Two-way SMS messaging in Amazon Pinpoint

Amazon Pinpoint includes support for two-way SMS. When you set up two-way SMS, you can receive incoming messages from your customers. You can also use two-way messaging together with other AWS services, such as Lambda and Amazon Lex, to create interactive text messaging experiences.

Two-way SMS is only available in certain countries and regions. For more information about two-way SMS support by country or region, see Supported countries and regions (SMS channel).

For more information on managing two-way SMS see Configuring two-way SMS in Amazon Pinpoint.

Two-way SMS use cases

Businesses in a wide variety of industries can use two-way SMS to keep their customers informed and engaged.

For example, medical practices can send messages to their patients asking them to confirm their appointments. Patients can respond, indicating whether they're able to keep their appointments. Patients who respond that they can't keep their appointments are sent a list of available times, and can reply to the message to reschedule. This use case can be applied to several other types of businesses, such as restaurants or salons.

Another use case is the verification of certain real-world actions. For example, banks or credit card providers can send a verification message when they notice unusual charges on a customer's account. The customer can respond to the message authorizing the charge. When the provider receives the authorization, they can allow the transaction to proceed.

A third use case for two-way SMS is interactive customer support, either with a live agent, or with a bot. For example, the AWS Messaging and Targeting Blog describes a solution that uses Lambda and Amazon Lex to create an SMS chatbot.