What’s new in Texter’s Realm: Loads of good stuff — May 2018
One of the best ways to improve a product is to listen to your customers and potential customers. That is exactly what we have done with Texter’s Realm. The six features below are as a result of conversations we have been having with our customers.
1. Short names on Telecom Networks
We introduce the ability for customers to buy short names on all the Telecom operators and have those names linked to their accounts in Texter’s Realm. This will make text messages show the name of the customer’s organization e.g. “MPESA” when delivered to the end user’s mobile phone.
To request a new sender name on Texter’s Realm, customers can go to the menu on the left side of the page. Click request sender name. Type in their requested sender name and click submit. Note that customers will need to have an airtime balance of KES 15,000 and above to request for short names.
This is detailed below:
We will then respond to the customer with a contract that needs to be signed for us to initiate the request on the Telecom operators. The whole process takes around 2 weeks.
Once the sender name has been activated, the customer will have the option of using it to identify their text messages as below:
2. Bulk uploading of contacts
Now customers can upload thousands of contacts to their Texter’s Realm accounts using .csv files. Unlike excel, .csv files are better because they do not have a limit to the number of records that they can hold. Therefore, with a powerful browser and personal computer, a customer can upload thousands of records to Texter’s Realm all at once.
Even cooler, customers can pre-select the groups that the customers being uploaded will be linked to. This enables for simpler grouping which customers can utilize while texting.
To upload contacts in bulk, they need to be in a certain format. Customers can click the menu upload contacts in bulk using a .csv, download our csv template to use, optionally select the groups to be populated with uploaded contacts and click upload as shown below:
Once uploaded, customers will be redirected to the next page where they can sanitize their contacts. If all the records are in the right format, the green button to commence upload will become active.
If everything checks out, customers can sit back and enjoy while Texter’s Realm does the heavy lifting.
3. Send messages to individual contacts
As opposed to just sending messages to groups, customers can now send messages to individual phone numbers.
Customers click send SMS, send to individuals and start typing the details of the individuals i.e. either name, phone number or email address. This is shown below:
4. Edit existing groups
Customers can now click the edit button on the left of their group names and edit the names of their groups to their hearts content.
Contacts associated to the group will remain intact as they were before and after the edit was done.
5. New navigation bar
We have updated our navigation menus and permanently brought them to the left of the screen. We think this is better because menus do not disappear once you click them and can significantly improve the speed of how customers navigate features on Texter’s Realm.
6. Improved search capabilities
Customers can search for active contacts using their first names, last names, phone numbers or even emails. This is quick and makes it easy for customers to identify contacts that either need to be edited or deleted.
That’s all for now. We are cooking up more for the next releases. Stay tuned!
As always, please keep your suggestions, feedback, and bug reports coming our way. Send us an email and be part of the conversation.
