Hello!
I'm new here and I just want to say how much I appreciate all of you who work on technology to make our lives easier, faster, more automated and more efficient. My life and business thrives on it, so I can't thank you guys enough and this request is really more of a question about where you think your abilities have you now and where it's taking the technology. I figured out of everyone here, ya'll have to be the best of the best when it comes to technological advances among smartphone technology/apps/etc. I've been a MAC guy for 6 years now, but I'm no developer. I have basic C++ and HTML coding and I've forgotten most of it. Please forgive me for the subsequent long-winded request.
The reason I'm writing you all here today is I need your expert knowledge and have some questions I can't find answered here anywhere and it's limited & convoluted in searches elsewhere online.
1. Do all cellular carriers allow "surf and talk" now? It seems Sprint may be the only one who can't, but I'm reading some people who can, so is the technology across the board now? If not, will it be seamless soon with the likes of 5g and beyond with development capabilities?
2. Do you need a certain year model smartphone or technological capability within the phone to execute that function?
3. Is it relatively uncomplicated to develop a program in a CRM that doesn't group text, but rather mass texts one message to a group of people who have opted-in to receive texts and they individually receive on message and not the replies of others? Much like how CRMs execute mass email marketing campaigns or if a user manually put all email addresses in the BCC, effectively making the god awful "Group texts/messaging" feature mimic who is CC'd in email where everybody responding is automatically placed in "Reply All", and Mass texting individually (which is what I want) mimicking who is BCC'd manually in email for example. Is that possible?
4. Are there any emerging technological advances in smartphone capability you'd like to share in which I could study?
Let me give you a quick background behind the reason why I ask.
I am a nerd when it comes to watching the exploding growth of technical capabilities and I'm excited for what the future will bring. The business I'm in relies heavily on increased efficiency to stay competitive at a high rate. Part of the technology we rely on is the "Surf and Talk" feature that AT&T started in cellular networks and now seems to have morphed into other platforms, however it's hard to pinpoint which brands do and our team here at work doesn't have time to ask everybody who their carrier is or anything else for that matter about it. We just need them to surf and talk from their cellphones.
Most of what I can find on the subject within this site are in threads between 2017 and September 2019 where the conversation about the technology ends. I've gathered that it is perceived that most data plans these days will allow you to talk, put it on speaker phone, and surf the web at the same time, or check an email/text/or picture to somebody while talking to that person on the same device.
We deal with people every day in this regard, thousands per month, and for the most part they can surf and talk, but there are a good number of people who still can't and I don't know if its a carrier service issue, an older phone model issue, or something else. Plus people habitually save wifi logins at the common or frequent places they are at, so I never know if it's working due to wifi or not because we never ask unless there is a problem with them receiving data from us while on the phone.
Our CRM has the capability of submitting documents online and getting digital signatures from people while we are on the phone at the same time. It's awesome. We've been doing this for about 6 years now. In 2008 I said, "I bought my house on a digital document, I sign digital papers when I go to the doctor, and my brother in law in the military is doing it all the time for those matters...why aren't we doing it? Why can't we have digital documents for all the people who can't drive in to their nearest physical location in their state? Why can't we be online together, filling things out on documents, we both see it, and we both are on the phone using our same devices?" Fast forward to 2014 and our group started testing what we could and it has just been beautiful since. It makes me have such appreciation for folks like yourselves.
Now today, I get chills thinking about the possibilities because I think I've stumbled across something huge for our business. We now seem to have the technology to give them control and fill something out, or they agree for us to help them type their responses if they can't, all while talking on the same device. It's about to be rolled out soon. So this has me thinking about all the folks that inquire about our services and opt-in to receive a text message. I think we can turn what typically would take an hour or two to do in a day, we could literally do with a couple pushes of a button within 3 to 5 seconds. I'm currently seeing a 600% increase in efficiency manually sending the texts one by one. If we can group select and mass text individually, we could literally see a 72,000% to 144,000% increase in efficiency; thus increasing our available time. It's mind blowing.
Please, if anyone can answer those 4 questions I have or point me in the right direction to information that would allow me to study the emerging technology and services available, I would be extremely thankful beyond measure.
I'm new here and I just want to say how much I appreciate all of you who work on technology to make our lives easier, faster, more automated and more efficient. My life and business thrives on it, so I can't thank you guys enough and this request is really more of a question about where you think your abilities have you now and where it's taking the technology. I figured out of everyone here, ya'll have to be the best of the best when it comes to technological advances among smartphone technology/apps/etc. I've been a MAC guy for 6 years now, but I'm no developer. I have basic C++ and HTML coding and I've forgotten most of it. Please forgive me for the subsequent long-winded request.
The reason I'm writing you all here today is I need your expert knowledge and have some questions I can't find answered here anywhere and it's limited & convoluted in searches elsewhere online.
1. Do all cellular carriers allow "surf and talk" now? It seems Sprint may be the only one who can't, but I'm reading some people who can, so is the technology across the board now? If not, will it be seamless soon with the likes of 5g and beyond with development capabilities?
2. Do you need a certain year model smartphone or technological capability within the phone to execute that function?
3. Is it relatively uncomplicated to develop a program in a CRM that doesn't group text, but rather mass texts one message to a group of people who have opted-in to receive texts and they individually receive on message and not the replies of others? Much like how CRMs execute mass email marketing campaigns or if a user manually put all email addresses in the BCC, effectively making the god awful "Group texts/messaging" feature mimic who is CC'd in email where everybody responding is automatically placed in "Reply All", and Mass texting individually (which is what I want) mimicking who is BCC'd manually in email for example. Is that possible?
4. Are there any emerging technological advances in smartphone capability you'd like to share in which I could study?
Let me give you a quick background behind the reason why I ask.
I am a nerd when it comes to watching the exploding growth of technical capabilities and I'm excited for what the future will bring. The business I'm in relies heavily on increased efficiency to stay competitive at a high rate. Part of the technology we rely on is the "Surf and Talk" feature that AT&T started in cellular networks and now seems to have morphed into other platforms, however it's hard to pinpoint which brands do and our team here at work doesn't have time to ask everybody who their carrier is or anything else for that matter about it. We just need them to surf and talk from their cellphones.
Most of what I can find on the subject within this site are in threads between 2017 and September 2019 where the conversation about the technology ends. I've gathered that it is perceived that most data plans these days will allow you to talk, put it on speaker phone, and surf the web at the same time, or check an email/text/or picture to somebody while talking to that person on the same device.
We deal with people every day in this regard, thousands per month, and for the most part they can surf and talk, but there are a good number of people who still can't and I don't know if its a carrier service issue, an older phone model issue, or something else. Plus people habitually save wifi logins at the common or frequent places they are at, so I never know if it's working due to wifi or not because we never ask unless there is a problem with them receiving data from us while on the phone.
Our CRM has the capability of submitting documents online and getting digital signatures from people while we are on the phone at the same time. It's awesome. We've been doing this for about 6 years now. In 2008 I said, "I bought my house on a digital document, I sign digital papers when I go to the doctor, and my brother in law in the military is doing it all the time for those matters...why aren't we doing it? Why can't we have digital documents for all the people who can't drive in to their nearest physical location in their state? Why can't we be online together, filling things out on documents, we both see it, and we both are on the phone using our same devices?" Fast forward to 2014 and our group started testing what we could and it has just been beautiful since. It makes me have such appreciation for folks like yourselves.
Now today, I get chills thinking about the possibilities because I think I've stumbled across something huge for our business. We now seem to have the technology to give them control and fill something out, or they agree for us to help them type their responses if they can't, all while talking on the same device. It's about to be rolled out soon. So this has me thinking about all the folks that inquire about our services and opt-in to receive a text message. I think we can turn what typically would take an hour or two to do in a day, we could literally do with a couple pushes of a button within 3 to 5 seconds. I'm currently seeing a 600% increase in efficiency manually sending the texts one by one. If we can group select and mass text individually, we could literally see a 72,000% to 144,000% increase in efficiency; thus increasing our available time. It's mind blowing.
Please, if anyone can answer those 4 questions I have or point me in the right direction to information that would allow me to study the emerging technology and services available, I would be extremely thankful beyond measure.
