Well they’re all describing the same thing – users can send an SMS message to a handset, to either a landline number or mobile phone, and have the message read out over the phone by recorded message.Something hard to comprehend is that Voice SMS has been available for several years. So why now is it becoming more popular? I guess this could be because of several reasons…. the increase in mobile penetration, the overall acceptability of SMS, the realisation that Voice SMS has additional benefits over and above SMS ? These are just a few points to think about.At Esendex, we have seen many uses for Voice SMS. Hospitals, pharmaceuticals and chemists use Voice SMS, to send to high risk patients for dosing reminders. In this instance, when messages are particularly important, SMS to voice is a fundamental feature because you are able to confirm with the “acknowledged” status that the message has been listened to.At Esendex, we have seen a large take up in Voice SMS by debt collection companies. We have a client who began using SMS to voice, at the beginning they were sending thousands of messages each month, unfortunately for us, it has been so successful in collecting debt that they now only send a small proportion of what they had started sending as they no longer need to send follow up messages.There are a variety of reasons why you might choose Voice SMS over SMS. To name a few, it could be that you provide services to people who are partially sighted, blind or elderly and therefore find SMS to voice a quick and easy method to communicate information? It could be that the message you need to send is quite long? (Text messages are charged in multiples of 160 characters)The key factors to think about with SMS voice messaging is the speed of the message and the retry costs. If this is something that you are thinking about, then my advice is to check the speed that the messages are read, if they have an Australian accent, whether or not there are automatic retries on the account and are they free?If you are an existing customer and would like to try Voice SMS simply visit your account to enable. If you don’t have an account the please sign-up for a free trial – It would be great to hear what you think!
