I was running a contact tracing contact center during COVID and we were having a bitch of a time getting people to talk to us. We ran ads on TV and in the paper, got the mayor to talk about us several times on the news and just could not get right party contact (rpc) above 20%! Then one day I did this to my daughter and she gave me so much shit for just calling her like that.
A week or so went by and if sunk in, we kicked off a text first pilot in our worst penetration zipcode and like magic we were over 80%. We rolled it out to the whole state and we moved RPC up to 75+% for the remainder of COVID.
While I can’t say how many lives contact tracing saved, I firmly believe my daughter giving me shit about calling her like that saved at least a few.
A friend sends them all the time or uses voice to text. Both are a disaster. The best part is he’s an English major and brilliant at writing copy but his friendly communication is frequently unintelligible.