Missed-call auto-text

When someone calls and you don’t pick up, ServiceBooked sends them a text within seconds. They reply, the AI Receptionist starts a conversation, and you’ve kept a lead that would have otherwise gone to your competitor. This is the simplest, highest-impact feature in the whole product. Most owners see a ~3× lift in lead capture from this alone.

​

How it works

1. A customer calls your number.
2. You don’t pick up (you’re on the tools, driving, or it’s after hours).
3. Within ~5 seconds of the missed-call event, ServiceBooked sends the caller an SMS from the same number they just called. To them, it looks like a personal text from your business.
4. When they reply, it goes into your Inbox and the AI Receptionist takes over the conversation — answering questions, qualifying the lead, and (if you’ve connected a calendar) booking an appointment.

​

Set it up

​

What makes a good auto-text message?

The default we ship is intentional:

Hi! Sorry we missed your call — what can we help you with?

A few things make this work:

• Open-ended question. “What can we help you with?” begs for a reply. A passive “we’ll call you back soon” gets crickets.
• Apologetic, not corporate. “Sorry we missed your call” is what a real person texts back. “Thank you for contacting [Business Name LLC]” is what a robot does.
• Short. Long messages feel scripted. Short ones feel human.
• No “press 1 for…” They already called. Make it easy for them to just type what they need.

If you’re going to customize, keep those principles. Some good variants:

Hey, sorry I missed you — what’s going on at your place?

Hi from ! Just stepping away from the truck. What can I help with?

Hey! On a job and couldn’t pick up. Drop me a quick note about what you need and I’ll get back to you ASAP.

Don’t:

• Pitch services (“We offer 24/7 emergency plumbing service…”). Too corporate.
• Promise a callback time you can’t keep (“I’ll call you back in 5 minutes”).
• Skip the open question. Without it, lots of callers don’t reply.

​

The 10DLC compliance footer

We automatically append Reply STOP to opt out. to your auto-text. This is required by US carriers (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile) for business-initiated SMS. Without it, your messages get filtered by the carrier and never reach the recipient. You don’t need to add this manually — we add it for you. If your custom message already mentions STOP/opt-out, we won’t double-add.

​

What about texts you didn’t write?

The auto-text is the FIRST message. After that, when the customer replies, the AI Receptionist takes over the conversation using your business hours, services, and knowledge base. You can read more about how that works in SMS replies. That takeover is a setting, not a requirement — see below if you’d rather handle the replies yourself.

​

Prefer the auto-text without the AI?

Plenty of owners want the text-back but aren’t ready to let an AI speak for their business. That’s a supported setup, not a workaround. Two independent settings control it: Everything else keeps working: the auto-text still fires, missed calls are still logged, and voicemail still records and transcribes. Once you’ve watched it for a week, the AI Receptionist is there when you want it. It’s the difference between “we got their text” and “we booked the job.”

​

A2P 10DLC registration

Before US carriers will deliver your texts reliably, you need to register your brand under A2P 10DLC. This is a one-time process you complete in your Twilio account. Without it, messages will look like they’re sending from our side but get silently filtered before reaching customers. Full A2P 10DLC walkthrough →

​

Common questions

Will my auto-text replace my voicemail greeting? No — voicemail is independent. If voicemail is enabled and the caller waits past the auto-text, they can still leave a message; we’ll transcribe it and add it to the conversation. What if a customer calls multiple times in a row? We deduplicate by caller ID + a short window, so frantic redials don’t generate three texts. The auto-text fires once per real “missed call” event. Can I exclude my own number / partners / spam callers? Not yet — the auto-text fires on every real missed call. If you have a known spam-caller problem, add their number to your phone’s blocked list at the carrier level so the call never reaches us. Does auto-text keep running if my trial ends or my payment fails? No. Auto-text pauses whenever your account doesn’t have an active plan — a lapsed trial, a cancelled subscription, or a failed payment that’s exhausted its retries. Missed calls are still logged and voicemail still records, so nothing is lost from your Inbox; the outbound text just doesn’t go out. It resumes automatically the moment billing is sorted. It also pauses if you’ve hit your plan’s monthly conversation cap — see Plans and limits. Can I send different messages on weekends / after hours? The single auto-text message is what fires regardless of time. The AI’s follow-up responses (after the customer replies) DO use your business hours and respond differently outside hours. So a customer texting at 11pm gets the same first auto-text but the AI Receptionist’s answer to “are you open right now?” reflects reality.

​

Next