This organization had some negative experiences with virtual meetings and participant interactions. They desired participation from attendees, and had previously done that through the chat window and also through unmuting the entire group, however:

• there was confusion when multiple people were verbally asking questions at the same time
• questions were off-topic and unrelated to the meeting
• Some chat window behaviors/poor etiquette reflected poorly on the organization
•  disruptive
•  excessively long posts
•  commenting on other participants posts/questions
• unfiltered and non-sequential chat posts made it confusing

Pulse Retail Systems (PRS) supplied its SMS/Pro technology and consulted with organizers to tailor a solution that worked for the forum.

The meeting host disabled the public chat function, but sent an initial post to let the participants know they could text their questions to a specified number. It’s important to note that this number was the organization’s landline that had been text-enabled through the SMS/Pro implementation.  This was not a personal mobile number; this is an important concept because the organizers did not want to use a personal device for personal privacy reasons.

The moderator/host could view the questions and address them when appropriate.

The questions were handled in an orderly fashion and there were no disruptions during the meeting. At the end of the meeting, participants that asked questions were sent a feedback survey via SMS; virtually all of the people that were contacted filled out the survey and additional insight was available for the organizer.  That was an expected outcome, as studies have shown that a greater participation rate is associated with SMS conversations.

An interesting revelation happened at the end of the meeting: participants were unmuted and could participate in an informal Q&A … what happened at that point was that people were all talking at the same time and the situation became confusing … proving the effectiveness of the moderated model using SMS/Pro.