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Live Chat, SMS/Texting, and Self-Service

close of of a woman's hands texting on a mobile phone

Live Chat, SMS/Texting, and Self-Service

For a variety of reasons — Privacy, personal preference, convenience, culture, availability of technology — people are abandoning the phone call in favor of typed communication like texting, Live Chat, or engaging in self-service options on the web. If you want stay relevant and reach everyone in need of help, you must offer your services over these new channels in addition to the traditional ones.

Live Chat FAQ
SMS/Text FAQ
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With iCarol You Can:

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Offer Services by Live Chat

Using a simple widget on your website, your community can send you chat messages. Inbound messages appear in your iCarol Messaging Queue where your volunteers and staff can chat with consumers. When the conversation is over you can document notes and input data just as you would for any other Contact Form — and the information is available for reporting just like your other forms, too!

Engage in 2-way Texting/SMS

Invite your community to reach you by Text message. We can help you obtain a new local 10-digit number, a short code, or work to text-enable an existing number you already use for voice calls. While your consumers will be using their smartphone to send you texts, your specialists will you iCarol to send messages back.

Search For and Find Appropriate Services

Your iCarol resource database is available to you during Chat or SMS conversations the same way it is when you’re documenting a phone call. Find the right referrals for your help-seeker and send them through the chat or text conversation. You can also send the referrals in a separate text or email for their records after the conversation ends.

Report on Activities

Regardless of channel — Live Chat, SMS/Text, or Public Web Forms — the documented activities are stored in iCarol Contact Records where they are available for Exporting and Reporting. Easily consolidate this data for reports of all your activites, or separate them out when you need to report on them individually.

Offer Online Intake, Surveys, and More

Self-service options are in high demand among consumers, and can divert non-emergent requests to other channels. Use iCarol to create Public Web Forms to use for screening and eligibility, intake, enrollment, satisfaction surveys, and more.

Enable Self-Service Referral Searches

With iCarol’s Public Resource Directory option, you can embed your Resource Database on your website where it can be searched or browsed by your web visitors who may be looking for resources such as housing, food pantries, utility assistance, and other needs. This allows multi-channel access to your services for those who prefer self-service over engaging directly with your specialists, while still providing them with relevant and expertly curated search results.

Collaborate with Partners

Want to join a network of several organizations that are sharing responsibility for providing a statewide, provincial, or regional chat service? Or perhaps a partner wants you to provide Chat or SMS services on their behalf as a part of a special program? With iCarol you can create several different “portals” of chat or SMS services each with their own Contact Forms and data collection, hours of operation, and staff assigned to the project.

We look forward to learning how we can help your organization thrive and grow!