SMS Channel

Owned by XCALLY Knowledge (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Jul 08, 2024 by Product Knowledge
4 min read

The SMS Channel Section shows all the interactions managed by the Agents and coming from Short Message Service systems.

The SMS Channel allows you to define the SMS Accounts that the Agents, belonging to specific SMS Queues, will share and use to send and receive SMS messages in the standard XCALLY Motion Omni Desktop Interface.

The XCALLY Motion SMS Channel provides some ready-to-use interfaces towards Short Message Service Providers (like Twilio) but the System Administrator can very easily configure new ones. 

SMS benefits

The Customer and the Agent can exchange SMS messages, reaping the following benefits:

  • the Customer can use market standard SMS systems

  • the Agent interaction happens inside the XCALLY Motion common environment

  • the Agent can manage several types of interactions at the same time

  • the interaction content is shared, easily retrieved and managed

  • all the Customers information is stored in the Contacts Manager 

 

Whenever customers interact with the Contact Center using SMS system, the Agents belonging to the specific sms channel queue will receive a request on the Omni Desktop interface.

They can reject it and the request is passed to another Agent in the same queue (in this case Sales). 

The interaction starts when one agent  accepts it: all the others will be notified that the interaction has already been taken by somebody else.

If your Agent Desktop is running on MAC with OS High Sierra and using the Browser Safari, remember to enable the audio notifications in Safari in order to receive an audio alert for all incoming interactions

SMS Session

Let's see how a typical SMS session looks like:

On the Agent's side, anytime a message is sent:

a single checkmark means that the system encountered a problem

a double checkmark means that the message has been delivered to the sms recipient

In order to reply to a SMS, the Agent can insert directly a text in the input box and press enter (or search a canned answer and send it).

 

Moreover every interaction presents, on the right side of the screen, contextual information that the agent can use (during the session or after it) to manage the interaction/customer with these tabs:

You can explore documentation about that on this page

 

The agent can also insert an internal note: explore here documentation about that.

 

Closing SMS session

If the Agent closes the session clicking on the X sign in the session tab:

and confirm:

The interaction can be simply Closed or Closed & Disposed.  You can explore documentation about dispositions on this page.

Moreover, if the Transfer option is set by the administrator in the Website Settings, the Agent can also see this command in the menu of 3 dots  in order to redirect the SMS interaction:

You can explore documentation about transfer on this page.

 

SMS Interactions

The list of the interactions managed by the Agents will be available on the SMS Channel Interactions view:

The down/up arrows near the Last message field indicate if the last message was incoming or outgoing.

You can filter the interaction list by: Start Date, Read/Unread, Status (Open/Closed), Account, Agent (the first one who managed it), Tags (multiple choice).

Moreover you can search interactions by search button (click here for documentation) or you can use advanced search (click here to read relative documentation).

The interaction can be:

  • Open 

  • Closed (by an Agent)

 

If you see a small number near the contact name, like in the following picture:

it means that new interactions have been received (but not managed) in the same conversation.

  • Clicking on the Interaction row, the agent is able to see all the messages exchanged in the single session, as well as the right side bar information (contact, interaction, journey).

  • Clicking on the three dots menu, the agent can apply the following commands to the selected interaction:
    - Show the interaction contents
    - Download a pdf transcript of the interaction (depending on Agent's permissions)
    - Close and (eventually) dispose the interaction.

 

Send a new SMS

In order to send a New SMS click on + button, choose the account (from the list of those available) from which to send it and then compose the message and recipient number:

The limitation for SMS attachment is 0.9MB

 

The recipient number must be:

  • internationally formatted number, if you use Twilio, Connectel, ClickSend or Plivo

  • internationally formatted number without +, if you use Skebby

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