Skip to content

Missed-call recovery

The thirty seconds after a missed call decide whether you keep it.

Somebody rang, nobody picked up, and right now they are looking at the next search result. A text that arrives before they get there changes the outcome more than anything else you could do.

Why the window is so short

A customer who dials your business and gets nothing does not usually sit and wait. They have a problem, your number was one of several in front of them, and the next one is a thumb-width away.

Whatever reaches them has to arrive inside that gap. An hour later they have hired somebody. A callback the next morning reaches a person who no longer needs you and is faintly annoyed to be reminded.

A text is the only thing that fits in the window. It arrives while the phone is still in their hand, it does not demand they stop what they are doing, and it turns a dead end into a conversation.

What the customer actually experiences

The point is not that a text goes out. The point is what happens after they reply.

  1. Ring

    The call goes unanswered

    You are under a sink, on a roof, or driving. It does not matter which.

  2. < 30s

    The text arrives

    Your business name, an apology for missing them, and a question: what do you need?

  3. Reply

    They answer in their own words

    Most people do. It costs them nothing and it is easier than dialling again.

  4. Ask

    It asks what it needs to know

    What the job is, roughly when, and whereabouts. One question at a time, like a person would.

  5. Act

    It books or it flags

    Your booking page and a confirmation, a real calendar slot on Growth and above, or a flag to you if it is urgent.

  6. Email

    You get the whole thread

    Not a notification that somebody called. The actual conversation, so you know what you are walking into.

An automatic text on its own is not the product

Plenty of things will send an automatic reply to a missed call. Almost all of them send one message — sorry we missed you, we will get back to you — and then stop, which puts the customer exactly back where they were, except now they have been told to wait.

The value is in the conversation after the first message. The customer answers, and something has to understand the answer, ask the right follow-up, know whether you cover their street, know whether that job type is one you take, and finish by putting a time in the diary.

That is the difference between an autoresponder and something that recovers the job.

Some people prefer texting anyway

A decent share of customers would rather text you than talk to you. They are at work, the baby is asleep, they hate the phone, or they simply want a written record of what was agreed.

For those people the missed call was never the failure — the phone call was. Being textable is not a consolation prize; for a chunk of your market it is the preferred way in.

Where the texts come from, and why registration matters

The messages go out from a dedicated number set up for your business, not from your personal mobile, and the whole thread stays in one place.

US carriers require any business sending automated texts to register first, under your own company and EIN. We file it for you. It takes a few business days on the carriers' end, and it is the honest reason setup runs about a week rather than a day.

Where missed calls cost the most

Questions on this

How fast is the text, really?

Less than 30 seconds from the call ending. It does not slow down when several calls come in at once, because nothing is queued behind a person.

What if the caller never replies to the text?

Then you are no worse off than voicemail would have left you, and you still have their number and a record that they rang — which voicemail would not have given you unless they left a message.

Can it text from my own mobile number?

No, and you would not want it to. The messages go from a dedicated business number, which keeps your personal phone out of it and keeps every conversation in one place you can hand to somebody else later.

Not sure this is the one that fits? How it works walks the whole thing end to end.

The other three

15 minutes. Bring your call log.

We'll count what you actually missed last month and tell you what it cost. If it's not worth fixing, we'll say so.

Book a call

Or go break the demo first. It costs you nothing to test.