Transport business is on the increase day by day in Nigeria today. These business owners might deal with the delivery of goods and packages from place to place, and/or the converging of people either within a particular state or between different states in the country.

As a transport business owner, one of the major things you want to ensure is your customers’ satisfaction. Also, you want people to just use your service once and go or use it coincidentally; you will want it to be treated as a number one choice for travelers. One way to do this is to make provisions for seat reservations for your clients.

The first thing you need is to have a phone number database for people who use your transport service. If you are just starting, you can request this from people who patronize your service and keep it in a database. Also, if you have a website for your business, which you should seriously consider having, people can drop their phone contact details there online as you let them know it’s for promotions and special provisions like seat reservations confirmation.

After getting a phone number database, the next thing you want to do is have a dedicated phone number to which these persons can send their reservation requests. If it’s possible within your means, preferably you can get a shortcode for the purpose. See here why shortcodes are nice for SMS marketing. Choose something easy to remember. Once this is done, make it available to all in your database, put it up on your website, and let people know about that.

Once you have your contact detail set up and have gotten across to everyone that needs to know, the next thing is to develop a system for people making seat reservations using SMS. This might be in form of them sending a keyword to the number that will already have been defined or sending a brief message stating the request and their choice of seat.

The next thing is to register a bulk SMS account if you have not already. There are many things you will do with it, and sending notice of transport schedules and acknowledgment of seat reservations is one of them. You inform your clients that they can make seat reservations through SMS by sending them a targeted SMS, and giving them how to go about it. Once someone has made a reservation, you will also acknowledge this using SMS and follow up with other details such as time of departure, and ticket number if applicable.

The arrangement can be made for them to pay for the seat online through a portal you’ve designed or pay at the ground once they come. Also, remember that to make it interesting for your clients, i.e. making reservations through SMS, you will want to add a discount for those who do that. That way, you offer convenience at a lower cost and will make your business grow.

With bulk SMS, make your transport business an endearing experience for travelers, keep existing customers, get a whole lot of new ones and watch your business grow.

Let us have your questions and general contribution on the use of bulk SMS for seat reservations by transport companies.