RiTA SMS delivery usually happens within a few seconds of sending your SMS. If, however, there is a reason the SMS cannot be delivered immediately, the telecommunication companies queue the SMS and try to resend it over a certain period of time. This period of time is called the SMS validity period.
Each telecommunication companies has a standard validity period, which on average is 2 to 3 days. During this period the SMS will be in a pending state where it has been sent by RiTA but not yet delivered. If the phone the SMS was being sent too did not become available within the validity period, the SMS will fail to deliver.
We cannot guarantee delivery for numbers in roaming (If they are overseas at the time). Whether or not the SMS can be delivered depends on agreements between the home network and the roaming network. This is out of our control.
There are a few reasons why an SMS might arrive late:
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The number in question is not available to receive SMS. It could be that the phone does not have good service, OR
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The phone is on a Do-Not-Disturb (DND) list for SMS services. This is usually initiated by the customer through their provider.
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The network has put a block on the number, for example, due to unpaid bills.
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There is an issue with the network or a service outage. In these events your SMS will get queued and will be sent for delivery as soon as possible, but there will likely be some delay.
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The phone is currently turned off when scheduled for delivery, when it is switched back on, the telecommunications company will try and deliver the SMS.
In short yes,
There are costs for us for every SMS we schedule for delivery and it is outside of our control as to whether an SMS gets delivered late or fails to deliver due to the nature of how SMS works at a telecommunications level.
To mitigate sending out SMS’s that won’t ever get delivered RiTA validates every mobile number in your CRM to make sure that it looks like a real mobile number before sending an SMS. If we do find a number that a SMS failed to deliver to RiTA will also let you know about it if you wish so you can update the data in your CRM so it will never happen again.
In our analysis SMS would get delivered late (past 12 hours) or not delivered at all <1% of the time and it can depend heavily on the quality and age of the data in your CRM. To mitigate this risk we are working with our SMS provider on ways to limit how late an SMS can be sent so they aren’t getting delivered late into the night in some cases.