Business Services by SMS?

Jarmal Richard, CEO, jdrlegal pty. ltd.
3 October 2006

How are major banks, insurance providers and law firms using SMS to deliver business services to their customers?

Consumers have used SMS to retrieve information about local eateries, movies, concerts and events. Now, a growing number of busy executives, who are time poor, are using SMS to receive business information services, in particular while they are traveling interstate or overseas.

A busy executive in search of information wants the requisite information provided in a timely manner, wherever the executive is, with the ultimate in convenience, including:

• Access convenience – location, operating hours, Internet [Google], VOIP, SMS, blogs;
• Search convenience – easy identification, comparison and selection of products/services, Internet [Google];
• Possession convenience – in-stock and quick delivery; and
• Transaction convenience – complete, amend and exchange quickly and easily.

‘I want what I want, and I want it now’ is the mantra.

In Australia and overseas there is an emerging SMS business information delivery model whereby service providers use SMS to communicate with their customers and to allow customers to complete business transactions. The right information is finding the customer, versus the traditional situation where the customer has to go and find the information, when he or she has time.

This trend is being further fueled by the enormous penetration of mobile telephone in every day business use, including the uptake of 3G mobiles, which in the US, alone, currently sits at 7 million users now, and an estimated 28 million users by 2008 according to market research firm emarketer.

Innovation in information service delivery is moving toward the use of SMS to connect the right information to business executives. There are many mediums on which service providers can communicate with their customers. Business executives now have a greater segmentation of communication needs (ie. print, fax, post, verbal over the telephone, in-person meetings, email, instant messaging, SMS, MMS). Each of these mediums for communication serves a suitable purpose, and includes certain pros and cons. Business executives, generally, use all of these forms of communication, and many do not wish to be locked into any particular way of communication with their service providers; in particular when they are interstate or overseas traveling for business.

SMS is being trialed in a growing number of information service centric businesses, including insurance, market research, banking and legal.

For banking services in Australia and New Zealand, Westpac and St. George are using SMS in innovative ways to provide customers with a communication platform (in addition to traditional in-person and Internet transactions) in which to:

• Check bank balances on an account;
• Receive information alerts;
• Verify status of deposits and withdrawals; and
• Receive warnings in relation to overdraw limits.

In the banking, insurance and legal industries, service providers are also starting to integrate transactional and smart chip functionality into technology platforms so that customers may use SMS to complete standard transactions.