Events Part III: Using Text Messaging to Save Staff Time

Reprinted from Resdida.com .

Time is money, and in this economy there isn’t much of either to go around. I know from my own experience running events that things are hectic and time is scarce. The last thing anyone needs is another moving part to manage. The more you can get done ahead of the event the better. Imagine for a moment what your experience could be … automating customer service, directing attendees to sessions, and making timely announcements. You can simply leverage text messaging to save staff time while actually increasing the level of service you provide. But how?

With Resdida MOBILIZE, it’s not difficult or time consuming, and it can all be set up ahead of event time. Here I will show you how to quickly and easily automate key announcements and reminders, automate FAQs and provide easy access to customer service. 

Key Announcements & Reminders
Running events, you often feel like a traffic cop. There are lots of halts, go’s and general ushering of attendee traffic. Timing is everything and every minute counts in order to meet the tightly run schedule for the day. The goal is to get people into the next session, seated and ready to begin on time, every time. 

There are several things you can do in advance to take some of the pressure off and ensure that attendees are informed and know where they need to be next. An easy option is to setup a Conference Channel and instruct attendees how to join. See Part II for detailed steps for instructing and encouraging adoption. Setting this up in MOBILIZE takes less than a minute. Once it’s set up, it’s very easy to use and manage.

Let’s assume you are staff for the ACME Conference. It took me less than a minute to setup the ACME Conference Channel; in fact, text ACME to 80474 to subscribe right now. If you do, you will see that the system will ask you to confirm by returning Y. Then, you will see a confirmation and welcome message for the channel.

Now, let’s say you know there will be cocktails on the 23rd floor at 6pm Tuesday of the conference. Let’s look at how you would schedule a text message reminder so you don’t need to worry about catching everyone at 5:45pm.

Start by creating “stories” for this and every other announcement or reminder that you’ll want to send during the conference. Here’s an example of the cocktails story below.

Then, add this Cocktails story to the Channel and schedule it to send at 5:45pm on Tuesday. While you are at it, schedule the remaining announcements to go out “just-in-time” during the conference.

Now you are done! MOBILIZE is now your traffic cop letting folks know where to go next as well as other mission critical information during the event. The only thing left to do is get folks to subscribe before or during registration.

FAQs
In addition to a channel, you can serve attendees and save time by pre-programming the answers to Frequently Asked Questions into MOBILIZE. Let attendees send a text message with the speaker’s last name to learn where and when those sessions are, or let them text INTERNET to learn the WIFI codes to access the network. This effort is easy to pre-program and saves paper and staff time during the event asking these questions. Be sure to place this information on the mobile information page in the event program. See Part II for more details on fostering participation.

Taking a closer look at the Internet example, setup is easy and takes less than a minute. You enter into MOBILIZE the key term INTERNET and the automated response “ID: acme Password: conf2011.” Instead of running around last minute printing handouts with Internet info and taking countless questions, you can use your mobile program to save time and trouble. Plus, if the ID or password were to change, you would just update MOBILIZE. Results are immediate and simple. 

You can try it now for yourself by texting INTERNET to 80474.

Because MOBILIZE can adapt with you and absorb new information as it comes down the pike, it surpasses paper publishing by far in effectiveness and is the “green” solution as well. Instead of quickly running off to print those quarter-sheet info flyers, you are taking two seconds to make the change and inform folks in real time.

Customer Service
In addition to frequently asked questions, there are questions that fall outside the ordinary or times when the audience needs to quickly report a problem. Especially for events that are spread-out in large venues, it can be very helpful to offer the opportunity for folks to ask questions and report problems remotely via their mobile phone. This gets the information to staff faster and makes the process more convenient for attendees as well.

This, too, is easy to set up in MOBILIZE and is related to our functionality for collecting data from the field. You would choose a key term for the audience to use. In this example, I will choose AQ for Acme Question. You would choose an auto response to acknowledge that the question was received. Finally, you would instruct the audience to send questions following an AQ- to 80474.

Staff will receive information instantly from within the session that the projector has failed and can quickly dispatch AV resources to the Starlight Room. The attendee receives the auto-response “Thank You” message as a confirmation that the information was received. The issue is resolved quickly and everyone is satisfied. 

In Summary
Automating essential repeatable tasks like key announcements, reminders, FAQs and customer service can improve the conference experience for both the attendees and the conference staff and allows for a more “green”, efficient and environmentally friendly experience as well . Staff time saved is priceless and putting technology to work for you feels great. Implementing is affordable and easy as well but is not something that you need to tackle alone. Resdida is there to lend expertise every step of the way.