Tapping the text market: Chattanooga startup Text Request unveils new technology

photo Brian Elrod, left, and Rob Reagan are photographed in the lobby of the Imax Theater on Thursday during a tech startup launch for their company, Text Request. The new company has developed a system that enables customers to send text messages to businesses.

Grocery shopping and need to know where the olives are?

Want the dinner check but your server hasn't circled back for ages?

Feel like letting your local salon know their stylist cut too much off your bangs?

A Chattanooga startup gives you texting power for all that.

Text Request launched Thursday with a technological splash, showcasing its interactive service at the Imax theater in downtown Chattanooga.

The company's goal is to create a convenient line of communication between businesses or organizations and their customers.

"Everybody texts already," Brian Elrod, one of Text Request's founders, said. "The learning curve is so quick."

It takes no more manpower to answer texts than answer phones, Elrod said. "Most people who are responding would have answered the phone."

Tammy Neil, a receptionist at St. Nicholas School, attests to that.

"You can answer so many texts in the time you would answer a phone call," Neil said. "Calls take longer, or you get put on hold."

Parents use Text Request to send information about their children. The texts go to three computers at the Chattanooga private elementary school. Neil's is the main one. If she's not there, others tend to the messages on their computers. To that end, Text Request includes an auto responder, which Neil turns on after school hours.

St. Nicholas School was one of five local businesses or organizations that Text Request allowed to use its service for free during recent weeks, in order to test its technology.

Text Request isn't the first to offer a text-based customer-service solution. Zingle, based in California, is one company that already does.

But Text Request's execs have done their research, finding that none of the companies is in the Southeast, nor do they offer exactly what Text Request offers, Elrod said.

"We can't find a single business in (Chattanooga) that was text enabled," Elrod said. "No one has grabbed the lion's share of the market, so for us, in our mind, it's about to become an arms race."

Elrod founded Text Request with his wife, Jamey, and Iron Horse Software founder Rob Reagan. The Elrods also lay claim to two other Chattanooga-based companies they founded: Jock Sale and Educational Outfitters.

The concept for Text Request came to the couple about two years ago, when they needed to leave a restaurant but couldn't find their server to get their tab. About a year later, the team started building the company.

Text Request's technology doesn't reveal customers' phone numbers. Instead, customers appear, for example, as "random user #3322." Businesses can take those identifiers and rename them. That's useful because the communication threads gets archived.

Texts can be forwarded: For example, when a hotel's front desk clerk gets a text pleading for plumbing help he can pass it on to maintenance.

And Text Request has mechanisms to alert businesses or organizations when texts have not been addressed, and mark when they have.

Guests at the SpringHill Suites Chattanooga Downtown have had access to the service for two months, said Dwayne Massengale, the hotel's general manager. About half of them have used it, and none has mentioned using a similar service before, he said.

Hotel staff tell guests about Text Request when they check in and include information in key packets and rooms.

"They were so excited to try something new, that they didn't need to pick up a phone," Massengale said. Most used it for directions, finding out about Chattanooga happenings and getting information on hotel amenities.

Contact staff writer Mitra Malek at mmalek@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6406.

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