When a call to your contractor business goes to voicemail, an automated SMS reaches the caller within 30 seconds. The conversation continues over two-way text while you finish the current job. Add-on to any LocalPulse monthly tier.
A homeowner calls your shop while you are on a ladder, under a sink, or driving between jobs. The call goes to voicemail. You see the missed call notification four hours later when you finally check your phone. By then, the caller already booked someone else.
This is where the leak is. Industry data from ServiceTitan and related research shows that when a home service call reaches voicemail, 80% of callers hang up without leaving a message, 85% never call that business back, and 67% immediately call a competitor instead. Live-answered calls convert at 30 to 40%. Voicemail conversion drops below 5%. The math on this one is brutal: every missed call you do not recover within minutes is a job that went to the next contractor on the search results page.
Missed call text back closes that gap. The moment your business line shows a missed call, a Twilio-powered automation fires an SMS to that number within 30 seconds. The text reads in your voice, names your business, and gives the caller something to reply to. Most reply. Now you have a lead in text instead of a voicemail you missed.
The single most expensive line in a contractor's marketing budget is the call that already happened and never converted. SEO, GBP work, Google Ads, citations, reviews. All of it is upstream work to make the phone ring. When the phone rings and nobody answers, the entire stack just paid for nothing.
The mechanics are simple and the customer experience is the part most contractors get wrong on their first try. Here is the sequence we set up.
Twilio sees your business line ring and go unanswered. That event triggers the SMS workflow. No app to open, no button to press, no employee to remember.
The text reads in your voice, says who you are, acknowledges the missed call, and asks one question. Something like "Hey, this is Mike from Vegas Plumbing. Sorry I missed your call. What is going on at your house?" Short, human, no marketing fluff.
Most people are more willing to text a description of a problem than leave a voicemail. They tell you the sink is leaking, the AC stopped working, or they need a quote on the back patio. Now you have specifics, in writing, on your timeline.
From your phone, between jobs, with full context. Quote the work, set the appointment, send a calendar link. The lead never went to a competitor because the conversation already started.
The pattern is proven on our own product line. LocalPulse runs the same speed-to-text architecture inside an automotive-shop product where every missed call from a customer triggers a triage SMS. The shops using it close conversations on calls they would have lost in voicemail. The architecture is the same one we put on your business line.
The script matters more than the technology. A generic auto-text reads like spam and gets blocked. A specific, in-your-voice message reads like a real person and gets a reply. Here is the structure we tune for each business.
Identify yourself. "Hey, this is Mike from Vegas Plumbing." Not "your call is important to us." Real first name, real business name, no corporate hedging.
Acknowledge the missed call. "Sorry I missed your call." One sentence. Not an apology paragraph. The caller already knows their call went to voicemail.
Then a specific ask. "What is going on at your house?" or "Quick text me what you need a quote on and I will send pricing." Open-ended enough to get details, narrow enough to feel intentional.
Set the expectation. "I will text you back within the hour, I am on a job right now." Honest, sets the pace, prevents the second-call-to-a-competitor reflex.
One follow-up if they go quiet. If the caller does not reply within 24 hours, one polite check-in. After that, nothing. Persistent auto-texts are how you end up on a carrier spam list.
For Spanish-speaking customers, the SMS goes in Spanish. The setup detects the caller area code or you tell us the customer base is bilingual at setup, and we wire a language-aware template. LocalPulse is bilingual EN/ES, and the messaging respects that.
Missed call text back is an add-on to any LocalPulse monthly tier, not a standalone service. The reason is that the SMS only works if the rest of the stack is already clean. If your GBP shows a different phone number than your website, or your Yelp listing has the old number from three years ago, the missed-call event fires on the wrong line and the lead still leaks. We sequence the work: audit first, fix the phone trail, then turn on the automation.
Foundation tier. Missed call text back available as add-on once GBP is verified.
Adds citation cleanup so the phone number on every directory matches. Missed call text back wires cleanly on top.
Full stack, including the monthly strategy call where we tune the SMS script over the first 90 days.
Setup is $497, one time. We don't lock you into a contract. What we do ask: be ready to give this at least 3 months. GBP rankings need 90 to 180 days to compound, per BrightLocal's 2024 Local Search Ranking Factors report. The text-back automation itself goes live within 48 hours of the audit clearing, but the audit and citation work that comes first is what makes the automation actually pay off.
The first step is the free Google Business Profile audit. The audit is what tells us whether your phone number is consistent across GBP, your website, and the top 20 directories. If it is, automation goes live fast. If it isn't, we fix that first so the SMS fires on the right line every time.
Before any automation goes live, we verify your phone number is clean across GBP, website, and the top 20 directories. PDF in 48 hours. No obligation.
Get My Free GBP Audit