgun under the pillow. Clickatell have partnered an insurance company to provide R60,000 (about €6,000) worth of cover by subscribing to a premium rate texting service. While scandal stil surrounds premium rate lines in Europe, this is an innovative method of providing insurance without the associated form-filling and stamp licking.

CEO of Cover2go Derek Pead explains:

“Every day, a large majority of South Africans have to board minibus taxis, many of which are notoriously unsafe. For people travelling over the most dangerous periods such as the Easter weekend, the risk to the wellbeing of their families is very real – 276 people died this past Easter holiday. Unfortunately, the common perception is that life assurance is a luxury that’s unaffordable and complicated to obtain. With Cover2go, people can get basic cover instantly, at very affordable prices, when they need it most”

Poor customer service isn’t something that is limited to Dublin - as a recent trip to Madrid proved - but it is certainly a hot topic. If you are running a business, the sheer volume of work to be done can squeeze out some of the basics. Even here at SmartNote - I should be the first to admit that we can do more to look after the people who are putting dinner on the table. A couple of our clients who inspire me to look at how we can provide better customer service. Of course- I get to see how they do this using text messaging - so I thought I deliver some tips for better customer service using text messaging.

Before I do though - its worth mentioning that the immediate association many people have with text messages is unwanted or nuisance messages. If you have had one of these -you might want to check out where they have come from. Messages from SmartNote have a note at the end indicating where they have come - so you can be sure that if you do receive a nuisance message from a SmartNote client - we can move quickly to rectify the situation.

So lets get on with some best practice examples of how to use texting for better customer service.

• Gym assesments: Ever joined a gym, signed up for an assesment and wandered off into the great blue yonder never to let a sweat band mop your brow again? Well gyms in Dublin are using SmatNote to remind clients when they are due to revisit their gym assesment. Making groups of people, or scheduling messages into the future makes it easy for staff to schedule a follow up text at the time the initial consultantion takes place.
• Accocuntancy Firms: From the very start, some of our accountancy clients have been delighting those attending meetings at the office by sending out an appointment reminder. Ever time I meet up the the principal partner, he tells me what a good first impression the reminder text makes on his clients. It also reduces the number of missed appointments. We also have estate agents, holistic healing centers and personal trainors.
• Insurance companies: following up an insurance quote over the phone, by sending through a confirmation of the details by text is a super-handy way of making sure prospective clients have your details to hand. It makes it easier for clients to get back in touch.

Before I started this post - I actually didn’t realise how many ways there were to improve customer service by text. I think I will have to reserve some more tips for a future post.

In the nineties it was sheek to be a geek. Now you’ve got to be blogging, feeding, posting and generating to hang with the cool kids. If that doesn’t make sense to you - don’t worry. SmartNote has been brushing up on its web2.0 credentials but hasn’t stopped being the easiest way for you to keep in touch with clients and staff by text message. Since we were last in touch by newsletter we have completely repositioned our products. You can read all about our exploits for yourself at our new blog.

Business Text is our award winning solution for the modern business - allowing you to remind people of appointments, keep a log of all your office bound messages and now includes great 2-way support.

Grouptext has gone from strength to strength. Clubs, retail outlets and even social groups has cottened on to this easy way to keep your group in the loop. Send a text to 10 - 10,000 clients or close personal friends right from your desk.

Net2Rep is our coolest new tool - allowing you to literally quadrouple the ROI you get from your website.

Read on through our blog for news and offers. Better still - get in touch.

At last nights ICES Group meeting, Eamonn Fallon, co-founder of daft.ie gave a brief history of his internet startup to a worried bunch of property investors. To describe them is probably not entirely accurate. The previous nights RTE interview on the state of the property market only served to wet the appetite of these seasoned developers at the thought of hordes of hysterical first-time buyers abandoning 2-bed semis in the suburbs in wholesale proportions.

There were a couple of things that really stood out in the tale he told. The first, and probably scariest, was the six years of loss making daft wracked up before turning a profit. At the time, Eamonn and his brother Brian were working from their respective bedrooms. Their story has been told before . Their single-minded determination to become a media company, competing with newspapers such as the The Herland is claimed by Fallon as the key reason for their success. There had been many opportunities to divert into website development as they pioneered their way across cyberspace in the last 90’s.

Another key success factor is their ‘three month rule’, claiming that DAFT will introduce a truely innovative feature every three months. Sited examples included the mortgage repayment calculator beside each ad and email alerts on new properties as they became available. Innovation as a competitive advantage is something that isn’t often touted. From SmartNote’s perspective it was nice to hear that they were able to use this tactic to see of competitors who were plentiful - but are no longer around.

Eamonn also recounted how a mate had been looking for a car parking space in the city centre, and had set up a email alert accordingly. Picking up the mail on his Blackberry - he was able to respond within seconds of a new ad going up. I couldn’t help think of net2rep.

Find yourself repeatedly checking your RSS feeds during the day? Involved in a firey blog exchange with rival bloggers? Can’t stand missing out on new blogosphere posts? Well - you needn’t worry about not being right on top of the SmartNote blog. You can now text ’smartblog’ (although we don’t guarantee the smartness of the content) to 087 1212 850 to receive a text message notification of new blog posts to SmartNote.

We’ve done this using a SmartNote account and is something we talked about some time ago. Its about time we practiced what we preach and show you a demo.

I have been a big fan of Venturecast, a tech venture capital podcast run by Grunt Media and one of the partners at August Capital. The two presenters are very entertaining and bring you up to date with what is happening in the ’social media’ space in a very down to earth kind of way. I mention it here because in the last edition they have been talking about twitter.com. Twitter allows you to let your friends what your upto by updating your ‘what I’m doing now’ status. Its a fun service and was all the rage at the recent South by South West event.

As part of the service you can send a text message updating your status. I tried it out and it works well. The only trouble is that you need to send text messages to a UK phone number to update your status. As an offering up to the greater good, SmartNote is now offering an Irish interface to the same service. To take advantage sign up and use the promotion code ‘twitter’ to claim some free messages allowing you to update your twitter account.