Based on its recent analysis of the North American business communications solutions market, Frost & Sullivan recognizes Sprint Business with the 2019 North American New Product Innovation Award for Sprint® Smart Messaging — a solution to help businesses communicate with their customers through an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered text messaging system. Sprint’s innovative solution allows businesses to use their existing phone number to communicate in real-time using AI, and as a result rescue missed customer calls.  Smart Messaging allows businesses to uniquely interact with customers using non-traditional forms of communications. It delivers enterprise-grade assistance for storefronts, restaurants, and businesses of all sizes. With the unique text capabilities of Smart Messaging, businesses are realizing the benefits of an ‘always-on’ automated assistant that enhances customer satisfaction and employee productivity.

“Broadly applicable across a range of main street businesses, Sprint Smart Messaging expands capabilities and functions with an AI engine to respond to customer calls and questions via text messaging. When the business cannot answer the phone, the call automatically gets converted to text capability. No other carrier currently supporting the small to medium size business (SMB) segment offers this level of enterprise-grade customer engagement,” said Brent Iadarola, Frost & Sullivan Vice President of Information & Communications Technologies. “When callers leave a voicemail, the Smart Messaging system transcribes it and transmits it to the business owner (or designated employee) to read, callback, or send a follow-up text.”

With Sprint Smart Messaging, business owners or designated employees have an application interface (iOS and Android) to direct responses via their smart phones, tablets, or computers. It can even deliver seamless translations, automatically sending and receiving messages to and from customers and businesses in their preferred language. Furthermore, its application interface can notify the business owner or predefined personnel of associated inquiries, orders, or sales opportunities. Business users can also gain insights from rolling analytics reports on the data and usage of their Smart Messaging deployment.

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The AI-powered messaging assistant allows prospective customer questions to be answered immediately, ultimately reducing labor costs and increasing response times. Numa AI is the engine powering the solution. Numa AI answers customer queries, takes orders, and is built to handle commerce via text conversation. The AI provides answers to frequently asked questions and learns over time the business’s preferred answers. When Numa AI cannot provide an answer, it escalates the question to the human user and learns the best responses for future reference. Numa AI helps businesses personalize responses to customers, at scale, for each individual, based on past touchpoints.

“Smart Messaging complements Sprint’s Smart Communications portfolio dedicated to driving value for SMBs. By focusing on services with quick development cycles, Sprint has successfully addressed the communications needs of businesses that demand more efficient and economical software-based solutions,” noted Iadarola. “Smart Messaging can layer in bundled Sprint services such as Business MultiLine for separating personal and business phone service on a single device, and Omni™the intelligent office that connects your business to everything, for cloud-based phone service with unified communications features designed for SMBs.”

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Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has developed an innovative element in a product by leveraging leading-edge technologies. The award recognizes the value-added features/benefits of the product and the increased return on investment (ROI) it gives customers, which, in turn, raises customer acquisition and overall market penetration potential.

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry.

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