I am trying to submit a suggestion for new RingCentral Automator work flows. I hope this is the correct place.I would like to see the Automator fully automated to support the TCR requirements. Specifically:send the opt out verbiage with the text message record the customer preferences to ensure text messages are not sent when the customer has opted out or are send when they have opted in

Yes you can auto send the outbound messages when you receive the keywords in a SMS. What the Automator doesn’t do:automatically send the opt out info when a text is generated, the user has to do it manuallythere is no tracking of customer preferences. i.e. customer opts out but you can still send them a SMSThese elements are needed to support TCR.Thanks Ellen

E

esoper

The First Step

Solved

Request: TCR opt-in/opt-out auto-replies and enforcement

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
November 19, 2024
35 replies
1485 views

I am trying to submit a suggestion for new RingCentral Automator work flows. I hope this is the correct place.

I would like to see the Automator fully automated to support the TCR requirements. Specifically:

send the opt out verbiage with the text message
record the customer preferences to ensure text messages are not sent when the customer has opted out or are send when they have opted in

Best answer by ByrneReese

@bt-chris.brown I am not sure this is what you are saying, but one thing I feel I should point out is based on my own misunderstanding early on.

TCR applies to all communications between a business and consumer. TCR does not disambiguate between 1-on-1 communications between a business representative and a customer. So if you and I are corresponding with one another via SMS, me from my RingCentral phone number and you as one of its customers, if you text STOP to me, I am obligated not to text you again -- even if we are talking about what we both did last summer. You know? I thought I would share, because again, I thought TCR governed how I use SMS to market to you or sell to you. But it governs more than that.

Let me take a step back and look at your request fresh. You are not talking about an auto-reply to a request to STOP, START, etc. You are looking for a way to inform the people you correspond with of their ability to unsubscribe if they want to. I think that is correct, but let me know if I got that wrong - otherwise, the rest of my advice below is likely to be wrong. :-/

Ok. So I see two ways to solve this problem: one is through the use of SMS templates. SMS templates allow you to write and share a message across your organization that you can easily insert into a text you intend to send to someone. This would not be automated, but would at least let you create a consistent message that could be sent to the people you correspond with. The downside being that it is not automated, and your employees would need to be trained to send this disclosure reliably. Ug.

Ideally we could automate this message using Workflow Builder. We don’t have a trigger for SMS sent - that seems like the ideal trigger. The workflow would work like this:

At a frequency of once per month or even once per year, when you send an SMS to someone, the workflow would be triggered and send a second SMS shortly thereafter saying, “FYI - you are corresponding with INSERT NAME from COMPANY NAME. If you would like to no longer receive messages from them, you may send ‘STOP’ at any time.” The workflow would periodically send this disclosure based on the workflow’s frequency settings - in this way it would also work to remind users of their rights on a recurring basis. In this scenario, the following would be possible:
- Byrne: “Hey Chris, I wanted to follow up regarding our phone call.”
- Workflow Builder to Chris: “Disclaimer: you are corresponding with Byrne Reese from RingCentral. If you would like to no longer receive messages from Byrne, you may send ‘STOP’ at any time.”
- Chris: “Oh hey Byrne. No problem. It was great speaking with you.”
- Byrne: “Likewise. Let’s schedule a meeting to chat...”
Alternatively, you could bind the same logic to the “SMS received” trigger. So the interaction would be slightly different, but it would still work to achieve the same results. In this mode though the following interaction would be more common.
- Byrne: “Hey Chris, I wanted to follow up regarding our phone call.”
- Chris: “Oh hey Byrne. No problem. It was great speaking with you.”
- Workflow Builder to Chris: “Disclaimer: you are corresponding with Byrne Reese from RingCentral. If you would like to no longer receive messages from Byrne, you may send ‘STOP’ at any time.”
- Byrne: “Likewise. Let’s schedule a meeting to chat...”

You can see the only difference between the two would be the order in which the messages are sent. What do you think of these ideas?

E

esoper

Author

The First Step

There is no automated way to send the OPT OUT verbiage with SMS messages sent from RingCentral
- My understanding of TCR requirements is that this is required for all outbound SMS messages
- From my point of view, this is the first priority to have automated. It is unreasonable to believe that the human will type or copy / paste this into every message that they send by SMS

There is no automation, other than sending a message to the sender, when they send a keyword like Start, Stop
- The automation I have set up, sends the automated response if a keyword match is found.
- However, as far as I can see, RingCental doesn't use this information to manage future correspondence. For example; the customer sends STOP, it doesn't update the customer's contact preferences or prevent future messages from being sent.

ByrneReese

Product Manager

@esoper We previously had opt-in and opt-out messages powered by Automator (now Workflow Builder), but we recently made this feature a core part of our SMS sub-system. We now automatically responds to and enforces opt-in and opt-out requests.

E

esoper

Author

The First Step

Yes you can auto send the outbound messages when you receive the keywords in a SMS. What the Automator doesn’t do:

automatically send the opt out info when a text is generated, the user has to do it manually
there is no tracking of customer preferences. i.e. customer opts out but you can still send them a SMS

These elements are needed to support TCR.

Thanks Ellen

ByrneReese

Product Manager

Ellen - everything you mentioned above is supported by our Core system now. Please see the knowledge base article I shared with you above. If you do not see these capabilities in your account, please reach out to support and they can assist.

E

esoper

Author

The First Step

I have already reached out to support. I have been told by at least 4 people that it is not possible to automatically send text with the text message to provide opt out information. The user has to enter it manually See case # 26276139

Here is the response from RingCentral

Hi Ellen, Got your email. Apologized for the inconvenience. With regards to your queries. They told me that there is no option for the receiver to Opt Out on every text message they receive. https://support.ringcentral.com/article-v2/Automating-SMS-replies-and-other-common-workflows.html?brand=RingCentral&product=RingEX&language=en_US Regards, Joe

ByrneReese

Product Manager

@esoper Wow. Ok. I am terribly sorry you are caught in the middle of this. I think there is a misunderstanding part somewhere within our teams. Either I am misinformed, or support is. I will reach out to schedule a call with you and the PM for SMS to make sure we are all aligned.

M

mebliden

New Participant

@ByrneReese I and my colleagues are also extremely interested in this, I was under the impression Automator had the option to create the messages for all opt in/out/help keywords, however the “Enable this automation for what phone numbers?” option only gives my direct number or all of our numbers (we need to be able to select the numbers to match each TCR campaign). The documentation you linked above about the built-in opt-out feature does not appear to have any option to create or modify the message that is sent to someone who texts an opt-out keyword. If you could please post the solution to this publicly to this thread that would be greatly appreciated!

E

esoper

Author

The First Step

If the sender of the text sends a message to the RingCentral system with a keyword, you can send a message back based on the keyword. You can then include the opt in / opt out message that you want sent using the RingCentral Automator.

The issue is if a new text message is created by the RingCentral sender, they have to manually append the opt in / opt out verbiage on each message.

The Automator doesn’t have an option for this presently.

ByrneReese

Product Manager

To close the loop on this issue for the community, I met with @esoper over the phone. Opt-out enforcement and built-in autoreplies were not worked as she was on a server cluster that had not received the update yet. She was scheduled to receive the update on December 11, 2024. We accelerated that for her and everything should now be working. @esoper can you confirm?

E

esoper

Author

The First Step

I appreciate your time today and agree that the majority of my concerns were resolved.

The remaining issue that isn’t resolved, but we have a semi manual / auto solution, is to automatically send the opt out verbiage with the text initiated by the RingCentral user.

The workaround for this is to create a text template that the user manually selects when creating a text. It is an extra step, but will help us be compliant.

Thanks again for your help.

Ellen

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