With the intention of helping small businesses deliver better customer service, Orange has announced that it will release its SMS API by beginning of April.
With the new service, one will be able to send validation codes to customers to confirm an advert on a classified ad site, notify customers when a package is ready for delivery and and keep customers in touch with the latest news about a service.
“With our SMS API, you can now send automatic SMS from your digital service to all Orange and non-Orange users in Côte d’Ivoire. The service is easy to set up and run, and you can use it for a whole range of marketing and customer service activities,” said Orange on their website.
“By choosing our SMS API, you have the reassurance of dealing with a pan-African operator established in
. Orange is the premier operator in Côte d’Ivoire with 8.2 million mobile customers (source: ARTCI, Sept 2014).
With this API, your SMS activity is carried over the Orange network, which is widely acknowledged for its quality,” read another part.
Now, the Api will be progressively available in a selection of countries where Orange operates, starting with Côte d’Ivoire.
The API can be integrated in the following steps; register your app (select “use API”), choose the SMS bundle you need, configure your service with the API key you have been given and then set rules according to your needs, for example to efficiently send notifications or validation codes.
The service comes with a set of reporting APIs that will always tell you where you stand:
remaining credit, number of SMS consumed by your applications and history of your purchases.
“Orange wants every developer to be able to use the SMS API. You don’t need to have a bank account or a credit card to buy our SMS bundles: just use a local Orange SIM card, whether it is a voice offer or an Internet Everywhere /Business Everywhere one.
The bundles are deducted from your prepaid account, so top up to buy each new bundle,” said Orange.