Awardco has the ability to send SMS (text message) notifications to users when they are recognized. This will be especially useful for companies with employees who have limited access to email, or who may not be frequent users of computers (employees in restaurants, hospitals, warehouses; truck drivers; etc.). It’s important to note that this feature is not an complete alternative to email notifications—rather, it is a supplementary feature to expand the reach of your Awardco platform.
Note: Some Awardco clients may not be eligible to use our SMS feature. Our SMS provider Twilio blocks companies in certain industries from using their service (for example: illegal substances/articles, prescription drugs, gambling, etc.) Please reference Twilio’s full list HERE to ensure your company does not fall into one of these categories.
How it Works
If a user is enrolled in SMS notifications, they will receive text messages when they are recognized in Awardco.
Message Format
Each text message will be in this format:
Awardco: Congrats {RecognitionToFirstName}! {RecognitionFromFirstName} just recognized you! View your recognition here: [link to recognition]
Additionally, when a user receives a text from Awardco for the first time, it will be immediately followed up with the following introductory message:
You have been opted in to receive notifications from Awardco. Message frequency varies. Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to opt out.
User & Company Setup Process
User Setup
If your company has SMS enabled, you can opt-in to receive text messages by logging in to Awardco and going to My Account→Notifications→SMS and turning SMS Notifications to “ON”
If you do not have a phone number in Awardco, you will be prompted to add one to your profile before you can enable the feature.
To opt-out of receiving SMS messages from Awardco, simply follow the steps above and turn SMS Notifications to “OFF”. You can also reply to any text messages you receive from Awardco with the word “STOP”, in which case you will need to reply with the word “START” again should you wish to resume receiving notifications.
Company Setup
As an Awardco admin, you can enable SMS Notifications for your company by following the steps below:
- Start populating Phone Numbers in your Awardco platform
- Contact your Awardco representative to enable the SMS feature
- Configure your company settings for SMS Notifications
Step 1: Start Populating Phone Numbers in your Awardco platform
User phone numbers must be provided for employees to receive SMS notifications. Users have the option to either provide their phone numbers or enter them manually in their My Account settings. Please refer to our support documentation for detailed instructions on how to add phone numbers to ensure your user information is provided correctly. Once you understand how phone numbers are added to your Awardco platform, you’re ready to proceed to the next step.
Step 2: Contact your Awardco representative
You’ll need to contact your Awardco representative to have them enable SMS Notifications on your company’s Awardco platform. This activation process can take several business days. Once you receive confirmation that the feature has been enabled, you’re ready to proceed to the next step.
Step 3: Configure Your Company Settings for SMS Notifications
You are now ready to configure SMS Notifications for your company’s Awardco platform. These settings can be configured by going to Admin→Settings→Company Settings→SMS.
There are two primary settings you may configure:
Who Can Receive
This setting allows you to select which users will have the ability to receive SMS notifications. The options are “No One” (nobody can receive texts), “Everyone” (all employees can receive texts), or “Metadata” (only users with a specific metadata value can receive texts).
Note that this setting only designates which users are eligible to receive SMS Notifications. They will not actually receive any text messages unless they opt themselves in to receive them (see “User Setup” above) or they have been opted in automatically by your company (see below).
Automatic Enrollment
This setting is optional, and allows you to automatically enroll users to start receiving text messages. The settings you’ve configured for “Who Can Receive” will still apply to the settings you configure here. If enabled, the options are “Everyone” (all users are automatically opted-in to receive texts), or “Metadata” (only users with a specific metadata value are automatically opted-in to receive texts).
Note that you will be prompted to accept our SMS Agreement when enabling this setting. This indicates that you are aware that you must obtain consent from your employees to automatically opt them in to receive texts.
You are now set up and ready to take advantage of SMS Notifications!
Additional Details about SMS Notifications
Each client will have their own dedicated phone number that messages are sent from. This number is automatically assigned when the feature is enabled and cannot be customized. Companies cannot use their own existing phone numbers for this feature.
The verbiage of the text messages is standardized and cannot be customized at this time.
International Considerations
Foreign Countries
While our SMS feature is capable of sending messages to users outside of the US, we do not have a comprehensive list of countries that are supported, and at this time, we cannot guarantee that all foreign users will receive messages. Laws and regulations surrounding SMS vary from country-to-country, and network-to-network, making it a massively complex and constantly evolving landscape.
We cannot guarantee the successful or consistent delivery of SMS messages to international users. Some reasons for this include (but are not limited to): carriers/networks blocking messages, laws prohibiting messages from US Toll-Free numbers, laws prohibiting messages containing links, insufficient connectivity levels, and so on.
So long as you understand the constraints outlined above, international messaging is possible. You’ll simply just need to add your international users' phone numbers into the system and enable or enroll them to receive texts (as outlined earlier in this article).
Foreign Languages
SMS messages will be translated according to the Language that users have their account set to on Awardco. (*The exceptions are languages that our SMS provider does not support, in which case, the texts will be sent in English.)
The following languages are supported by our SMS service:
- Arabic
- Bengali
- Chinese (Simplified)
- Chinese (Traditional)
- Czech
- Danish
- Dutch
- English
- Finnish
- French
- German
- Greek
- Hebrew
- Hindi
- Hungarian
- Italian
- Japanese
- Korean
- Lithuanian
- Malay
- Norwegian
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Russian
- Slovak
- Spanish
- Swedish
Regardless of the language that texts are sent in, the keywords to opt-in or opt-out must still be in English (ie: "STOP" to opt-out, "START" to opt-in)
If you have any questions, please contact our Awardco Support Team.