Forward OwnerRez CRM SMS message to a cell phone

It would be great if we can forward the SMS in OwnerRez CRM to my cell phone. I have automated messages sent out to my guests with my cell phone number inside, however, I notice a lot of people don't read or remember my direct cell phone number and still use the OwnerRez phone number to respond, this led many incidents that I failed to timely address their inquiries or concerns due to the fact there is no immediate notification from OwnerRez unless I am using OwnerRez.

Thanks,

Stuff like this is why I haven't activated OR's SMS feature yet, despite being an early proponent of it and asking to be put in the beta.

I think with as much as the OR system is maturing (including offering channel messaging integrations and SMS functionality), it's past time the OR team develops (or contracts to develop) mobile apps with push notifications and quick access to a messaging inbox. Real-time notifications are absolutely necessary in this industry in 2021, especially with the (also unnecessary) ~2-minute delay OR engages in when sending emails via their Postmark ESP (they appear to use a batch process that runs every ~1-2 minutes instead of sending messages in real-time, which Postmark should support AFAIK).

Because of the volume of data we process, we can't connect to data partners in real time. Doing that would cause negative domino affects depending on what the success/failures was from the partner and the response time. All SaaS apps of any size have to use queues to process inbound and outbound requests. Not just email but also SMS, bookings from channels, inquiries, rate/rule pushes and a dozen other things.

We send email to the ESP (typically Postmark, but not always) every ~30 seconds or less, and it's often a lot less, so the TTI (time to inbox) is very fast. Not sure where you're measuring 2 minutes, but that's not typical. Could be your inbox provider not surfacing it for a minute or virus checks or something else going on.

ESPs sometimes delay messages on their own based on temporary network slow-downs, blocks or issues they are seeing with IPs being slow on their side. They might have rules for Comcast (for example) that say they shouldn't deliver more than 10k emails per hour on a particular IP and they're coming up close to the max across the entire block. We use dedicated IPs with our ESPs but it doesn't always matter.

I should point out that our TTI is typically faster than the channels. Vrbo can sometimes take 5-10 minutes to deliver a message, and that includes the push notification on their mobile app.

There's no way to design or pay for a system where you have always-immediate email delivery. That doesn't exist in the email world.

SMS is a bit better but still not guaranteed immediate when sending via SaaS.

PS. I agree on push notifications, and we've discussed that internally as a delivery option for system alerts.

I don't know how many emails you guys send a day, but at my day job, we use AWS SES to send about 25,000 transactional messages a day. We send in real-time, not in a batch/queue process. It's possible that SES may implement some minor delivery throttling on their end (between SES and the destination SMTP server), but I've never noticed any delays beyond maybe a few seconds.

Two minutes may be a slight exaggeration, but here's one that had a 54-second delay: https://app.ownerrez.com/inbox/history/emails/23266793. I clicked "Send" at exactly 14:09:40 and it wasn't sent by Postmark until 14:10:36 (and then delivered to my Google Apps/G Suite/Google Workspace/Whatever-they're-calling-it-this-week hosted email account at 14:10:37):

From: xxx
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2021 19:10:36 +0000
Subject: xxx 2:09:40
Message-Id: <3bd5c242-dec2-40d6-8458-36e6f0b22bfa@mtasv.net>
To: yyy
Received: by mta222a-ord.mtasv.net id hec6aq27tk4d for <xxx>; Fri, 22 Oct 2021 15:10:36 -0400 (envelope-from <xxx>)
Received: from mta222a-ord.mtasv.net (mta222a-ord.mtasv.net. [104.245.209.222])
by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id r25si9849819vsj.349.2021.10.22.12.10.37
for <xxx>
(version=TLS1_2 cipher=ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 bits=128/128);
Fri, 22 Oct 2021 12:10:37 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 2002:a54:354d:0:0:0:0:0 with SMTP id e13csp2212015ect;
Fri, 22 Oct 2021 12:10:37 -0700 (PDT)

I think the reason for the delay is because you queue your messages up and then send them in batch at xx:xx:30 (30 seconds after the top of the minute). (I sent test emails every 10 seconds for a period of 2 minutes and was able to discern that pattern.)

That delay is mostly fine for low-priority booking alerts but not acceptable when you're having real-time communication with a guest and relying on those email notifications to know when you've received a text and need to respond to it. I use Google Voice for texting and have frequently had the experience where a guest texts me and I may be in the middle of composing a response, but if I don't send the response within ~60 seconds of their send, my phone starts ringing with a call. I've learned to very quickly respond, "Hi [Name], one sec" while I then compose the rest of my response. :D

That's interesting research, thanks for sharing it with us. I understand how with the SMS/conversation side, a minute longer is annoying.

FYI - the reason we queue isn't just the volume alone, it's about all of the negative affects of sending inline. eg. what happens if you detect security issues (a user starts sending thousands of spam messages out) or the ESP is momentarily down. You don't want to drop messages, etc

It's possible to both queue and send fast at the same time, but our focus is mostly going to shift to other ways to get notified instead of email. Email isn't the correct medium for chat conversations.

Hey Paul - so are there plans to at least set up push notifications?

That would require a dedicated app, so, no, not in the near future.

We do intend to implement push notifications from our Progressive Web App in the near future. [WebApp Notifications on Apple/Android]

We found a workaround: we now use Gmail filtering the SMS message emailed by Ownerrez and forward them to our cell phone. It has a 10~15min delay, however, it's better than responding to our guests many hours or a day later.

This is the great news! Not being able to be notified of an incoming SMS message is the major drawback of Ownerrez. 

I am having the same issue and was reading through this thread that is two years old.  wondering if there has been any advancements made in this area?   I would really like to receive my guests SMS replies to my cell otherwise I am getting them very untimely and it makes me look bad responding so late.  

Thanks!

Shawn

Hello Shawn - we are working towards push notification capabilities. Apple released the long-awaited capability a little earlier this year and that was the key for us to begin the work to add support for browser-based push notifications across Android and Apple OS's.

Team System Alerts is the initial groundwork for this coming out next, and then push notifications sometime after that (which can alert you that you received an SMS message or any other System Alert that you only receive via Email today).

In a release that went out this week, the SMS alerts (the emails that OwnerRez sends you saying "SMS received") now use a different sending lane to go out immediately.

We created an immediate sending lane for several important "has to be right now" message types, and "SMS received" received is one of those.  Another example is the 2FA auth code when you first log in - that too uses the immediate sending lane.

All email alerts, whether queued or sent immediately, still use the same logging and sending infrastructure.  The change was just in how some are sent.

I know this feature request topic is about something else, but I wanted to jump in here and mention it because of the chat that Chris L. and I had earlier where he mentioned sending delays.

Sometimes I don't get email notifications right away, and sometimes it can be hours later, is this going to help speed that up?

Anything that doesn't go into that new sending lane would go into the queue like before and may experience varying levels of queue time before sending.

I do believe system alerts are being factored into the new lane as Paul described above and should be sent instantly as well.

~Caleb

I am also interested in any potential future advancements in this area.  Guest replies to SMS text messages coming right to our cell phone would help us reply to guests in a timely manner, especially when it’s an opportunity for service recovery.  

we had originally setup email filtering rules to automatically forward applicable emails to our Verizon cell numbers (##########@vtext.com) which initially worked great.  We have been noticing very long delays recently in receiving the text, sometimes as long as 24 hours.  When discussing with Verizon, they let us know the @vtext.com service is being discontinued so we should not expect any improvements.  

we did setup the OwnerRez push notifications that are helpful, but it would be ideal to either be able to customize the push notification sounds or being able to receive an SMS text.  With an SMS text, we can customize the notification sound to be unique and loud to get our attention and respond promptly.  

Any future advancements in this area would be greatly appreciated!

Ryan