Replies by text
Customers text the business's number and the agent texts back. Short replies, one question at a time, drawn from the same knowledge base the phone agent uses. Early access.
Texting
Texts answered the way calls are.
A customer texts a business number and waits. The reply comes when somebody gets a minute, often the next day, and the photo of the problem they sent never gets looked at.
The texting agent is in early access. Text campaigns and the texting API are available now.
What the agent does
Short replies, one question at a time, from the same facts as the phone.
The same agent that answers the business line answers its texts, so a customer gets one answer whichever way they ask.
Reads a photo
A customer texts a photo of the error on their screen, the damaged delivery or the meter reading. The agent reads it and answers what it can see.
Hands over to a person
The moment somebody asks for a person, gets upset, or asks something the agent should not guess at, it stops. The whole thread is emailed and texted to the business and a lead is filed.
Text campaigns
An opening message, follow-ups to the people who did not reply, and a short conversation with each reply. Sends are spread evenly across the business's numbers, and a refused text is retried from another one.
Texting API
Plain texting for the client's own software: reminders, codes, dispatch notices. Replies are posted back to their software and opt-outs are handled by the platform. New Zealand and Australian numbers.
Its own number
A New Zealand mobile number for a New Zealand business, an Australian one for an Australian business, set up by the platform as part of onboarding, so two-way texting lands where it should.
Two things it does not do
- It cannot send a photo back.
- It does not book into a calendar or look up a CRM over text. Those are jobs for the phone agent, and the texting agent will offer a call instead of guessing.
How it goes for the customer
A text in, an answer back, a person when it matters.
- The customer texts the business's texting number. Any hour, any day. There is no office to be closed.
- The agent replies. A short answer, one question at a time, from the same knowledge the phone agent uses, so hours, services and service area come back the same by text as by voice.
- A photo comes through. The agent reads it and answers what it can see, or asks the one question it needs to.
- Somebody asks for a person. Or gets upset, or asks something that should not be guessed at. The agent hands over: the whole thread goes to the business by email and text, and a lead is filed with it.
- A campaign runs the other way. Opening message, follow-up to non-repliers, a short conversation with each reply. STOP ends it, and the opt-out is honoured permanently.
What the business gets
The whole thread, filed where the next person can find it.
Nothing lives only on a handset. Every handover arrives with its history attached.
- Every handover emailed and texted to the business with the whole thread, not just the last message.
- A lead filed in the leads list, with the text history for that number beside it.
- STOP honoured and counted, so the business can see how a campaign landed.
- Campaign replies answered in conversation, with the hot ones flagged for a person.
- Replies to API texts posted straight back to the client's own software, with opt-outs handled before they get there.
- Results into anything else through Zapier, the REST API and webhooks.
Sold through partners
Texting sits beside the phone agent in your catalogue
Text campaigns pair naturally with outgoing calls: the agent rings, texts the people it misses, and carries on by text. The texting API is a plain service for any client with their own software, on New Zealand and Australian numbers. Sold through partners: you set the price, Talkgate runs the platform. The texting agent itself is early access, so sell it that way: a pilot for the clients who want it, described plainly as early access until it is not. See the partner programme.
Works with
Plugs into the client's own software.
One API, one token with ticked abilities, with an OpenAPI spec for import. See all integrations.
Next step
See a text thread handed over, start to finish.
A partner briefing shows the texting agent, a campaign run and the API, and is clear about what is early access.