What is the toll-free migration?
The toll-free migration enables your organization to continue business operation without interruption as the carrier-imposed August 31 deadline approaches. As a field service organization, you have come to rely on the benefits afforded to you by sending communication to your residential and commercial customers via text message (SMS) letting them know that one your service technicians is on their way to the service location. You have helped your employees win more by sending an SMS to your service technicians the morning of an important customer on-site visit reminding them of what it will take to be successful and to deliver a service your reputation has been founded upon. You have grown faster by decreasing your oldest aging AR account by sending invoices to your customers via text messages they can then easily pay from their phone using the payments integration. You have more free time to enjoy with your family as a result of utilizing the estimate/job status change notification, the reminder preset, and the dispatch grid text messaging features to automate the distribution of communication via SMS instead of using your cell phone for each communication. The toll-free migration allows us to continue to empower you with all of these benefits and more!
What is going to change?
When you initially signed up with Service Fusion, you were provided with a phone number, local to your jurisdiction, that has been used for the distribution and reception of text message communication in a variety of aspects through our platform. We have communicated the need to register this number. The toll-free migration does not alleviate this need - your original number will need to be registered through our registration portal. More information is still to come.
The registration process can take anywhere from 2 – 8 weeks, as this effort is led by the carriers, and affects everyone that is conducting business and using SMS messaging for business operations. The resources required to facilitate the registration process on the carrier side, completely external to Service Fusion, are navigating these requests from a national audience.
What will change will be the number that you use for text message communication through the Service Fusion platform. Free of charge to you, you will be provided with a toll-free (1-8XX pre-fix) number that will act as the basis of communication for all outbound messaging that is either automatically or manually distributed to your customers through Service Fusion. Toll-free numbers are currently exempt from registration requirements and will allow business to continue without interruption. Not migrating to toll free numbers would result in outbound communication that is distributed via SMS to be blocked by the carriers on and after September 1st while the registration process occurs with your local numbers.
Will I still be able to use text messaging with Service Fusion after September 1? I have heard of this 10DLC carrier-led initiative but, as I have been instructed to wait on the Service Fusion hosted registration portal, I have not registered yet.
Yes, absolutely. Our behind-the-scenes teams have been working around the clock with solution providers, carriers imposing the regulations, alpha and beta participants, as well as our front-line product solution experts and engineers to ensure your business can thrive in this heightened regulatory landscape. We remain steadfastly dedicated to our mission of helping you grow faster, win more, and provide real time savings through efficiency with software tools.
What will this solution look like? What changes can I expect to see in Service Fusion to support this change?
There are a couple of places in the software where we will see reference information to help make this change as easy as non-invasive to your operation as possible. In the company information section of My Office (My Office > Company Information), in the lower right region of the screen, you will now see the toll-free migration reference table illustrating the following pieces of information:
- Your original local number
- Your new toll-free number, and the relationship back to your original number
- An indication of if this number is a ServiceCall.ai number (only customers who have actively subscribed to the cutting-edge VOIP solution offered by Service Fusion AND have a phone number active in ServiceCall.ai will see this component)
That is not the only place that we will see additional supporting information for this toll-free migration! We will also see a reference available, upon mouse hover action, within each individual customer's profile - in the activity feed section. This will look like the following:
As the activity feed section acts as the one-stop-shop for all individual customer communications, SMS text messages included, the reference back to the original local number that would have been used for distribution allows you to see both the toll-free this originated from as well as the number the toll free communication is associated with. This section summarizes the messages sent either manually or via system automation such as associated status change sms updates, reminder or notification functionalities.