Adapting to the New Standard for SMS in the US: Inside the Massive 10DLC Product Build at Vonage

As product managers, we find ourselves needing to suddenly throw our product roadmaps out the window at times due to unexpected market disruption. Recently, it’s been a global pandemic. Before that, GDPR and the CPRA affected how any product manages the data it collects. 

When these significant shifts happen, we need to adapt quickly. The question soon becomes: build or buy? Is this something that your development team can adjust to very quickly? 

This type of shift is happening in the SMS industry with the adoption of the 10 Digit Long Code (10DLC) standard. Our partners at Vonage have been at the forefront of this shift, ensuring their customers are compliant with the new 10DLC number option, which is the new standard in application-to-person (A2P) conversations. 

• 10DLC is incredibly important for all PMs building products that use SMS to communicate with and get feedback from their customers. 
• It will help with alerts and notifications, customer support, two-factor authentication (2FA), and marketing messaging. 
• You can make sure that your important messages are read on time, help customers get their questions answered quickly, and be certain your messaging is secure.

We asked Vonage Product Manager – Numbers Team, Doru Moise, how they went about building a product that is compliant with the 10DLC standard.

The process for building Vonage’s 10DLC offering

In a pandemic, it was essential for pharmaceutical companies developing vaccines to work with organizations such as the FDA. Similarly, Vonage went to the source when developing their product to be compliant with new guidelines.

“This is a big shift in the SMS industry and is brought on by new carrier guidelines,” explained Moise. “A lot of the planning was dependent on working with the carriers on the new requirements and deadlines and making sure to execute on a plan for our customers to be ready.”

Building a product to solve customer pain points

Consumers at large stand to benefit from products such as the 10DLC feature Moise helped build at Vonage. Product managers looking to do 10DLC-compliant SMS communication with their customers get a solution that won’t impede their roadmap when faced with new guidelines. They can quickly get set up and keep building. That allows them to continue to give their customers the best possible user messaging experience. It’s a win-win.

“10DLC is a regulation for SMS in the US that we have to follow. Unfortunately, there is no workaround. [These guidelines] create a bit of disruption in the short term, but in the long term, 10DLC will be good for everyone since it gives brands more ways to connect with their audience in a format that’s more personal.” 

“It will allow our customers to register the phone numbers they are going to use for SMS in the US against different use cases. The purpose of this is to offer better tools for blocking bad actors and preventing fraud without impacting the rest of the customers.” 

What PMs should know

From one PM (Moise ) to another (all of you), it’s important that businesses leveraging mobile communications stay up to date with the complex world of mobile compliance guidelines.   Here’s what you should know about 10DLC registration with Vonage.

“Our team aimed at creating the best user experience for our customers going through the registration process. Our customers will be able to register via either the Customer Dashboard using a UI or via a brand new API.”

Lessons learned building this feature that they’ll use in the future

Products That Count is big on leveraging a Growth Mindset and focusing on continuous improvements in our daily operations. With that in mind, we asked Moise to share their most significant takeaway from this product build.

“10DLC was quite a big project, touching a lot of parts of the organization, and being in charge of the project helped me boost my coordination skills.

“As a PM, I’ve learned that you have to be comfortable taking key decisions on very short notice. With 10DLC, the deadline was very tight, and the requirements kept changing. Everything has been very dynamic. We had to move fast and be ready for any change that might come with very short notice.”
You can learn more about the 10DLC product from Vonage here.