Remember the time when, in order to text someone, you had to push the same button on your mobile phone up to 3-4 times to get that ONE letter you wanted?!
Well, we’ve come a long way since then! From smartphone touchscreens to predictive texting to speech-to-text, texting isn’t going anywhere. That begs the question: Is your business also using this ever-present communication feature?
If your hosted VoIP or UCaaS provider offers SMS and MMS capabilities and you're not using it, you're missing out on new sales, customer satisfaction boosts, and much more. Here's why VoIP SMS is essential for business communication and how you can use this feature with an OnSIP account.
Simply put, it's the ability to send and receive text messages directly through your business VoIP phone system. Instead of texting from your personal cell phone or managing a separate SMS platform, you can send texts using your business phone number—the same one customers already call.
The ‘hosted’ part means everything runs in the cloud. No additional hardware to buy, no complicated setup, and you can send and receive messages from your computer, laptop, softphone app, or web browser.
SMS stands for Short Message Service, is plain text only, and has a limit of 160 characters. MMS, on the other hand, is short for Multimedia Messaging Service and allows you to send various forms of content that include pictures, emojis, documents, and audio or video files. MMS does not have a character limit.
Customer convenience. Some interactions don't need a phone call. Appointment confirmations, quick questions about holiday hours, order status updates—these are perfect for text. When customers can text your business number instead of calling, they get answers on their schedule, not just during the coverage window when they can make a call.
Your team becomes more efficient. A receptionist can handle multiple text conversations simultaneously while also answering phone calls. Text messaging adds a communication channel that doesn't monopolize someone's attention, helping your team get more done without feeling overwhelmed.
You maintain professionalism. If employees use personal phones to text customers, you lose visibility. Messages disappear when employees leave, there's no oversight, and professional boundaries are blurred. Hosted VoIP SMS keeps everything on the business line with proper documentation and management oversight.
Follow-ups become effortless. After a sales call, send a quick text thanking them and recapping next steps. After a service appointment, text a satisfaction survey. These small touches significantly impact customer experience, and they take seconds instead of minutes.
OnSIP Hosted VoIP offers SMS and MMS messaging to our customers as part of our suite of calling, collaboration, and conferencing features. The feature is built into the OnSIP desktop and web apps, so you can seamlessly navigate between answering calls, sending/receiving texts, listening to voicemails, and more, in one centralized and streamlined user dashboard.
You can select which of your existing business phone numbers that you want to be text-enabled, and both toll and toll-free numbers can be used for texting purposes.
You can also assign multiple users to the same phone number that is text-enabled. This will create a shared inbox in the Admin Portal that lets multiple employees respond to and collaborate on SMS and MMS conversations.
Core SMS features include:
Core MMS features include:
And administrative functions for the texting feature include:
You’ll have to register your brand and campaign ahead of time with The Campaign Registry to ensure compliance with regulations and improve campaign deliverability. It’s easy to get up and running because we’re here to guide you through the process with a helpful setup wizard in the OnSIP app.
For more information on OnSIP business SMS and MMS, please see the informative guides and step-by-step setup instructions found in our Knowledgebase. Happy texting!