Text Request Lets Consumers Text in Real Time With Their Favorite Businesses
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn., Jan. 12, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- A Chattanooga-based start-up is revolutionizing customer service care with a proprietary platform designed to provide real-time customer-to-business communication.
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Text Request lets consumers text their favorite businesses, just as they text friends and family. The company is fulfilling its mission of opening the lines of communication via texting by allowing the public to use standard text messaging to share and receive information from hotels, salons, schools, security, medical offices, places of worship, entertainment spots and more. Text Request allows for two-way communication between consumer and businesses, just like a phone call.
A Pew Research Center study cites that 33 percent of adult Americans prefer texting to all other forms of communication and that 95 percent of Americans under the age of 18 are active texters. This trend is expected to continue to grow rapidly as cell phone culture transitions from call-based to short form text-based communication. Businesses can take this data as a sign that text culture is shifting to the consumer world as well.
"These days people don't want to make calls or send emails," said Brian Elrod, the company's co-founder. "Text Request is easy, fast and at their fingertips—and that makes customers happy."
There are no apps to download. Consumers simply use a special standard phone number assigned to each businesses to text their communications. Businesses and organizations can even respond in real time to messages received through the Text Request platform. It takes a business 60 seconds to sign up, get a number and get to access dashboard. Incoming texts can be managed from any Internet-connected device.
Text Request is not a mass texting or SMS marketing tool and users will never receive unsolicited messages from Text Request nor the businesses they choose to communicate with. Additionally, other than standard text messaging rates from their cell phone provider, Text Request is completely free to consumers.
Text Request was conceptualized by Elrod, along with cofounder and technologist Rob Reagan after noticing the need for a fast, simple way to communicate with businesses. The business partners said they first devised the idea after discussing Elrod and his wife's visit to a busy restaurant during which they thought, "we wish we could just text our server."
In the months since, they have built a development and marketing team, as well as proprietary technology that interfaces with all text messaging systems, pulling and pushing content with a powerful, robust, easy-to-use, business system.
"Our business platform uses custom-designed technology to put our users in control of communications with their customers," said Reagan. "With our tool, businesses can handle ten times as many incoming texts as calls in the same amount of time."
The custom platform provides a collection point for businesses to manage the incoming communications from customers. The platform allows businesses to collect, synthesize and respond to incoming customer messages.
The company rolled out a beta launch in summer of 2014 with a diverse set of initial customers within a variety of consumer segments including hospitality, education, places of worship and food and beverage.
These beta test users and others have encouraged their customers to contact them through the Text Request platform and have reported growing satisfaction with the tool.
"More and more of our guests are beginning to prefer texting the front desk instead of calling," said Andrew Arnold, front desk customer service specialist at the Springhill Suites Marriott, one of the initial beta customers. "The value to our customers comes in the simplicity of the service from their perspective, coupled with the ease of accommodation and efficiency from the business's perspective."
Text Request is currently expanding nationally and is performing additional testing in various markets across the country.
Those interested in learning more can visit textrequest.com to see how it works for free or attend a daily webinar. Scalable pricing plans are available to meet every size business.
About Text Request:
Customers know what they want, when they want it. Text Request is a comprehensive management system for customer interactions that allows consumers to connect with their favorite businesses through direct text messaging. To learn more, visit textrequest.com and connect with Text Request through Facebook and Twitter.
CONTACT: James Dawson
Text Us at: 423-218-0111
Email
SOURCE Text Request
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