Two-way business texting

Two-way texting lets you message customers from your business number in HLB and handle their replies in Conversations. It works well for quick, everyday contact, such as confirming a cleaning visit, following up on an estimate or answering a question about hours.

When you send a text from Conversations, you can choose the From number (the business line that sends it) and the To number (which of the contact's saved numbers receives it). If you do not pick a sender, HLB uses this priority order:

• The From number you selected manually.
• The number assigned to the user sending the message.
• The number already used in that conversation.
• The account's default outbound number.

Admins can send texts using any SMS-capable number configured for the account. Users see the default number, the last-used number, the numbers assigned to them and eligible unassigned numbers. A contact can store up to 11 phone numbers, and the one marked Primary is used by default when there is no earlier conversation. Workflows and bulk texts use their own sender settings.

Each message shows a status such as Queued, Sent, Delivered, Undelivered or Failed. Only Delivered confirms the text reached the recipient's phone. Message Logs (under Settings > Phone Numbers) show timestamps and error codes, and on a failed message you can hover over the warning icon to see its error code. If a number fails as invalid, check that it includes the country code and has no spaces, parentheses or dashes.

You can also run keyword campaigns. A workflow with the Customer Replied trigger, filtered to SMS and an exact keyword such as COUPON, sends an automated reply and can tag the contact. Exact match avoids triggering on longer messages.