You're under a sink with your hands full and the phone buzzes in your pocket. By the time you can call back, that customer has already booked someone else. Missed call text back fixes the gap between the ring and your callback: the caller hears from your business in seconds, by text, while they're still deciding who to hire.
Here's how General Dispatch does it, why it sends exactly one text and not three, and what happens after the reply, which is the part most text-back tools leave to you.
How it works
- A call to your business goes unanswered. Your phones rang first, in the order you set, and nobody picked up.
- Within seconds the caller gets a text from your business number.
- If they reply, Jack (the AI that runs the conversation) picks it up: what's wrong, where, how urgent. Then it books a window on the right tech's calendar or answers the question.
- You see the whole thread in the app and in the next morning brief. You can take over at any point with one tap.
This is the text that goes out when we've never texted that number before:
Hi, it's Summit Heating & Air. Sorry we missed your call. Can we help by text? Reply YES to continue, or STOP to opt out. Msg&data rates may apply.
No offer, no price, no link. It reads like a person at your office, because the only job of that first text is to get a reply. The business name is in it because the carriers require it, and because a text from an unnamed number gets ignored.
Why only one text
A lot of missed-call setups fire a sequence: a text now, another in an hour, a "just checking in" tomorrow. That's how a business number ends up flagged as spam by carriers, and it's how a customer who called once ends up annoyed at you. It's also how a shop gets a complaint, and a complaint on a registered number is a problem that outlasts the lead.
General Dispatch sends one. Two missed calls from the same number in an evening still get one text; the system holds a 24-hour cooldown per caller. And nothing else goes to that number until the person replies. When they do reply (yes, a question, even a photo of the unit), that reply is recorded as their consent to text with you about the request, with the time and the message as evidence. If they text STOP, it's honored right away and stays honored until they text in again themselves.
The system enforces this, not a setting someone can forget. A text to a number without consent is refused before it ever reaches the carrier. That's the same rule the whole product runs on: it never texts anyone who didn't ask.
What happens after the reply
This is where most text-back tools stop. They send the text, and then the reply sits in an inbox until someone gets to it, which is the same problem as the missed call, an hour later.
Here the reply goes straight to Jack, which knows your services, service area, prices and each tech's calendar. A typical thread:
| Who | Message |
|---|---|
| Customer | yes, our ac is blowing warm air |
| Jack | Sorry about that. What's the address, and is it running at all or just not cooling? |
| Customer | 412 Elm. it runs, just warm |
| Jack | Thanks. Mike can be there tomorrow between 10 and 12. Want me to book it? |
| Customer | yes please |
| Jack | You're set for tomorrow, 10 to 12, with Mike at 412 Elm. |
Booked, on Mike's Google Calendar, with a confirmation text and a reminder queued. The arrival window is two hours because that's what you promised, and Jack never narrows it to an arrival time. If the job needs your judgment (outside the service area, a price you haven't set, anything over your ask-first line), Jack asks you first and tells the customer you'll confirm shortly.
If the reply is "I smell gas," the thread does something different: the safety line first, leave the building and call 911 or the gas utility, then it pages you and books nothing. The emergency rules on the AI receptionist page apply to text the same as to voice.
What a missed call is worth
People search for a "missed call text back ROI calculator," so here's the honest version: the math is simple and the inputs are yours.
| Input | Example |
|---|---|
| Calls you miss in a week | 6 |
| Share of missed callers who were ready to book | 1 in 3 |
| Your average service call | $240 |
| Jobs recovered if the text brings back half of them | 1 a week |
| A month | about $1,000 |
Those are example numbers, not a promise. Your miss rate depends on whether you answer from the truck, and your recovery rate depends on how fast the reply gets answered. The text-back only works if the reply gets handled in minutes, which is why the reply goes to Jack and not to an inbox. Count your own missed calls for a week before you believe anyone's calculator, including this one.
Missed call text back or an AI receptionist?
They're the same system answering two ways. The text-back answers by text. The AI receptionist picks up the call and talks. You choose per business:
- Text-back only. Every unanswered call gets the text. A good start if you answer most calls yourself.
- AI receptionist after hours. Jack answers calls at night and on weekends; during the day it's the text-back.
- AI receptionist always. Jack answers every call your team doesn't pick up.
Some callers would rather text than talk, and some would rather talk. Whichever you pick, a caller who texts afterward lands in the same conversation. Most shops start with the text-back because there's nothing to configure, then turn the receptionist on for after hours once they've read a week of threads.
What a text-back should never do
A few things to watch for in any missed-call tool, including ours:
- Pretend to be a person. "Hey, it's Mike, sorry I missed you!" from a number Mike has never touched is a lie the customer finds out about on the first reply. Ours says it's the business, and if the customer asks whether they're texting a bot, Jack says yes and that you see every thread.
- Send a link or an offer in the first text. It reads as spam, it gets filtered, and it isn't what the caller wanted. They wanted to reach you.
- Keep texting. One text, then silence until they reply.
- Leave the reply in an inbox. The reply is the lead. If nobody answers it for an hour, you've missed the same call twice.
Before you turn it on
Business texting in the US runs on registered numbers. Carriers require every business that texts from a regular local number to register a brand and a campaign through The Campaign Registry (that's 10DLC), and unregistered traffic gets filtered or blocked. General Dispatch registers your number as part of setup, using a customer-care campaign that describes exactly this text-back and the conversation that follows. So the first text you send isn't the one that gets you filtered.
The text-back is included with the phone line: $10 a month for the number, its 10DLC registration, inbound texts, and 300 outbound texts a month, then 2 cents a text. The business plan is $97 a month to go live, and setup is free. See pricing.
Then forward your unanswered calls to the line, call it from your cell, let it ring out, and read the text you get back.