Edinburgh, Scotland, 13th December 2010   

As the extreme winter weather continues to hit most of the country, companies and schools are faced with the huge task of contacting customers, staff and parents.  Companies need to quickly advise their customers and staff of important information such as office closures and alternative working arrangements.  Schools must advise parents as soon as possible that they should not bring their children to school or in the event of worsening weather conditions and building problems schools need to communicate with parents to collect their children early. 

Making contact with customers, staff and parents when an organisation needs to do so quickly can be a resource intensive process and one which can take a considerable length of time if someone needs to phone around and speak to all contacts.  Most people nowadays have their mobile phones with them and so are immediately contactable by a phone call, but more importantly can be contacted by SMS text message.  SMS text messaging is an instant and extremely powerful tool for contacting a large number of people simultaneously.

SMS text messaging is used by a number of organisations throughout the UK and worldwide for communicating in emergencies or distributing information in less urgent situations.  Schools and nurseries are a prime example of where the use of SMS text messaging can allow quick communication with a high number of parents and staff in a cost effective way.  No company or school should be without such a powerful communications tool at any point in the year, not least during the winter months.  With the extreme weather conditions we are experiencing again at this time of year SMS reduces the burden.  SMS can improve communications and can assist when implementing contingency plans but at the same time SMS can save companies and schools a significant amount of money by being more efficient and effective in their communications.

HSL provides a number of services and solutions that can be used to enable communication with large groups of people efficiently and effectively.  HSL’s WebSMS solution provides a web browser interface that can be used from any computer to easily send messages to large groups of people simultaneously.  Delivery to each recipient of the SMS is confirmed, meaning you can track the delivery of each message sent.   The HSL AlertBroadcast solution allows a “controller” user to remotely send a message from their own mobile handset to a large number of mobile phones simply by sending a single SMS message, removing the need to be at a computer at all.

Further information regarding HSL’s SMS messaging services can be found online at http://www.hslsms.com/ or by contacting HSL Marketing and Sales on +44 (0)1506 605 260 or by email to [email protected].