Remember how people communicated with each other in olden days? Letters and telegrams were the only ways of communication, which not only took time to deliver and respond but also came with a cost.
But today, communication has become one of the most powerful and effective modes for transacting, interacting and engaging with business, customers or any individual. In today’s technology-driven world there are multiple apps available for interaction and communication but SMS and WhatsApp are the most widely used technology today reason being most effective way of communication providing instant delivery and response mechanism at low or zero cost. SMS is one of the oldest method of communication which is still used by business and even banks for intimation of financial transactions and operations whereas WhatsApp is still mainly used for personal communication by a wide range of users. There are multiple reasons why SMS is considered the most essential medium for communicating business transactions. Some of them are as follows:
Faster Delivery of messages
You can swiftly send SMS as you don’t require an internet connection to send as well as receive messages. All it needs is a decent network
Already available in all phones
Messaging is a common platform and does not require the user to download any app it is available in every cellphone by default. It doesn't matter whether you are using a smart phone or a feature phone
Short & precise message
All messages sent through SMS are short and precise. This is beneficial for both the sender and receiver as he/she doesn't have to read anything that is more than necessary thus saving his/her time
Higher chances of reading
Since these text messages are short and precise it has a higher chance of being read As it is said, it takes only 90 secs to respond to a text message
Does not require any kind of approval from the receiver
Messages once sent through SMS will be received by the receiver. The only condition being that he/she must have a cell phone
Better coverage
Every person today has a cell phone. Even teenagers these days at least have a feature phone. SMS can be received both in smart phones as well as in the oldest Feature phone and so the coverage of SMS is much higher
SMS is considered a premium messaging
SMS is charged according to the number of messages you send also the number of characters that can be used in a text message is limited thus, the chances of being spammed by a particular sender is lower as compared to WhatsApp. This increases the readability of the message. Moreover, TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) has restricted SMS per sim to only 200 per day
Compatibility
Text messages can be received from any other third party applications which means it is compatible with many others application’s. Today, businesses send messages directly from their CRM to the customer’s. We can also send and receive messages from Tally
The cost of sending a text message is higher than using any other chat messenger but this is the biggest reason why customers read a text message more than a WhatsApp message.
