Help Center

How it works

1. A customer calls your business phone number
2. If you don't answer after a few rings, the call forwards to your RingBackSMS number
3. The caller hears a brief greeting: "Hi, thanks for calling [Your Business]. We can help you faster by text — you'll receive a message in just a moment."
4. They can optionally leave a voicemail (up to 60 seconds)
5. Immediately, they receive your custom SMS greeting
6. The AI continues the conversation from there

Setup instructions by carrier

What callers experience

When a call goes unanswered, callers hear a short, professional greeting and can leave a voicemail. Simultaneously, they receive an SMS with your custom greeting. If voicemail is left, it's saved to the missed call record in your dashboard.

How the AI works

• Personality: You can customize the AI's tone in Settings. Describe how you want it to sound — friendly, professional, casual, etc.
• Business context: The AI knows your business name, type, address, hours, and available menu items or services. It references this info when answering questions.
• Website context: If you add your website URL in Settings, the AI can extract info from your site to answer detailed questions.
• SMS-optimized: Responses are kept concise (under 160 characters when possible) for the best text messaging experience.
• Smart routing: When someone asks about food, the AI directs them to text ORDER. For appointments, it suggests texting MEETING.

Conversation flows

RingBackSMS has three main conversation flows you can enable in the Flows page:

Viewing conversations

Go to Conversations in the sidebar to see all SMS threads. You can search by phone number, filter by flow type (Order, Meeting, Fallback), and view the full message history for any conversation.

AI transcription & summary

• Transcript: Generated automatically when the recording finishes — usually within ~30 seconds. Click any row to expand the full transcript.
• One-line summary: The AI condenses what the caller wanted into a single sentence so you can triage at a glance.
• Intent badge: Each voicemail is tagged ORDER, BOOKING, QUESTION, COMPLAINT, SPAM, or OTHER. Use the intent dropdown above the table to filter — e.g., show only ORDER voicemails during a busy lunch rush.
• Status: While the transcript is being generated you'll see "Transcribing…". If transcription fails (very noisy audio, dropped recording) the row is marked Failed — the original audio is still playable.

One-click reply & callback

• Reply: The Reply button on each row opens a small popover with a message composer and your saved reply templates as one-tap chips. The reply is sent via SMS and threads into the caller's conversation, switching that thread to Human handoff so the AI stops auto-responding.
• Call back: The Call back button is a tel: link that opens your device's dialer with the caller's number pre-filled.
• Funnel impact: Replying from this view stamps the "Owner responded" step on the recovery funnel automatically — no extra bookkeeping.

Managing your menu

• Go to Menu in the sidebar to add, edit, or remove items
• Each item has a name, price, category, description, and availability toggle
• Items are grouped by category (Appetizers, Mains, Desserts, etc.)
• Toggle items off when they're temporarily unavailable — they won't show to customers
• If you use Square, Clover, Toast, or Shopify, you can sync your menu automatically from your POS system in Integrations

How SMS ordering works

1. A customer texts ORDER (or the AI directs them)
2. They receive your menu with numbered items and prices
3. They reply with their selection (e.g., "1x2, 3x1" for 2 of item 1 and 1 of item 3, or just item names)
4. They see an order summary with total and reply YES to confirm
5. They provide a pickup time
6. If Require Upfront Payment is enabled, the customer receives a Stripe payment link via SMS. The order is only confirmed after payment is completed. If disabled, the order is placed immediately.
7. You receive a notification with the order details

Payments

RingBackSMS integrates with Stripe to collect payments during the SMS ordering flow.

• Payment links: After a customer confirms their order, they receive a secure Stripe Checkout link via SMS. They can pay on their phone in seconds.
• Require Upfront Payment: Toggle this ON in Settings → Payments to require payment before the order is placed. The order is only created in your system after the customer completes payment.
• Pay After Order: When upfront payment is OFF, the order is placed immediately and the payment link is sent as a follow-up. Useful for businesses that want to confirm the order first.
• Expiration: Payment links expire after 30 minutes. If the link expires, the customer is notified via SMS and can text to start a new order.
• Cancellation: While waiting for payment (upfront mode), customers can text CANCEL to abort and return to the menu.

Managing orders

Go to Orders to see all incoming orders. Each order shows its payment status (Unpaid, Pending, Paid, or Expired) alongside its fulfillment status:

Pending → Confirmed → Preparing → Ready → Completed

You can advance the status or cancel at any stage. Orders auto-refresh every 30 seconds.

Adding services

• Go to Services in the sidebar
• Add each service with a name, price, duration (in minutes), category, and description
• Services are automatically flagged as requiring booking
• The AI will reference your service list when callers ask what you offer or how much something costs

How service booking works via SMS

1. A caller asks about services — the AI lists what you offer with pricing and duration
2. When they want to book, the ORDER flow shows services with duration info
3. After selecting a service and confirming, they're asked for their preferred date and time
4. You receive a notification with the booking request
5. Confirm the appointment and the customer gets a confirmation text

Setting up appointments

• Enable the Meeting flow in the Flows page
• Optionally, add your Cal.com booking link in Settings — customers get a direct link to book online
• Without Cal.com, customers provide their preferred date and time via text, and you confirm manually

Managing meetings

Go to Meetings to see all appointments. You can view them in a list or weekly calendar view. Each meeting can be confirmed, cancelled, or marked as completed.

Contact management

• Contacts are auto-created when someone calls and receives an SMS
• View each contact's full history: conversations, orders, and meetings
• Assign statuses: Lead, Customer, VIP, or Inactive
• Add tags for custom grouping (e.g., "catering", "regular", "follow-up")
• Write notes on any contact for your team
• Send a manual SMS directly from a contact's profile
• Export your contacts to CSV for use in other tools

Automatic contact linking & VIP detection

Every missed call automatically upserts a Contact for the caller's phone number, so the same person across multiple calls is always one record. On the Voicemails page each row surfaces:

• Caller name (when known) instead of just a masked phone number — clickable through to the contact profile.
• Status badge: VIP (gold), Customer (green), or Lead (gray). Promote anyone to VIP from their contact profile to make their future calls jump out.
• Repeat counter: A "2nd call today" / "3rd call today" badge appears when the same number has called more than once in the last 24 hours — the clearest signal that someone urgently needs you.

POS systems

We support four point-of-sale systems:

• Square — Sync your Square catalog to your RingBackSMS menu. Orders can be pushed back to Square.
• Clover — Import your Clover menu items with pricing.
• Toast — Pull your Toast menu structure and items.
• Shopify — Import products from your Shopify store.

POS integrations are available on the Growth plan and above. Go to Integrations to connect. You can pull your catalog from the POS or push RingBackSMS items the other way, and every sync is logged with item counts and status.

Other integrations

• Cal.com — Add your Cal.com booking link in Settings to let customers book appointments online.
• Slack — Add a Slack webhook URL in Settings to receive order and meeting notifications in a Slack channel.

Plans

Usage & overages

Your SMS usage is tracked on the Billing page. You'll receive email warnings at 75% and 90% of your plan limit. If you exceed your limit, additional SMS are billed at a metered rate.

Managing your subscription

Go to Billing to view your current plan, see your usage, and upgrade or downgrade. Click Manage Billing to access the Stripe customer portal where you can update your payment method, view invoices, or cancel.

Business profile

Configure your business name, type, owner email, owner phone, address, and website URL. This information is used by the AI when responding to customers.

Auto-response settings

• Greeting: The first SMS sent to callers when they miss your call. Keep it short and welcoming.
• AI Personality: Describe how you want the AI to sound (e.g., "warm, casual, and enthusiastic" or "professional and concise").
• Website Context: Add your website URL and the AI will extract relevant info to better answer customer questions.

Business hours

Set your timezone and business hours for each day of the week. You can also add closed dates for holidays. The AI is aware of your hours and can tell callers when you're open.

Payments

• Require Upfront Payment: When toggled ON, customers must pay via Stripe before their order is confirmed. The order is only created after payment succeeds.
• Pay After Order: When toggled OFF (default), orders are placed immediately and a payment link is sent as a follow-up.

Configure this in Settings → Payments.

After-hours greetings

In the Greeting card you'll find a second pair of fields labeled After-hours SMS greeting and After-hours voice greeting. These are used whenever a call arrives outside the business hours configured in your Business Schedule (using the timezone set on your tenant).

• Leave them blank to fall back to your normal greeting around the clock.
• Use them to set a different tone after-hours — e.g., "We're closed now, but reply MENU to order ahead for tomorrow."
• Double-check your Timezone setting first — that's what decides what counts as after-hours.

Reply templates

Manage your library of one-tap SMS replies in the Reply Templates card on Settings. Add a label and body for each template (e.g., "On our way", "Closed today", "Pickup ready in 15"). They appear as chips inside the Reply popover on every voicemail and conversation row.

Phone number

Go to Settings → Phone to provision a phone number or view your current number. This is the number callers are forwarded to and the number SMS messages come from.

Recovery funnel

The Recovery Funnel card on the Analytics page shows exactly where missed-call revenue is leaking. Each step counts unique missed calls and the bar between steps shows the drop rate:

1. Missed calls — every inbound call that wasn't answered.
2. SMS sent — your auto-greeting actually went out.
3. Caller replied — the caller texted back at least once.
4. Owner responded — you (or the AI) sent the first outbound reply, either from the dashboard or via SMS.
5. Orders / meetings created — the recovery converted into real revenue.

Below the funnel you'll see headline KPIs: conversion rate (orders ÷ missed calls), average response time (how long it takes you to reply), meetings booked, and week-over-week deltas on the headline numbers.

Adding a new client

Inviting client staff

You can invite each client's team members as members of only their organization. They'll see just their own business and won't have access to your other clients. Manage members from the organization switcher's Manage organization panel.