Cost Structure
SMS Messages are sent through Twilio by default (our built-in provider), or you can choose to buy a Flowroute account and send through your own account.
If you use the default setup, it "just works," and we include some SMS credits for you to use every month.
You get 200 SMS messages per month. This is subject to change without notice based on pricing and availability!
If you go over, or want to buy more credits, head to Admin > Buy Credits/Add-Ons page inside your account to buy more. We sell add-on packages of 2,500 credits for our cost.
What Sends and When
If SMS is ENABLED for a customer, they will get these messages:
If SMS is enabled, the Initial Problem SMS will be sent upon ticket creation.
In addition, your customer will receive the custom SMS messages your write in the ticket update box:
SMS will not be enabled unless there is a phone number that is categorized as a "mobile" phone on the customer record.
Note that you do need to include the message in both the email and the SMS field for it to be sent in these cases.
If you'd like to customize the SMS messages sent with ticket update triggers, go to Admin > PDF/Email Templates > SMS Templates.
You can also customize SMS messages to only be sent out during business hours. You can set this up in your ticket settings by going to Admin > Tickets > Preferences. This is also explained here.
Important: Furthermore, if a customer has more than one open ticket at a time, we cannot guarantee that the SMS customer reply will attach to the proper ticket.
Note: Messages exceeding 144 characters can be sent to the Customer, though they will be split up by the system into multiple messages.
MMS Replies
A customer can reply to an SMS that's sent from a ticket with an image (and text) and that image will upload to the associated ticket as an attachment and a thumbnail on the Ticket Comment.
NOTE: This feature only supports images currently.
The attachment will affix to the Ticket and will be set as Public. This means that the image can be viewed on the Ticket in the Customer Portal by your client.
The Ticket Comment that is created will have a thumbnail of the image, the text, and will be a Public Comment (also visible on the ticket in the Customer Portal).