Sports Team Texting Saves Time, Gas, and Frustration for Parents, Athletes and Coaches

Written by Calvin Fabre on Jun 30, 2012

Group SMS Texting with Intelligent Voice Callback is making the lives of players, coaches, and parents better through an instant, opt-in, group SMS texting system which can be used from a flip phone, website or smart-phone.

BATON ROUGE, LA [JUNE 30, 2012] - Today, Envoc announced FlipFire, a new and innovative service that will revolutionize the way that sports teams communicate, with the prospect of influencing communication methods in other areas as well. The service utilizes an activity that modern society, especially young team players, has embraced in recent years - texting. Group SMS Texting with Intelligent Voice Callback is simplifying the lives of players, coaches, and parents through an instant, unlimited opt-in, group SMS texting system which can be used from a flip phone, website or smart-phone.

"With the way that texting has exploded in our culture in recent years, we thought that it made sense to create a service that would utilize this activity but also solve a common communication problem for team coaches," said Calvin Fabre, father of three kids with sports team practices in their present and future, "We know from experience that it’s frustrating to waste time and energy traveling to a practice only to find out it’s been cancelled after you arrive. For coaches responsible for notifying a team of players and parents of a canceled practice, changing in uniform colors for the big game, or a change in bus schedules, email, website updates and phone calls just don't perform. We wanted to create a solution that would work for coaches, players and athletes."

Thus, Envoc designed FlipFire to solve this issue with a system that is opt-in for parents and players alike. Coaches are able to send broadcast messages even from low-tech feature phones to specific groups easily. Website-based signup of text broadcasts can capture opt-ins from a team or league's website with no web programming needed. The software is already being used successfully in Baton Rouge.

"The hundreds of opt-in text message subscribers appreciate getting notified about field closures due to weather before they reach for their car keys," said Bo Cassidy, Developmental Director for Baton Rouge Soccer Association, who has been using the software for the current soccer season.

An additional feature of FlipFire includes Intelligent Replies which allow recipients to reply only to the person who sent the broadcast instead of replying to the entire group as is the default behavior of most mobile phone messaging apps. By using local opt-in phone numbers instead of short codes, the five digit codes that are frequently used in mass texting, FlipFire can route voice calls back to the broadcaster when there is no time to text a reply back. By using local, dedicated phone numbers instead of short codes, FlipFire can intercept incoming voice calls and route them to the broadcaster and even play a pre-recorded marketing message before connecting the callers.

"Intelligent Voice Callback allows a recipient to call the number that sent them a text, creating a phone-to-phone voice-call," said Nathan Arant, Communications Specialist at Envoc, "This provides a mix of old-school and new-school users the ability to communicate with no hard feelings."

The service does have potential for use beyond sports scenarios. This type of Opt-in / Broadcaster Model can be used in Emergency Management and Disaster Scenarios, Teacher-Student, and even Travel Agent-Travel Group scenarios. Envoc has the capability of customizing the system to meet any number of agencies specific communication needs.

In 2010, Envoc, a software company based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, came under the wing of the Louisiana Small Business Development Center located on the SouthEastern Louisiana University campus and is fast becoming a success story for the center's business incubator. For more information contact Calvin Fabre at (225) 910-8239 ext 101 or visit http://envoc.com.