Solutions By Text (SBT)
Introduction
LoanPro is integrated with Solutions By Text (SBT), a third-party software that allows you to send text messages to your customers through our software. SMS messages are a form of LoanPro's customer communication options, but texting your customers come with a few restrictions.
In this article, we'll explain how to set up an SBT integration.
Getting Started
To get started, you will need to create an account with Solutions By Text. To sign up, you can follow this link to view their website.
Before we explain how to integrate your SBT account, there are a few important things to know. First, it's important to note that SMS communications comes with a few limitations. There are restrictions on sending unsolicited text messages to borrowers, so we suggest reading up on your local laws regarding communicating with your borrowers. Next, your SBT integration will not allow you to send freely written messages. Instead, you will need to use the templates that you can create and save within your account. You can save as many templates as you'd like, but they're the only way to send out specific messages.
Integration
Once you have an account with SBT, navigate to Settings > Company > Plugins > Solutions By Text (SBT) to enter your credentials.
To enter your credentials, click 'Edit'.
Each of these fields will be provided to you by Solutions By Text except for the 'SBT Environment' setting; this setting lets you choose whether you will be using your live account inside LoanPro or an SBT sandbox account. Once you’ve entered your credentials, click 'Save'. Now, you will be able to send text messages to your customers.
Receiving Responses
Your borrowers can respond to your text messages; however, for their responses to show in the Communication History, you will have to add LoanPro callback URLs to your SBT account. The callback URLs for each LoanPro environment are as follows:
To enter these into SBT, navigate to https://ui.solutionsbytext.com/Sbtweb and log in.
Next, click the gear icon to open your settings.
For each of the groups, individually navigate to the 'Custom.Info' tab and enter the callback URLs at the bottom of the page.
Once you have added the callback URLs for one group, click 'Save'. Make sure to add the callback URLs for all three groups. You are now ready for two-way communication with your borrowers via text.
Imports
If your company is new to Solutions By Text and you want to verify multiple phone numbers, you can use a Customer Tools import to verify customer phone numbers. The import file contains the following headers:
- action - For an SMS verification, this should be set to "update"
- customerId - For an SMS verification, this should be the ID of the customer whom you want to verify
- ofac - Not applicable to an SMS verification
- upsverify - Not applicable to an SMS verification
- credco - Not applicable to an SMS verification
- smsverify - This should be set to "bypasssmsverify" if you want to mark the customer verified in LoanPro ONLY. It should be set to "smsverifysend" if you want to send out verification messages for all the customers in the file
- carrierLookup - Not applicable to an SMS verification
Verification Through the API
It's also possible to perform SBT verification of phone numbers through the LoanPro API. To do this, use the following endpoint:
POST https://loanpro.simnang.com/api/public/api/1/sbt/verifyCustomer({id})
If you want a number to be verified in LoanPro, but not send a message through SBT, add a parameter to the URL:
POST https://loanpro.simnang.com/api/public/api/1/sbt/verifyCustomer({id})?bypassVerify=true
(Make sure to replace {id} with the ID of the customer for whom you are verifying the primary phone number.)
It is important to know that when a borrower is set up with SBT, any shortcode they send to your company will be lost until an initial message is sent through LoanPro. That means that if you have never sent anything to the borrower, there is no way for SBT to know which customer they are inside of LoanPro. Consequently, all messages they send at that point will be lost and unrecoverable.