Question

Photo of Bryan Cole

0

PastorsLine vs Rock for info requests (versus transactional sms messages)

2

Hello All!

Thanks as always for reading the post. As an IT professional who has joined a church AFTER the Rock implementation, there's a lot of processes that have been churning away here and have not needed any attention.  We use Rock for texting event attendees, notification of upcoming events, etc. We use PastorsLine for short code inquiries, such as "Text ISAIDYES to 77411."

Id like to ask the wider audience - Rock can most likely handle the shortcake work as well - but two specific questions come to mind:

1) is there any benefit to recording all of these communications in one place (Rock) - I can think of some, but they are just guesses. It seems it would just "fill out" the assimilation pathway with data points, and keep most all digital comms in one place. On the flip side, the PastorsLine messaging, at least how it is used here, is to request information for events, etc - it's essentially a way to take action on things spoken in sermons, listed on news slides, etc.

2) If so, how does Rock do at handling this kind of request/reply information? Is it fairly straight forward for folks to create a campaign? 

Just curious if it makes sense to plan to merge these functions going forward.

Thanks for your time, as always!

~Bryan

  • Photo of Luke Taylor

    0

    Bryan,
    Rock does have a lot of SMS capability baked in. There's documentation about the SMS Pipeline here.
    In short, the SMS pipeline enables a number of features, such as immediate responses to keywords, entering into conversations, and lots of automation if someone wanted to pursue building workflows.

    I'm not familiar with other SMS conversation products in a way that I could compare and contrast those for you.

    One of the biggest benefits to centralizing communications in Rock, and especially those areas where your congregation is sending messages to you, is that you can build a picture of someone's involvement with the church rapidly.
    In the use case you spell out there - texting a keyword to let the church know that someone has accepted Christ, you could immediately start an accountable follow-up process for staff or volunteers because of it, and track whether that person moves from that decision point and into deeper relationship with God and the Church.

    The SMS conversation aspect is also very handy - pastors or ministries can have "their" number that doesn't actually resolve to their phone, but that can be used at low cost (for 10-digit numbers) to communicate with people.  It also allows a team of people to respond to messages, rather than just one person.

    I notice that you're in the Phoenix area.  If you hop on the Rock community chat, there's an #rc-phoenix channel that has a lot of other local Rock churches. You might want to join in, I know there are occasionally some get togethers where churches share what they're doing with Rock.

  • Photo of Bryan Cole

    0

    Luke, thanks so much for the detail!

    You are confirming what I was suspecting. Any visibility to involvement and actions really helps - and when it's extended across several platforms, that's a lot less effective.


    Thanks much for the tips, and the FYI about the Phx chat!

    ~Bryan