Customer service by text

Texting works best for short, practical exchanges: confirming a time, answering 'is my order ready?', chasing a missing detail, warning someone about a delay. The customer answers when it suits them, and you can handle several conversations at once, which nobody can do on the phone.

It's less good for anything long or sensitive. If a reply needs three paragraphs, or involves card details or health information, move it to a call or a secure channel and say so in the thread.

Conversations in CaptiFi Connect start with a text from you: a confirmation, an update or a quick question. Leave the sender name blank so the text goes from a UK mobile number. When the customer replies, it comes back into the same thread, and your answer goes out from the same number whenever that number is available.

A sender name looks smart on a phone, but nobody can reply to it, so keep names for one-way messages and use the number for anything that might turn into a conversation.

If your team works in a helpdesk or a CRM, use the API alongside the inbox. Set up a webhook for message.received and each reply arrives as a signed JSON request with the number and the text. Your system can match it to a customer by number (stored in E.164 format), open or update a ticket, and send the answer back with POST /api/v1/messages to the same number. GET /api/v1/conversations returns the threads if you'd sooner pull them.

Add opt_out.created to the same webhook, so your CRM knows the moment someone texts STOP.

There are no ready-made helpdesk or CRM connections, so the link is something your developer builds against the API. Test keys let them do it without texting real customers.

The parts of CaptiFi Connect that customer service by text depends on:

Answering a customer's question is a service message, and so is an update about something they've ordered or booked. The ICO doesn't treat those as direct marketing, so they don't need marketing consent or an opt-out line. Slip an offer into a reply and it becomes marketing, so keep the two apart.

Opt-outs still apply. If a customer texts STOP, CaptiFi Connect adds them to your opt-out list and refuses any further text to that number, your replies included, until they text START. A reply that only says 'please stop texting me' isn't caught automatically, so add that number to the list by hand.

Texts go to UK mobiles only, including Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man.

Trades and repair shops keeping customers posted on jobs, letting agents arranging access, hotels answering guests before they arrive, restaurants sorting out booking changes. If your team spends a good part of the day on short phone calls, some of them can move to text.