Lender Resource Center

Texting Shortcuts to Improve Your Response Time

By marywe on 1 Sep 2016

Getting a new contact alert while you are running off to a closing appointment or are heading home at the end of the day can be inconvenient. Responding right away will greatly improve your chances of connecting, but sometimes a phone call isn’t always possible. Even if you can quickly send a text message, it does take a little extra effort to review for spelling, grammar, and auto-correction errors. Creating pre-typed phrases and messages that you can send with the touch of a few keys is an easy solution if you have a smartphone. We’ll show you how to create quick text shortcuts and text message templates on your smartphone to connect with your contacts much faster and more efficiently.

Quick Texts/Predictive Text:

If typing on a touch screen is more of a nuisance to you than a help, then you might appreciate being able to use predictive text to quickly send a text message. How it works: enter in a shortcut code (such as “callme”) to have a suggested text come up. Once highlighted, simply touch the suggested text and it will populate the message field automatically.

The templates [below] contain sample text only. It is important to ensure that all advertisements and solicitations comply with state and federal laws, rules, and regulations and that you’ve received appropriate consent to contact consumers electronically prior to sending any advertisement or solicitation. Zillow Group Mortgages, Inc. makes no representation regarding the sufficiency of these templates for either these compliance purposes or any other purpose.

How to Set it Up:

Android Device (Samsung Galaxy series)

1) Access your “Settings”

2) Select “Language and input”

3) Select “Samsung keyboard”

4) Select “My hot keys” or “Text shortcuts”

5) For the shortcut, type out your full message in the “Enter shortcut text:” section. Add and continue to add additional ones if you like. It will save automatically.

Android Device (Non-Samsung)

1) Access your “Settings”

2) Select “Language and input”

3) Select “Personal dictionary”

4) Tap the “ADD” in the top right corner

5) For the shortcut, create a simple code that you can type to bring up the quick text (i.e. Zillow for the intro text). Type your desired predictive text in the text section. Select the checkmark at the bottom once finished to save. Add additional shortcuts if you like.

iPhone

1) Access your “Settings”

2) Select “General”

3) Select “Keyboard”

4) Select “Text Replacement”

5) Select the “+” to add a new text replacement

6) Add your desired phrase and type the shortcut code you’d like to use in the box below. Once finished, click the Save button in the top right corner. Add additional shortcuts if you like.

Text Message Templates

How it works: These are quick response text templates that are saved in your phone. Quickly select your desired message from the menu and it will auto-populate for you – no typing required. Click the send button and you will have replied in less than 10 seconds.

Template Recommendations

Create an introductory text identifying who you are and why you’re following up. We also recommend creating quick texts to send out as you are engaged in conversation – ones that ask for a good time to call and their preferred method of contact, any out of office responses you’d need send, and so on.
This doesn’t even have to be limited to new contacts only – you can create text templates for current clients – for following up on missing documents, sending links for your online application, or asking them to review you on your Zillow Group profile.

How to Set it Up:

If you use an iPhone, you can create longer text templates in the same location as the Text Replacement feature. However, if you use an Android, there are character limits for predictive text. To create longer messages, use the “Quick Response” option instead.

1) Go to your Messages and click the More button on the top right of the screen. Select Settings.