SMS/MMS via Twillio

Expertflow CX provides channel support for SMS/MMS channels via Twilio out of the box for inbound and outbound messages.

Twilio SMS/MMS enables the business to send and receive text and multi-media messaging services to any phone, anywhere in the world. This integration enables CX agents to accept incoming SMS chat requests to respond accordingly.
Channel Capabilities

Twilio supports a variety of capabilities as can be seen in the channel capabilities. The detailed view of each capability is described below:

Plain Text Message

Twilio integration allows Expertflow CX agents to send and receive SMS as a new chat interaction. This also enables to interact within an active conversation if there is any other conversation with the same customer. For one single SMS, the maximum character limit of 160 characters is supported. In case of a message having more than 160 characters will split into multiple messages.

The agent can send a reply back to the customer as an outbound MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) on the same customer's phone number.

Multimedia Messaging Service

MMS can contain plain text with a maximum character limit of 160 characters and multi media messages as described in channel capabilities with a maximum media size of 5 MB. For multimedia messaging, supported media and accepted media details are described below.

The content of supported media files will be received and displayed in the same way on the destination device whereas the the content of accepted media will be accepted not rejected but will be displayed as per destination device compatibility. In such cases, multimedia messages will only be shown as an External Media Link because of the destination device is not compatible.

Twilio Supported Media

^image/jpeg
^image/jpg
^image/gif
^image/png

Accepted Media

Media Type
Video Message	^video/mpeg ^video/mp4 ^{video/quicktime} ^video/webm ^video/3gpp ^video/3gpp2 ^{video/3gpp-tt} ^video/H261 ^video/H263 ^{video/H263-1998} ^{video/H263-2000} ^video/H264
Audio Message	^audio/basic ^audio/L24 ^audio/mp4 ^audio/mpeg ^audio/ogg ^{audio/vnd.rn-realaudio} ^{audio/vnd.wave} ^audio/3gpp ^audio/3gpp2 ^audio/ac3 ^audio/webm ^audio/amr-nb ^audio/amr
Image Message	^image/bmp ^image/tiff
Text Message	^text/vcard ^text/x-vcard ^text/csv ^text/rtf ^{text/richtext} ^{text/calendar} ^{text/directory}

Configuring Twilio

Using a Twilio phone number

The business will need a Twilio Account with a phone number configured on it. Once the Twilio Account is set up, now configure the SMS/MMS channel from Unified Admin Console.

All the things are set up. Now, one can be able to receive messages from Twilio phone number and reply via any of the configured business system integrations.