Texting is fast becoming the go-to for personal communications and not just among Gen Z and Millennials. What may surprise you, however, is that most people want to text businesses, too. Nine in 10 want to receive and respond to messages from brands.

But SMS technology does more than accommodate consumer preferences. When integrated with Broadvoice b-hive Unified Communications as a Service, 1:1 texting also saves time and money by boosting productivity and even improving customer experience.

With b-hive, you can send and receive text messages from your business phone number using our desktop web app or mobile app. That means all corporate communications – even 1:1 text messages – stay within the b-hive platform, so no customer contact info or account info ends up on employee phones. And you have a record of all customer interactions.

Sound good? It gets even better.

Here are six ways you can put b-hive SMS platform to work for your business today:

1. Solve problems faster

SMS is an efficient way for you to connect with colleagues in time-sensitive scenarios. Message each other for quick answers to questions, so that you can resolve issues faster. Our team has found that texting is particularly helpful when a supervisor or subject expert is in a meeting and unable to take a call (see No. 6).

2. Connect cost-effectively with overseas colleagues

If you’ve got colleagues or suppliers who are based overseas as we do, SMS to the desktop can be a cost-effective tool. No expensive international calls required; just use the Internet. Our marketing director finds text is not only useful for urgent conversations with out-of-country collaborators, but also for everyday communications, such as status updates, links to training videos, and more.

3. Coordinate field service activities

If you have a field service organization, SMS can streamline operations and enhance coordination between management and techs in the field, speeding communications significantly over email or calls. Our teams use text to help coordinate installations of our b-hive services. Text also can be used by techs to send messages from their mobile app to let customers know they’re on their way to their offices to complete a scheduled installation or repair.

4. Deliver customer packages

Dispatch can use SMS to inform customers about deliveries, giving customers the option to defer delivery or choose another time. This saves you money on missed deliveries (and redeliveries) and also improves the customer experience.

5. Connect in-flight

While we once viewed air travel as a forced tech break, in-flight Wi-Fi is becoming standard fare, enabling us to do work at a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet. And, while our phones must remain in airplane mode, we can text to our heart’s content with the mobile app or web app connected to Wi-Fi.

6. Circumvent the “no laptops rule”

For the record, we’re not advocating that you break the rules, but we’ve learned from experience (not naming names) that SMS on your mobile app can be a failsafe for your team when you’re stuck in a mandatory meeting and they need you to weigh in or sign of to move a project forward.

Every connection matters. But SMS matters more and more every day and with every generation. That’s why Broadvoice provides web-based SMS functionality with every Standard Seat and SMS via mobile app with every Pro Seat. We’re working on enhancements, including support for multimedia messaging service (MMS), so you can text photos and videos.

Stay tuned for updates. Maybe we’ll text them to you.