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Receiving Messages & Two-Way SMS

Let customers text your toll-free number and have your AI assistant reply conversationally.

Overview​

When Two-Way Conversations is enabled, a customer can text your verified toll-free number and the assistant will answer — questions about hours, services, directions, or booking. Two-way is a Beta feature and is off by default; turn it on per assistant when you're ready.

When two-way is off, inbound texts are still received and logged (and can trigger notifications), but the assistant does not reply automatically.

Enable Two-Way Conversations​

  1. Open the assistant and go to its SMS tab.
  2. Make sure Enable SMS is on.
  3. Turn on Two-Way Conversations (Beta).
  4. Optionally set a hand-off keyword and a max auto-replies limit (below).
  5. Save.

How It Works​

  1. A customer texts your toll-free number.
  2. The assistant replies using its knowledge and your business info — short, transactional, text-friendly responses.
  3. The conversation continues across messages, keeping context.

Booking over text: to book, reschedule, or cancel, the assistant sends your booking link (from the SMS Link Library) and lets the customer complete it there. It does not collect dates, times, or personal details over text.

The customer's inbound text is their opt-in, so the assistant does not re-read a consent script over SMS (unlike in-call texting). A "Reply STOP to opt out." footer is added automatically on the first reply of each conversation.

Conversation Sessions​

  • 24-hour session window — replies within 24 hours of the last message continue the same thread. After that, a new reply starts a fresh conversation (and re-discloses the STOP footer).
  • Max auto-replies per conversation — caps how many times the assistant will auto-reply in one conversation (default 10, configurable 1–50). This bounds runaway back-and-forth.

Hand-Off to a Human​

Set a hand-off keyword on the assistant's SMS tab (for example, human or agent). If a customer texts that word on its own, the assistant stops auto-replying so your team can take over. Leave it blank to disable hand-off.

Conversations can also be marked escalated or closed — those threads won't auto-resume until reopened.

The Inbox & Conversations Viewer​

Voka gives you a holistic view of customer communication:

  • Inbox — calls and SMS together, so you can follow each customer across channels.
  • Conversations viewer — every two-way SMS thread, most recent first, with a message preview. In the SMS dashboard's Recent Messages log, each two-way thread is collapsed to a single row with a replies-count badge; open it to see the full exchange.
  • Notifications — new inbound SMS and two-way threads surface in your notifications. Configure who's alerted under Settings → Notifications.

Opt-Out & Keywords (Automatic)​

Inbound keyword handling is automatic — you don't configure it:

  • STOP (and STOPALL, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, QUIT) — opts the customer out; no further messages are sent to them.
  • START (and UNSTOP, SUBSCRIBE) — opts them back in.
  • HELP / INFO — the carrier returns standard help info automatically.

See Compliance for the full opt-out behavior.

Inbound Costs​

Messages you receive are free and don't count toward your plan. The assistant's replies are outbound messages and count toward your monthly usage. See Pricing.

Troubleshooting​

  • Assistant isn't replying to texts — confirm Enable SMS and Two-Way Conversations are both on for that assistant, and that the number is Active.
  • It stopped replying mid-thread — the conversation may have hit the max auto-replies limit, received the hand-off keyword, or passed the 24-hour window.
  • A customer can't reach you — they may have texted STOP earlier; they must text START to resume.