How to Enable Text to Landline for Your Business Phone

Enabling two-way text messaging isn’t a “nice to have” business feature anymore. Customers expect and prefer to text your business over the dreaded game of business phone tag.

Your customers prefer texting over any communication channel—78% of people want to text with a business.Yet, only 48% of businesses are equipped to send and receive text messages from customers.

Enabling two-way text messaging isn’t a “nice to have” business feature anymore. Customers expect and prefer to text your business over the dreaded game of business phone tag.

Text-to-landline apps make it possible to send and receive SMS messages from your audience, all managed within a familiar interface.

What Does Text to Landline Mean?

Enabling text to landline means you can send and receive SMS messages from your wired-in business phone system and existing number — no additional hardware or messy contracts required.  

‍With a text-to-landline feature, your audience can instantly start texting your existing business phone number.  

‍Most importantly, you give your customers the ability to reach your business how they want to communicate. Texting a company is not only faster and more preferred, but it also eliminates the friction involved in calling a business and allows you to scale out business communication, conserve resources, and improve the customer experience.

Why Text-Enable Your Business Landline?

Changing up communication procedures within a business can feel risky.  You have to get your staff on board with a new process and adopt foreign technology.

‍But if you’re not giving customers the option to text your business, you’re leaving money on the table.  

‍Here are some compelling reasons to text-enable your landline.

Compelling Reasons to Text-Enable Your Landline

• Most calls to a business go unanswered. Businesses fail to pick up 62% of calls.
• ‍Your customers hate being on hold. Attention spans are dwindling, and your customers expect a rapid response.‍
• You hate checking voicemail. So much spam! So many vendors! Texts are easier to scan and prioritize than voicemails.‍
• Your customers hate checking voicemail. Only 33% of people check voicemail from a business, and 18% of consumers listen to voicemails from unknown numbers--so confirm that appointment or get approval for the order over text instead.‍
• Text messages get read more often. The open rate for SMS is 98% with 90% read within 3 seconds.

‍The case for using SMS in business communication is undeniable. Consumers text more than they call, respond faster to text messages, and prefer the medium to any other channel.

How to Text From a Landline

Sending text messages from a business landline number is simple with landline texting apps.

‍Text-to-landline apps are third-party services that text-enable your landline and offer a user-friendly interface to manage communication.

‍By investing in a text-to-landline app like Numa, you can monitor and respond to incoming business text messages right from the app.

‍Plus, you can set up Numa’s text-to-landline feature in under 15 minutes and start giving your customers the self-service experience they crave and—frankly—deserve. No porting, no hardware, no problems.

The Best Text-to-Landline App and Features

Landline texting services vary widely in pricing and functionality. When selecting a text-to-landline app, pay close attention to the features you’re getting.

Numa is an SMS platform that gives incoming callers the option to text your business landline. Offering a text option prevents potential lost calls and revenue and reduces the burden on your reception staff. Numa’s AI engine also learns about your business and can respond to incoming texts automatically — but only for the questions you want it to answer.

When evaluating business texting platforms, here are some features you won’t want to go without:

• Direct incoming calls to text messaging: With most business SMS apps, customers don’t know they can text your business unless you tell them. Numa gives incoming callers the option to text your business to reduce your call load and start directing customers to SMS.
• Send automated, AI-powered text message replies: As a business owner, you don’t have extra resources available to respond to SMS messages. And with Numa, you don’t need them. Numa answers incoming questions that you predefine — such as location information, store hours, directions, and more. Instead of adding another communication line for staff to manage, Numa saves your reception or customer service team time while addressing more inquiries.  
• Receive picture texts (MMS): The time will come when customers try to send photos to your business landline — but not all text-to-landline apps support MMS. With Numa, you can receive photos from your customers (and send photos to them) via text to answer their questions even faster.
• Route messages to the correct person or department: There’s nothing worse than calling a business and wasting hours just trying to reach the right department. With Numa, you can set up conversation routing to specific people or departments depending on the criteria you set, such as the topic of the text, time of day, etc.
• Unified Inbox integrates with your social media platforms: In addition to voicemail, text messaging, and picture messaging, connect to Facebook Messenger to manage all your business communication in one place.

How Much Does Business Landline Texting Cost?

Pricing for text-to-landline apps differs from a typical contract with a wireless services provider.

‍Most business texting apps charge a monthly service fee ranging from $49 to more than $600 and offer free incoming text messages. With the monthly fee, you receive a limit of outbound text messages and pay a small fee for any additional messages sent.

‍Other text-to-landline services like Numa charge a monthly fee with unlimited sent and received messages. So instead of paying per message, you pay a flat monthly rate for the service. ‍

How to Text-Enable Your Landline Phone With Numa

With Numa, you can text-enable your business landline within minutes:

1. Enter your business name and phone number. Numa will immediately start learning about your business.
2. Approve the automatic answers, make any changes or suggest new common questions that your business receives. You can try texting it from your own phone.
3. When you are ready and comfortable, click a few buttons to enable texting on your business phone number.

Converting your business landline to an SMS channel can open new revenue streams and cost savings for your business. Schedule your free Numa demo to get started today.

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