How to text from your business landline number.

Can customers text your number today?

Text your business number from your own mobile and wait. If nothing comes back and the text shows up nowhere, it went nowhere. Most landlines, and many office phone lines, cannot take texts until someone sets them up, and the customer who texted may never know their message was lost.

Then ask your phone company two questions: is texting already switched on for this number, and with whom? A number can be text-enabled with only one texting provider at a time. If a tool you tried years ago still holds it, a new provider cannot use the number until the old one lets go.

Customers text whatever number they find: the one on the van, the website and your Google Business Profile. Making that number take texts is nearly always better than asking people to use a new one.

Three ways to text from the number customers know

• Text-enable it. A texting provider handles the texts for your number, and calls stay exactly where they are.
• Move it, known as porting. The whole number, calls and texts, moves to a phone system that does both.
• Add a second number for texts, such as a mobile or a new local number.

For most small businesses the first is the right start: nothing changes for calls, and the number on the van keeps working. Move the number when you are replacing your phone system anyway. Add a second number only when the first two are blocked.

Text-enable the number you have

Text-enabling, sometimes called hosted texting, sends only the texts for your number to a texting provider. Calls, voicemail and call forwarding stay with your phone company, untouched. The steps:

• Choose the texting tool by where replies will land, which matters more than its feature list.
• Sign a letter of authorisation, the form that proves you control the number and lets the provider take over its texts. The name and address must match the phone bill.
• Confirm you own the number. Some providers ring it and ask you to key in a code.
• Register the number for business texting before the first text goes out.
• Test it from a customer's side, as in the checklist below.

What can stop it: the number is already text-enabled somewhere else, the name on the form does not match the phone account, or the number is a mobile, which cannot be text-enabled this way. Toll-free numbers can be text-enabled too, with their own verification instead of the usual registration.

Ask the provider whether picture messages will work. Customers send photos of leaks, dents and broken boilers, and some setups carry plain text only.

Move the number to a phone system that texts

Porting moves the whole number to a new provider. It suits a business that is changing phone systems anyway, or that wants calls, voicemail and texts in one app, where a missed call can trigger a text without any extra link between companies.

The FCC's rules on number portability let you keep your number when you switch, as long as you stay in the same area, including between landline, mobile and internet phone providers. Your old company cannot refuse to release the number because you owe it money, though you still owe the bill.

Before you ask for the move, gather:

• The account number and any PIN from your current phone company.
• The account holder's name and the service address, exactly as on the bill.
• A recent bill.
• Every number on the account, including fax lines and any second line.
• What else uses the line: an alarm, a lift phone or a card machine may stop working when the number moves.
• A date that is not your busiest day.

Do not cancel your old phone service before the move is complete. Cancelling first can lose the number. The FCC's advice is to keep the old service running until the new one works, and a number on the van, the website and every directory is hard to replace.

Add a second number for texts

A new mobile or local number for texts is the quickest to set up and the hardest to make work. Customers keep texting the number they know, so you have to print the new one everywhere and tell people which number does what. Your texts go out from the new number while calls still come in on the old one, and customers save one and not the other.

It makes sense in a few cases: a branch or a service with its own line, a stopgap while a number is being moved, or a switchboard you do not control, such as a clinic inside a larger building.

Never use a member of staff's own mobile as the business texting number. When they leave, the number and every conversation on it leave with them.

Why Google Voice will not do it

Google Voice can send and receive texts, but its own policy forbids sending messages automatically, through a script or in bulk. That rules out a text after every missed call, reminders from your booking tool and any connection to other software. It suits a sole trader who types every reply by hand, and little more.

Workarounds that bolt automatic replies onto Google Voice break that policy, and a suspended account puts the number on it at risk. If you want automatic texts, use a texting provider for the number or move it to a phone system built for business texting.

Decide where replies land

This choice matters more than any feature. A text nobody reads is worse than no text, because the customer thinks you have it. The usual places are:

• The texting provider's app, on the phones of the people who answer, with one shared inbox.
• Email, where each text arrives as a message and a reply goes back as a text.
• Team chat, such as Slack or Microsoft Teams, for teams that live there.
• Your CRM, where the text joins the customer's record.

Then name who answers in opening hours, who answers out of hours, if anyone, and who covers days off. For a small plumbing firm, the office manager reads the shared inbox on her phone, and a reply with the word "urgent" also goes to the engineer on call.

Give everyone their own login rather than one shared password, so you can see who replied and remove access when someone leaves. Then put "Call or text" next to the number on your website and your Google Business Profile, so customers know they can.

Make missed-call text-back work

For a text after a missed call, two things must be true. The text has to come from the number the customer rang, or they will not know who it is. And the system that sends it has to learn that a call was missed.

If calls and texts sit with the same phone system, that is a setting. If calls stay with your old phone company and texts go through a provider, the link between the two is the part to check before you sign. Ask the provider exactly how it will know a call went unanswered, then test it with a real missed call.

Here is how it looks for a two-van plumbing firm. A customer rings at 2.40pm while both engineers are under a sink, and the call rings out. Straight away the customer gets: "Sorry we missed your call, this is Brightwater Plumbing. Is it urgent? Reply here and we will call you back, or book a visit: [link]". They reply "Dripping tap, not urgent, tomorrow is fine". The reply lands in the office inbox, and the office books the visit.

Callers on a landline cannot receive the text, so keep voicemail on, with a greeting that says when you call back. GGSites sets this up as missed-call text-back, with replies landing where you already read messages, and connects it to the rest of your tools as part of automation.

Get ready for the first texts

Once customers know the number takes texts, the same few messages arrive again and again. Save a reply for each before you switch texting on:

• "Are you open on Saturday?" Your hours, and how to book.
• "Can you give me a price from a photo?" What you can quote from a photo, and when you need to visit first.
• "I'm running late." A thank-you, and whether the slot still works.
• "Is this the right number for a boiler service?" Yes, and what details to send.
• A text that arrives out of hours: when someone will reply.

Set an automatic out-of-hours reply only if it says something useful, such as when the office opens and which number to ring in an emergency. Keep each saved reply short, sign it with a first name, and write it in the same voice as your website.

What decides the cost

There is no single price, because the bill is made of parts. Ask each provider about each of these:

• A monthly fee for each text-enabled number.
• A charge for each text sent and received, higher for picture messages and for long texts that split into parts.
• The carrier registration fees, one-off and monthly, passed on by the provider.
• A fee for each user or app login, if the inbox is priced that way.
• A porting fee from the old or the new phone company, if you move the number.
• The link to your phone system, if missed-call text-back needs one.

In a small business the texts are usually the cheap part. The time spent answering them is not, so judge each tool by how quickly your team can reply from it on a busy day.

Register before the first text

To the US carriers, a text-enabled landline is an ordinary local number, and business texts from it must be registered first, or they are blocked. Toll-free numbers go through toll-free verification instead. A2P 10DLC registration walks through the forms.

The registration asks how people agree to receive texts, so decide that now. A reply to a missed call, a booking reminder and an offer each need something different, as set out in text message consent rules.

Test it as a customer would

• Text the number from phones on two or three different mobile networks and check each text arrives.
• Reply to a text you sent, and see where the reply lands on a weekday and at the weekend.
• Ring the number, let it ring out, and check that the text comes from the same number.
• Ring from a landline and check nothing odd happens.
• Reply STOP, then trigger another text. Nothing should arrive.
• Send a photo and see whether it gets through.
• Check that calls still ring as before, including any forwarding to mobiles.

Repeat the missed-call test after any change to your phone system, your opening hours or the texting tool's settings.

Mistakes that lose the number or the texts

• Cancelling the old line before a move is complete.
• Signing the authorisation in a name that is not on the phone account.
• Leaving an old texting tool attached, so the new one cannot switch texting on.
• Forgetting the alarm, fax or card machine that shares the line when you move the number.
• Texting customers from a second number they do not recognise.
• Nobody owning the replies, so texts sit unread over a weekend.
• A website and Google profile that still say "call us", so nobody knows texts work.

Which route fits your business

• A trade business with a landline from the local phone company, happy with how calls work: text-enable it.
• An office replacing an old phone system this year: move the number to a system that does calls and texts, then switch texting on.
• A clinic whose number sits on a switchboard it does not control: ask the switchboard's owner about text-enabling first, and use a separate texting number, printed on reminders, only if they cannot.
• A sole trader on Google Voice: keep it for calls you answer yourself, and use a texting provider for automatic texts.

Whichever route you take, the number customers already know should be the one that texts them. If a call, a text or a chat window is the bigger question, chatbot, live chat or contact form compares the ways in.