Missed-Call Text-Back and the Inbox

Most people who reach a voicemail don't leave one. They hang up and call the next company on the list. For a service business that's the most expensive moment in the day: someone wanted to give you work, and you were under a sink, on a dock, or on another call.

Missed-call text-back closes that gap. When nobody picks up, the caller gets a text from your business number within seconds: "Hi, this is Harbour Point Marine. Sorry we missed your call! How can we help? Just reply to this text." People who wouldn't leave a voicemail will answer a text, and now the conversation is with you.

Their reply, and every other text a customer sends you, lands in the Inbox: one shared conversation per phone number, with missed calls, voicemails and your team's notes in the same thread, and the customer's open jobs and balance beside it.

When you'd use this

Your techs answer the phone in the field and miss calls while their hands are full.
Calls come in after hours and you want them to reach you in the morning instead of a competitor tonight.
More than one person handles customer texts and you need to see who's answering what.
Customers text your business number and those texts are getting lost or answered twice.

If you never miss calls because a receptionist answers every one live, the text-back matters less, but the Inbox is still the place to work your customer texts.

How it fits together

Your business number (set up through PhoneLink) is answered by Suprata.
Suprata greets the caller if you've set a greeting (and tells them the call is recorded, if you record), then rings the phones you list: your cell, the front desk, a desk phone. They all ring at once and whoever answers first gets the call.
If nobody answers, the caller gets your text-back message and can leave a voicemail.
The Inbox gets the missed call, the voicemail (with a written copy), and any text the caller sends back. Your team gets a notification.
Someone takes it: replies by text, calls back, leaves a note, or hands it to the right person, then marks it Done.

Turning it on changes where your business number sends its calls. Suprata remembers how the number worked before, and turning it off puts it back exactly that way.

Setting it up

Go to Communication Settings → Missed Calls & Inbox. Everything is on one page with one Save button.

1. Who gets the call

Add the phones that should ring. Use Add a team member's phone to pull in numbers already on your staff profiles. Label each one ("Front desk", "Marco's cell") so the list stays readable.

Ring for: 20 seconds is right for most businesses. Keep it shorter than your cell phone's voicemail. Most carriers answer with voicemail at around 25 seconds, and once your personal voicemail answers, Suprata can't tell it was missed.

Ask whoever answers to press 1: leave this on. When your cell rings you'll hear "Call from Maria Delgado. Press 1 to answer." It takes half a second and solves a real problem: your cell's voicemail can't press 1, so a call it grabs (Do Not Disturb, Silence Unknown Callers, a dead zone) still counts as missed and the customer still gets your text. Turn it off only if calls go to an office phone system or an answering service that picks up automatically.

After hours: choose whether the phones still ring or calls go straight to voicemail. A one-person shop usually wants straight to voicemail at night; a 24-hour emergency service rings anyway.

2. Greeting and recording

Greeting is optional. It's what callers hear before the phones start ringing: "Thanks for calling %company%. Please hold while we connect you." Leave it blank if you'd rather they hear ringing straight away. Most small businesses skip it, because a greeting followed by ringing adds a few seconds before anyone can answer.

Record calls records every answered call. The recording and a written copy show up in the customer's call history and in the Inbox. It starts out matching whatever you chose for calls you make from Suprata.

Recording notice is what the caller hears when recording is on. Several states (Florida and California among them) require everyone on the call to be told it's being recorded. Keep the notice unless you're certain you don't need it.

3. Business hours

These decide when "after hours" starts. They start out matching your scheduling hours, and you can change them here.

4. The missed-call text

Write it the way you'd say it on the phone. Two tokens are available:

%company%: your company name.
%firstname%: the caller's first name, when they're already one of your customers. Leave room for it to be blank. "Hi %firstname%, this is..." reads as "Hi, this is..." for a new caller.

The preview shows exactly what customers will get and how many texts it uses. One text (160 characters or so) is the sweet spot.

Use Send a test to text it to your own phone before you turn it on.

After-hours text is optional. A good one sets expectations: "Thanks for calling %company%. We're closed for the night, but reply here and we'll get back to you first thing in the morning."

Text the same number at most: once every 12 hours is the default. Someone who calls three times in five minutes gets one text, not three.

5. Voicemail

Write the greeting callers hear. It's read in a natural-sounding voice (English or Spanish). Voicemails show up in the Inbox with a player and a written copy, so you can read a message in a meeting instead of listening to it.

6. Turn it on

Flip Answer calls here and press Save. The status at the top changes to Answering calls to (305) 555-0100. Call your business number from a phone that isn't on the ring list, let it ring out, and watch the text arrive and the Inbox update.

Working the Inbox

Open Inbox from the left menu. The red number next to it is how many conversations have something unread that are yours or nobody's yet.

Tabs: Open (everything not finished), Unread, Mine, Unassigned, and Done. Search looks across all of them, by name, number or message text.
A conversation shows everything with that number in order: texts both ways, calls, missed calls (with whether the text-back went out, and if not, why), voicemails, and team notes.
Text customer / Note for team: the reply box does both. Notes are yellow, stay inside Suprata, and are how you tell a colleague "I promised a call back at 2".
Quick replies: canned answers you set up in settings ("Your boat is ready for pickup"). One click puts the text in the box, where you can edit it before sending.
Assign a conversation to whoever should handle it. They get a notification, and it shows under their Mine tab.
Done when it's handled. If the customer texts or calls again, it reopens on its own.
The customer card on the right shows their balance, next visit and open jobs. If the number isn't on a customer yet, find the right one and link it, or create a new customer straight from the card.

Opening a conversation marks it read for the whole team. That's deliberate: the Inbox is shared, and "read" means "someone has seen this".

What it won't do (on purpose)

It never texts a number that opted out, a landline, a blocked or international number, or one of your own team's phones.
The first text to a new number ends with "Reply STOP to opt out." That's the carrier rule for business texting, and it's included in the same message so the caller doesn't get two.
It pauses itself if an unusual number of missed calls come in at once (a robocall burst, for example), so you don't spend your text balance on junk numbers.
Each text-back uses one text from your balance, like any other text you send.

Common mistakes

Ringing for too long. A 40-second ring lets every cell phone's voicemail answer first, and the caller never gets your text. Stay at 20–25 seconds.
Turning off "press 1" because it feels like an extra step. Without it, any phone on silent or Do Not Disturb sends callers to your personal voicemail instead of your text-back. It's the same reason calling out from Suprata asks you to press 1.
Writing a text-back that sounds like a robot. "Your call is important to us" gets ignored. "Sorry we missed you, what can we help with?" gets replies.
Leaving conversations open forever. Mark them Done when they're handled. The Open tab should be your to-do list, not an archive.
Not linking unknown numbers. Link a new caller to a customer, or create one, the first time. After that every text and call from them shows their jobs and balance.
Expecting it to work before your number is set up. Missed-call text-back needs your PhoneLink business number. Texts still show up in the Inbox, but calls can't be answered until the number is live.