Twilio is a good option if you don't mind paying, although I'm not sure how it would handle the non-response/escalation requirement. That would have to be managed by a program somewhere else. You pay for every call, message, etc and you do need some minor development skills to make it do what you want. YAs Forrest says, people do build whole call centers out of it, but that would get complex and pricey. They also have a unified product called flex that is very feature rich, but also a bit expensive. For less than you are paying twilio to do all that, you could easily spin up a VM at any hosting provider with free PBX, add a trunk line, and configure some scripts to manage the response time/escalation. I also like and use Google Voice and think it might be able to do 90% of what you need. I have used both Twilio and use Google Voice as well. I know you don't care much for the big billing platforms out there, but many have some great communication features now. For instance, Visp now has a messaging center that works through SMS, FB, What's App, and is adding more. It can handles incoming messages from customers and auto reply, open a ticket, chat with sales or support, etc. The SMS part works through Twilio. I'm sure Sonar and Powercode, etc will have something similar if they don't already. Lot's of options, but most require time or money or both.
On Fri, Feb 11, 2022 at 7:25 AM Chuck McCown via AF <[email protected]> wrote: > I am going to check it out. > > Sent from my iPhone > > On Feb 11, 2022, at 4:51 AM, Forrest Christian (List Account) < > [email protected]> wrote: > > > A bit more detail. > > If you need more flexibility than Google voice, Twilio is a provider which > has a whole crap ton of products dealing with telephony. > > More importantly for your situation they permit one to build a serverless > application to handle your incoming calls and SMS. So you can say "when > you receive a SMS, forward it onto these 6 cell phones and 4 email > addresses" > > The functionality is so complete that people build entire call centers > including hold queues, time on hold estimates, round Robin queues and so > on. > > The erector set comment I made refers to the fact that they give you the > tools, and docs and expect you to put them together to do what you want. > In your case, I'd expect twiML being "hosted" in twiML bins might have > enough functionality. > > On Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 6:35 PM Forrest Christian (List Account) < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> Twilio will do exactly what you need. The gotcha is that it is a bit of >> an erector set. >> >> On Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 4:25 PM Chuck McCown via AF <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> >>> Today, while doing some power wiring in the C.O. we shorted the battery >>> and blew the battery disconnect circuit breaker. >>> They guy doing it did not know that circuit breaker was behind a panel >>> in the rectifier shelf. If you didn’t know how to open the fancy door that >>> looks like a rectifier module you would have never found it. Took me a few >>> minutes to remember there were circuit breakers in there. >>> >>> So everything was down for some time. Customers wanted to know how to >>> contact us in the event our office phones were down (which they were). >>> >>> I would like to have a number they could text that would then forward >>> that text to all of us that are involved in tech support. I googled sms >>> forwarding but am not really seeing what I am looking for. >>> >>> Ideas? >>> An old fashioned call answering service would be nice if they still >>> exist. Lots of younger folks prefer texting though. >>> -- >>> AF mailing list >>> [email protected] >>> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com >>> >> -- > AF mailing list > [email protected] > http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com >
-- AF mailing list [email protected] http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
