How to Set Up Two-Way SMS with Your Customers

Two-way SMS turns your appointment confirmations from a one-way notification into an interactive channel. When a customer receives 'Your appointment is confirmed for Tuesday at 10 AM. Reply C to cancel or Y to confirm,' they can respond with a single letter and the system processes it automatically. Cancellations free the slot immediately and offer it to the next person on the waitlist. Confirmations update the appointment status in your dashboard.

Keyword routing in DialCloud supports several built-in commands: C or CANCEL cancels the most recent appointment, Y or YES or CONFIRM confirms it, numbers 1-5 submit a satisfaction rating after a completed appointment, APPROVE approves a pending estimate, and BOOK triggers a maintenance booking reminder. Any other text the customer sends is appended as a note to their most recent call log, so your team can see it in the dashboard.

To set up two-way SMS, go to Settings > Notifications and ensure your SMS templates include the reply instructions. The keyword routing is enabled by default. There is no additional configuration needed. The system uses the same Twilio phone number for sending and receiving, so conversations stay in one thread on the customer's phone. For businesses that want more sophisticated SMS flows, the webhook integration can push inbound messages to Zapier or your CRM for custom handling.