Google are going to do more and more of this kind of linking to the mobile phone, because they know that customers will use it. No doubt they will move to other alert types. For the enterprise, it will actually turn into a challenge. Think about it. If every one starts to get their SMS alert from Google, then you lose your opportunity to hook the customer back into a customer service conversation in order to manage their expectations. SMS alerts via Twitter API will also enable this kind of alerting. It would seem the time has come to really think about closing the interaction loop so that what I get alerted about, is actionable.

Flying high with Google SMS
from Official Google Blog by Molly Graham
Posted by Deepak Sethi, Software Engineer, Mobile Team

Ever spent 15 minutes on the phone shouting answers at the automated airline attendant while rushing to the airport? How cool would it be to get real-time flight info just by sending a quick text message? Well, now you can, using Google SMS.

Simply text your flight number to 466453 (‘GOOGLE’ on most mobile devices), and the status information will be sent back to you. Or text a specific airline name, and Google will send back the main phone number to call.

Google SMS is available for flights departing or arriving in the U.S., and all of the information is provided by flightstats.com. And as always, it’s free. Give it a try, and let us know what you think.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Explore Tags: alerting, google IM, Phone Alerts, sms

We’ve all been at meetings where people are checking sms/text messages, emails, even their voicemail. But how do you feel about that? Personally, during a meeting I think its pretty ok to check an sms, but not to take or initiate a phone call. Paul Kedrosky over at Infinite Greed quotes the WSJ survey of people’s feelings about checking email during business meetings. It would seem from that graph that Talk-Now from iotum is addressing a real pain. The underlying thinking here being that both sides of the communication must come to some kind of an agreement about the context in which they want to be called.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Explore Tags: communication, email, interaction, meetings, sms, talk-now, voicesage ioutum

Ken Thompson of Bioteam’s and Swarm-it fame as been interviewed by Robert Scoble for his podcast show. Ken has a really interesting way of looking at how Text messaging can help development teams keep in touch, and also how it could be used to support social networking activity. Its a very interesting concept, and it will be interesting to see how Ken’s concepts get adopted out there in the world.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Explore Tags: communications 2.0, sms, text messaging