BACKGROUND
The client, MobeVoice, provides international calling facility for clients, allowing them to dial local U.S numbers and get their calls routed to international recipients. The company’s registered users are provided an account number allowing them to make calls and choose one of six calling routes. The route selected by the user determines the quality and price per minute for these calls.
Requirements
The client was administering and managing the calling functionalities through a web interface, which proved cumbersome for users. They were looking to supplement their online account management module, with SMS based account management tool in order to enable their clients to modify account settings on the go. This way, MobeVoice clients could easily set up call forwarding, Direct Inward Dialing (DIDs), add, search, refer a friend features, and change command translations into French and Spanish on the fly.
The client had a clear vision of the solution they wanted to develop, but they lacked the resource bandwidth to develop the solution. So, they were looking for a team with expertise in Java and Spring framework to help them develop this product that will serve as a great value add to their business.
After considering various firms, the client partnered with Asahi Tech to develop this solution because of our experience providing similar staff augmentation services for firms like Vetsource and OHL North America.
The goal was to develop a simple and convenient SMS based solution, enabling users to register and manage ‘account settings' through SMS messages.
SOLUTION
We handpicked the team members suitable for this project from our pool of software engineers, and assigned them to this project full-time. The team comprised a lead solution architect, 2 senior software engineers, 4 intermediate engineers and 2 test engineers. The team worked closely with the client side project manager to strategize, build, integrate, test, and deploy the SMS solution.
Our dedicated team of Java engineers developed the SMS based account management system by integrating the client’s web service to Twilio in order to provide SMS capabilities. We supplemented their existing solution with a convenient and easy-to-use SMS driven account management module.
Key features that are managed via text messaging capabilities developed by our team are
Registration- Users send a text message to MobeVoice’s designated phone number to register for the SMS based account management feature.
Menu Options- Upon requesting a 'Menu', Mobevoice users are given five options to choose from – 'Mute', 'Reroute', 'Translate', 'Refer a friend' and 'Add new contact'.
- ✓Mute/Unmute capability- This allows users to stop or start receiving messages from the SMS based account management feature respectively.
- ✓Rerouting last call- This feature allows users to change the call route permanently for the number to which the last call was made. The call routing determines the call quality and cost/minute, and can be changed anytime by the user.
- ✓Foreign Language Support- Through appropriate resource files, our team added support for popular foreign languages such as French and Spanish, broadening the customer base for the application.
- ✓Refer A Friend- Enables existing users to refer a new customer by texting MobeVoice the new customer’s name and phone number, making the process quick and user friendly for the referring customer.
- ✓Add New Contact- Through SMS, MobeVoice users can add new contacts to their database by texting the name, international phone number, and receiving the local number required for calling the newly added number. This feature enables MobeVoice to expand its customer base by contacting the customer's friends and marketing their services to them.
SMS driven control of user functions- Provides a mobile device based control of user features for improved access and responsiveness. The highlight of this feature is the 'refund' option that allows users to pay only for quality services rendered.
Notification Mechanism - Users receive notification message regarding their account balance. This service can either be a system auto-generated message or a user requested delivery message.
Call History- This feature enables the users to check the summary of their call logs at any given time. When MobeVoice clients request this information via SMS, users receive details of the calls made by them, starting with most recent ones first.
RESULTS
With the deployment of the SMS based account management solution, the client gained competitive advantage. The solution additionally helped MobeVoice improve their customer satisfaction levels and user base, thereby enabling them to boost their bottom line.
BENEFITS
- ✓Easy account management with seamless messaging service
- ✓Improved customer responsiveness and faster turnaround time with text based control of user features
- ✓Multiple route number change option for users anytime and anywhere, resulting in improved customer satisfaction and additional references from satisfied customers
- ✓Growing customer base with French and Spanish mobile command translation service
