SMS

What SMS is used for

SMS is the quiet channel that solves the cases the others cannot. It does three jobs in Zuzana, and most teams end up using all three.

• Customers texting you 💬 An inbound text becomes a ticket like any other message, on the same board, with the AI working it under your normal rules.
• Answering voicemail 📞 A transcribed voicemail can be answered by the AI as a text to the number that called, so the customer has a real answer before anyone listens to the recording. See Phone.
• Reaching a third party 🔀 A driver, a shop, a warehouse. People who answer a text in minutes and an email in days. See Side Conversations.

Switching it on

Go to Settings → SMS and turn on Enable SMS. Then give each market a sender number: the number your texts go out from, and the one customers can reply to.

Numbers come from us, the same way phone numbers do. A market without a sending number cannot send, which is the usual reason an otherwise correct voicemail or side conversation silently does nothing.

Note: Use a local number per market. A Danish customer receiving a text from a foreign number reads it as a scam, and in several countries a local number is what makes delivery reliable in the first place.

Signature

SMS has its own signature, separate from email, because 160 characters do not have room for a job title and a logo. It takes the same merge tags: {{agentName}}, {{agentAlias}}, {{agentJobTitle}} and {{teamName}}, and it is translatable per language.

Keep it to a name and your company. Anything longer eats the message.

Text is not short email

The channel changes what a good reply looks like, and it is worth saying out loud to your team.

• Length costs money and attention ✂️ A long text is split into several messages on the customer's phone. Answer the question, then stop.
• No formatting 📵 No bold, no links that look like words, no attachments. Write a sentence someone can act on without tapping anything.
• Replies come back fast ⚡ People answer a text within minutes, often while walking. Expect a conversation rather than a single exchange.
• The number is the identity 📱 Anyone with the phone can read it. Be careful what order or account detail you put in a text, the same way you would with a postcard.

Good habits

Say who you are in the first message. An unexpected text from an unknown number is deleted. "Hi, this is [company] about your order 12345" is not.

Keep it to one question. Two questions in one text reliably get one answer, and you have to text again anyway.

Do not use it for marketing. Support numbers that send offers get reported, and once a number is flagged, your genuine service messages stop arriving too.