Brands embrace SMS channels in delivery of services and products

SMS plays an important role in marketing as well as delivery of some services to mobile users. PHOTO | FILE 

By Silvia Mwendia

Kenyans can now access professional counselling services via text through a newly launched platform, My Insight, which has led the way into a new area of service delivery by short-messaging-services (SMS).

My Insight was launched at the beginning of the month with the aim of offering anonymity and being the first point of contact for guidance and counselling services.

“Sometimes people are more comfortable getting such services in the privacy of their homes or villages and, with this new technology, My Insight is making counselling on a wide range of issues available to them, quickly and securely,” said Ms Cellina Alisi, founder of My Insight.

But as counselling services move from traditional face-to-face consultations to more accessible platforms, such as My Insight’s SMSes, it begs the question of the degree to which brands must consider the most appropriate delivery channels for the function of their products or services.

In counselling, early evidence is that SMSes can provide some help.

In 2015, Thomas D. Hull of Columbia University conducted a preliminary study on the effectiveness of SMS therapy by looking into Talkspace, which is an online and mobile-based therapy company.

By analysing the company’s messaging therapy, the study titled ‘A Preliminary Study of Talkspace’s Text-based Psychotherapy’ found that 90 per cent of the patients showed a “nearly full point improvement in psychological well-being”.

The respondents who also received the text-based therapy were quite satisfied with the treatment they got at Talkspace, compared to other types of treatment they had tried in the past.

Some 92.3 per cent of the respondents said Talkspace helped them make progress on their problem, while 96.1 per cent felt that they got the help right when they needed it.

This, while removing the breadth and depth of typically one hour long face-to-face counselling services, the new generation of text-based counse’ling services are, it seems, better fulfilling clients’ needs in some ways.

In exploring what clients really need, and get, from counselling, in 2012, a study titled ‘Meaningful Experiences in the Counseling Process’ by Corrine Sackett, Gerard Lawson and Penny L. Burge, published in The Professional Counsellor Journal, analysed the experiences of clients during counselling sessions, and found that six elements made for meaningful counselling, being insight, immediacy, goals, emotion, non-verbals, transference and countertransference.

Thus, as long as counselling is focused, personalised, insightful, professional and immediate, it seems that SMS texts can indeed serve to assist, opening the way to other brands, too, in extending their uses of SMS platforms.

In this, the extent to which SMS services can usefully be deployed does depend on the target market.

“Is it the middle class? Is it people at the bottom of the pyramid? Is it the affluent? Are they comfortable using it?” said Kenyan marketer and founder of digital agency Dotsavvy, Moses Kemibaro.

However, the growth in SMS based services and marketing has so far been largely confined to surveys, promotions and announcements.