SMS Chat

Syntelate XA’s SMS chat functionality lets customers communicate with an agent via an exchange of SMS text messages.

An SMS chat begins when a customer texts a phone number that is monitored by Syntelate XA.

For agents, SMS chats take place in Syntelate XA. Agents’ messages are sent as SMS messages from the company’s monitored phone number.

EXAMPLE

Customers can contact Inisoft Travel by sending SMS text messages from their cell phone.

Emily has an inquiry, so on her cell phone she sends the following message to Inisoft Travel: Hi, is my flight tomorrow from terminal 1 or terminal 2?

For Jack, an agent, the SMS chat opens in Syntelate XA.

Because Emily’s phone number matches an existing customer record, her details are automatically shown. Jack looks into Emily’s record to find information about her next flight and then types his response. This response is sent back to Emily via SMS.

Any further messages sent by Emily appear on Jack’s desktop in the same SMS chat.

Features

Some of the key features of SMS chat are described below.

Rewriter

Agents can use Rewriter to improve their email and chat messages. Rewriter is an AI-powered assistant in Syntelate XA that:

Analyzes the agent's written content,
Corrects any spelling, grammatical, and punctuation errors,
Rewrites it in a formal style,
And presents the agent with suggested replacements.

Configuration

If you add Rewriter to one of your channels, Inisoft Support will configure it for you.

When it is implemented, you have the ability to control whether Rewriter is on or off. You can switch Rewriter on and off using the AIRewrite setting in the GENERAL table.

Availability

The AI features in Syntelate XA are powered by the Azure OpenAI API and are available individually as add-ons. See Channels for more information.

Agent Experience

See Using Rewriter to understand how it works in practice for agents.

Smart Text

Smart text is text that an agent can quickly insert into a chat, for example Hi, [CONTACT.FORENAME]. I can help you with that.

Smart text can include references to data. For example, when an agent sends the above smart text, [CONTACT.FORENAME] would be replaced with the customer’s first name: Hi, Emily. I can help you with that.

Phone Numbers

You can monitor multiple phone numbers and associate each phone number with a different agent group. You can then direct customers to text a particular phone number for a particular type of query. For example:

Query Type	Phone Number
Personal Travel	07700900050
Business Travel	07700900060

Handle Multiple Chats

Agents can handle multiple chats at a time — you can choose how many. This can even be a mix of SMS, web, and social media chats.

SMS Chat vs Outbound SMS

Syntelate XA offers two types of SMS functionality.

SMS Chat

Allows back-and-forth chat between an agent and a customer via SMS. Initiated by the customer sending an SMS.

Outbound SMS

Allows outbound communication to the customer, either by automated communication or by the agent manually sending a message.

For more information about outbound SMS, see Outbound SMS.

SMS Costs

Syntelate XA integrates with third-party APIs for SMS chat, which means that you need to open an account with a third-party SMS provider to implement SMS chat. Check with your chosen provider to find out their costs for sending and receiving SMS.

Settings

Various general settings are relevant to SMS chat. See the GENERAL database table.

In particular, you must set the PhoneNumberMatching general setting with the telephone dialing prefixes that Syntelate XA should take into account for phone number matching.

EXAMPLE

Emily’s cell phone number is 07700900001. Emily lives in the United Kingdom, where the country calling code is +44.

For the PhoneNumberMatching general setting, Inisoft Travel have specified 44,+44.

This setting ensures that when Emily gets in touch by SMS, Syntelate XA can match her phone number against the number in Emily’s contact record. In other words, Syntelate XA would consider +447700900001 and 07700900001 to be a match.

Some advanced configuration options for SMS chat are held in App Settings files.

More Information

Section	Description
Handling Chats	Explains how chat (which includes web chat, SMS chat, and social media chat) works from an agent’s point of view.
Designer	Explains how to design desktops for your agents. To let your agents handle chats, add a Chat control to the desktop.
Message Gateways Configuration	Explains how to configure the phone numbers that you monitor and that agents can use to send texts.
Smart Text Editor	Explains how to configure smart text for chat.