Engage customers and increase security with SMS

Currently around 95% percent of all applications installed on mobile phones are abandoned and email notifications are often gone unread. Keeping users engaged is an ongoing battle against the ‘next big thing’. We’ve already touched on a few reasons why text messaging is gaining ground against more traditional methods of relationship management. Here are a few use-cases that, if used correctly, and leveraging Bandwidth’s application platform can keep your users secure and coming back again and again.

Two Factor Authentication

Two factor authentication requires users to provide a piece of ‘knowledge’ (password) and proof of ‘ownership’ (cell phone number) to access an account. By requiring a verification code to access sensitive information users are provided an extra layer of security against compromised credentials.

Bandwidth has an open source project written in NodeJS that can securely add a two factor authentication flow to any existing application (regardless of language). Bandwidth also provides NodeJS client side code to tie in with the two factor auth server.

Account Alerts Via SMS

Alerting users when atypical activity is detected on their account can help mitigate potential security threats. Ideally, users could configure alerts on IP address abnormalities, log in attempts, password changes, urgent notices, or new transactions.

Customer Support

Great customer support is something every application strives to achieve. Transparency is a key factor to a seamless customer support experience. Sending users updates throughout the process keeps them engaged and aware of any potential issues.

Order Status

For certain time critical orders, keeping users up-to-date of order status via SMS is invaluable. Quick and consistent updates allows users to better plan for delivery or act quickly when something goes wrong. Further, SMS notifications could potentially allow users to redirect packages on demand by decreasing the barrier of entry to just a cell phone (no apps/website integration needed).

Bandwidth Application Platform and SMS

Getting started with Bandwidth’s application platform with SMS/MMS is incredibly simple. Bandwidth provides SDKs for most common languages as well as plenty of sample applications using any combination of voice, messaging, and mobile technologies.

Start here to sign up to use the Bandwidth application platform then take a look at the resources we use to jump start our development.

Originally published at blog.bandwidth.com on July 7, 2015.