We are pleased to announce that you can now Send And Receive SMS Messages In IRIS CRM, right from the lead form!
A business owner that you have established contact with in the past is over 70% more likely to respond to an SMS versus an email in 2017.
Need to follow up with an unresponsive prospect?
Need to confirm a sales appointment quickly?
Need to ask them for additional information related to their application?
Send SMS messages and watch as their replies show up right on the lead form. Here is a quick rundown of the new feature.
The new SMS icon
When you enable the SMS send/receive feature in IRIS CRM (we’ll dive into how in a bit) you will see a new SMS icon next to the phone fields on your lead form:
To send a new SMS message just click on the icon. The “Send SMS” window will pop up, showing the sender’s and the lead’s phone numbers. You can now type your message:
If needed, you can also include an image in your message. Just copy and paste the image into the text box, and the image will be saved in the message and displayed right above the text box:
After you click Send, you will see a confirmation in the top right corner of the lead form that looks like this and signifies that the sending was successful:
When your contact sends you a reply, an incoming SMS notification will appear in the top right corner. The notification displays the lead’s name, the message text and it also has a Reply button which you can use to text your contact right back if needed.
Tip: While your outgoing messages may only contain text or images, incoming messages received from your contacts may contain any type of file attachments (e.g. .doc, .xls, .pdf or other file types). You will be able to open and view these attachments from the lead form.
Incoming SMS notifications are shown every 15 seconds. You can also find the notifications under the quick notification icon next to your username:
Viewing SMS conversations
All incoming and outgoing SMS messages will be added as new notes on the lead form. This provides you with a convenient way of reviewing the entire conversation threads.
If your contacts attached files to their messages, those files will be shown right below the message note as seen in the below image:
For reporting purposes, you can also view the number of sent and received messages on the Sales Metrics page in Leads > Sales Metrics.
Local Presence
Just like with the IRIS CRM dialer, the SMS functionality also supports the Local Presence feature. With Local Presence, your text messages will show up on the prospect’s caller ID as having been sent from a local phone number.
For more information on Local Presence, check out this post.
Enabling the SMS send/receive feature in IRIS CRM
The SMS send/receive feature may be enabled for each user class individually. For example, to enable this feature for the Administrator class, go to Manage > Administration > Users & Groups > User Classes and then click on the Administrator Permissions button:
Then expand the Communications section and click on the Send & Receive SMS Messages checkbox:
With the permissions set, you can now create a new cell phone field on your lead form by selecting Cell Phone in the Special drop-down.
After saving the new field, it will appear with the SMS icon next to it on the lead form, and with that, you’re ready to start texting your leads.
For electronic payment breaking news, feature releases and industry developments, please subscribe to the IRIS CRM newsletter.
Don’t have IRIS CRM?
Join over 100 ISOs using IRIS CRM to grow their business.
Schedule a demo to learn more.
