Nextiva Contact Center: SMS Workitems

When you are available in the ACD, and an incoming SMS is presented to you, the SMS Notification will appear in the lower right-hand corner of your screen. 

Accepting SMS Workitem Offers 

Upon accepting an SMS, the active workitem control tabs will default to “SMS” if you receive it from the Workitem view. You may now continue the SMS dialog “live.” 

The SMS dialog screen will appear directly in the middle of your workspace. You will see a time stamp from the customer and your responses next to each dialog. This helps you keep track of response time so you can engage the customer in a timely fashion. 

Active SMS Workitems 

When you have an active SMS, you can respond by typing in the input box below the main chat window and selecting the send icon on the bottom right-hand side. 

To the left of the send button is an Emoji Icon. If you click the emoji icon, a window will open. Select the emoji you want to send, which will be added to the input box. Then click the send icon to send the SMS. 

The icon to the left of the Emoji Icon is the Response Templates Icon. If your administrator has assigned SMS templates, you will see a red badge and a white number indicating the number of email response templates. 

If you select the response templates icon, a window will open with the names of the response templates listed on the left-hand side. On the right-hand side is the text that can be added to the SMS. To add the text, click the OK button at the bottom of the window. To cancel without adding any text, click the Cancel button at the bottom of the window. To send the text of the response template, click the send icon. 

Survey Tab 

After accepting an SMS workitem, you may see a user survey. Your administrator custom-builds user surveys. If you have questions about filling out the user survey, please speak to your supervisor or administrator. 

Contacts Tab 

After accepting an SMS workitem, click the Contact tab to show the Mini CRM screen. Here, you can add or edit information about the customer. The contact screen allows you to quickly review essential customer information, including fields for name, address, email address, time zone, coordinates, date of birth, and customer ID numbers or case numbers. 

Depending on how your system is configured, you may be able to view the same contact information in a native, third-party CRM system with which Nextiva is integrated. Tabs provide a shortcut to each section. You can also scroll down to the section you have selected. 

Notes Tab 

After accepting a workitem, you can click on the Notes tab to view existing notes on the customer taken by other agents and create a new note. 

Depending on your authority or class of service, you may need help to create new notes. Your system administrator sets this note-taking capability. 

Personality Insights Tab 

The Personality Insights tab reveals tips on how to best interact with the customer. Insights will only appear if there has been enough historical dialog with the customer to determine personality. 

Data Tab 

The Data tab stores essential customer snapshot information, including name and file number (if connected to the back-end system). 

Information Tab 

The Information tab provides details on the workitem, including priority, queue information, and start and stop times. 

History Tab 

The history tab reveals a chronological timeline of customer interactions. After performing a search, you will see arrows on the right side of the screen. Clicking on an arrow corresponding to a stored workitem will show more details. 

The history detail in an active workitem screen will appear on the right-hand side of the workspace. After a search, it provides a chronological history of interactions with the active contact. 

You can click the drop-down icon at the top of the history section to choose how far back in history you want to see. Your choice will then display only items in that chosen timeframe. 

Selection of Timeline Items 

By clicking the Down arrow icon associated with a particular timeline item, the item detail will expand to include more information. 

Events Tab 

The Events tab provides information on workitems associated with the active work item, such as routing results and duration. 

Outbound SMS 

Access the User Menu and click Outbound SMS to send an outbound SMS. Enter the phone number in the To Field. Enter the text in the SMS field and select the SMS campaign you wish to use from the SMS Campaign drop-down list. Click OK 

Response Templates can be used when initiating an Outbound SMS workitem. A new Template button has been added, showing the campaign templates. If a campaign is selected, the search will return its templates. If no campaign is chosen, all SMS templates will be displayed. 

Sending an Outbound SMS from a Contact 

You can also send an SMS from a contact within the Nextiva system. 

Navigate to the contact and select the SMS icon next to the contact’s mobile phone number. When initiating an outbound SMS from a contact, the system will use the default SMS campaign you selected under user settings.  

To see the outbound SMS, you must navigate to the workitem view. 

Once you have written the SMS, select the send button to send the email to the phone number. This will terminate the workitem. 

NOTE: The SMS will remain an active workitem on your screen until you terminate it. Unlike a Chat, which can terminate when the customer disconnects, an SMS does not terminate independently. It is your responsibility to terminate the SMS conversation. If the customer responds later, a new SMS conversation will be routed to the next available agent via the ACD. 

Predictive SMS 

Your organization can choose to have the system send automated SMS Messages to reach your leads based on their channel preference. This can result in more customer contacts than can be reached in a day. 

NOTE: Users do not need to be logged into the system to send Predictive SMS messages. However, they must be logged in if you want an agent to answer the customer’s SMS responses. 

You will need to set up an inbound SMS campaign for SMS replies to be routed to an agent. 

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