Connect your phone number

ServiceBooked needs to own a phone number to do its job. Two ways to wire it up — pick whichever fits your situation.

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Option A — Use the new ServiceBooked number as your business line

Best when: you don’t have an established business number yet, or you’re willing to swap the number you advertise on your website / Google Business Profile / business cards. How it works:

1. The ServiceBooked number is the public number customers call.
2. When they call, ServiceBooked rings your personal mobile (forwarded from the ServiceBooked number).
3. If you pick up — you handle the call normally.
4. If you don’t — ServiceBooked sends the auto-text and (on Growth/Pro) hands the call to the AI Receptionist.

Setup:

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Option B — Keep your existing number

Best when: you have an established business number you don’t want to swap (customers know it, it’s printed on materials, it’s listed everywhere). How it works:

1. Customers call your existing number.
2. Your phone carrier rings it. If you don’t pick up within X seconds, the carrier forwards the unanswered call to your ServiceBooked number.
3. ServiceBooked then runs the auto-text and (on Growth/Pro) the voice AI Receptionist.

This is called Conditional Call Forward on No-Answer (CFNA) and almost every major carrier supports it. Setup:

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Which option is “better”?

Most owners with an existing number choose Option B because they don’t want to re-print materials or risk losing repeat customers who only know the old number. New businesses without an established number go with Option A for simplicity. Both options give you the exact same auto-text + AI voice + transcript features — the only difference is which number is the public one.

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Changing or releasing your number

Once your ServiceBooked number is live, the number field on Settings → Phone is locked. It’s tied to a real phone line with call and text routing wired behind it, so it isn’t something you can safely swap by editing a text box — changing it there would point us at a number that doesn’t actually ring. To switch to a different number or release the one you have, open a support ticket. We do it by hand so your calls and texts keep flowing through the change, and we re-do the business-SMS registration the new number needs before it can text. There’s no fee to switch beyond the new number’s normal monthly cost.

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Multiple numbers / multiple locations

Each ServiceBooked organization gets one main phone number. Multi-location operators typically run one ServiceBooked org per location so each has its own dedicated number, calendar, and team. Talk to support if you want to consolidate — we can help you pick the right structure.

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What happens to voicemail?

If you’ve enabled the voice AI Receptionist (Growth/Pro), voicemail is mostly redundant — the AI Receptionist catches calls you don’t answer. If you keep voicemail enabled as a fallback, ServiceBooked will record + transcribe the message and surface it in the inbox alongside the call’s metadata. For Starter or for owners who don’t want voice AI Receptionist, voicemail still works the way it always has — your existing carrier voicemail picks up. ServiceBooked is independent of that.

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Next: configure what happens when you don’t pick up