Text messages get opened 98% of the time. Most of them get read within 3 minutes of being received. No other communication channel comes close to those numbers. Yet most businesses still send texts manually, one at a time, when a customer happens to ask for something. That approach does not scale and it leaves a lot of money on the table.
Telphi builds SMS automation systems for businesses across the US, UK, and Canada. We set up automated text messaging that sends the right message to the right customer at the right time, without anyone on your team having to press send. Our clients use SMS automation to book appointments, follow up on leads, recover abandoned orders, send reminders, and keep customers coming back, all running automatically in the background while the team focuses on everything else.
We build on the platforms you already know: Twilio, Plivo, Vonage, Telnyx, and leading CRM platforms.
SMS automation means setting up a system that sends text messages to your customers automatically, based on things they do or things that happen in your business.
A customer books an appointment. The system automatically sends a confirmation text. Twenty four hours before the appointment, it sends a reminder. If they miss it, it sends a follow up asking if they want to rebook. All of that happens without anyone on your team doing anything.
A customer adds something to their cart on your website but does not check out. The system automatically sends a text a few hours later with a link back to their cart. Studies consistently show that this single automation recovers between 20% and 30% of abandoned carts that would otherwise be lost.
A new lead fills in a form on your website at 9pm. Instead of waiting until the next morning when someone checks their inbox, the system sends a text within minutes introducing your business and asking what they need. That speed is often the difference between winning the customer and losing them to a competitor who responded faster.
This is what business SMS automation does. It makes your business faster, more consistent, and more present for customers, without adding to your team's workload.
Telphi does not sell you a generic SMS platform and leave you to figure it out. We build the automation workflows specifically for how your business works. We map out your customer journeys, identify every point where a well-timed text message would make a difference, and build the system that sends those messages automatically.
Here is every type of automated text messaging Telphi sets up for businesses. Most clients use a combination of several of these working together.
When a customer books an appointment, the system sends a confirmation text straight away. It sends a reminder the day before. It sends another one the morning of the appointment. If the customer needs to cancel or reschedule, they reply to the text and the system handles it automatically. Businesses that set this up typically see no-show rates drop by 40% to 60% within the first month. For any business that runs on appointments, this single automation pays for itself very quickly.
Two-way SMS lets your customers reply to your messages and have a real back-and-forth conversation with your business over text. Your SMS bot handles routine replies automatically. When a conversation gets to a point that needs a human, it flags the message and routes it to the right person on your team. Customers get fast responses at any hour. Your team only gets involved when they are actually needed.
When a new lead comes in, your SMS automation system sends a welcome message within minutes. If they do not respond, it follows up. If they do respond, it sends the next message in the sequence based on what they said. You define the journey, Telphi builds the automation, and the system runs it without anyone having to manually track who needs to hear from you next. Your sales team steps in when a lead is warm and ready, not to chase cold contacts who filled in a form three days ago.
For e-commerce businesses, abandoned cart SMS automation is one of the highest return automations you can run. A customer leaves your site without completing their purchase. Within an hour, the system sends them a text with a link back to their cart. A few hours later if they still have not bought, it sends a follow-up, sometimes with an offer. This sequence consistently recovers a significant portion of carts that would otherwise be lost and it runs completely automatically around the clock.
For businesses that need to reach large numbers of customers at once, Telphi builds enterprise SMS solutions that send targeted bulk messages to segmented customer lists. Not the same generic text to everyone. Different messages to different groups based on what they have bought, where they are, what stage of the customer journey they are at, and what they have responded to before. Enterprise SMS campaigns built this way consistently outperform generic broadcast messages by a significant margin.
An SMS chatbot handles the most common customer service questions automatically over text. Opening hours, order status, booking availability, returns policy, account information. Customers text in a question and get an answer within seconds, any time of day or night. For businesses with high volumes of routine customer enquiries, an SMS chatbot removes a large amount of that workload from the team entirely.
Order confirmations, shipping updates, payment receipts, account alerts, delivery notifications. These are the text messages customers expect and appreciate most. Telphi connects your SMS automation system to your order management, e-commerce, or billing platform so every transaction triggers the right notification message automatically. Customers stay informed without anyone having to manually send updates.
We do not hand you a login to a platform and leave you to work it out. We build the whole thing for you, test it properly, and make sure it is working before your customers experience it.
Before we build anything, we sit down and understand how your business communicates with customers at every stage. We look at where customers drop off, where they go quiet, where they need chasing, and where a well-timed text message would make the biggest difference to your conversion rate or customer satisfaction. At the end of this step you get a full map of every SMS automation workflow we recommend building, with a clear explanation of what each one does and why it will improve your results. You approve the plan before any building starts.
Great for: Business owners and marketing managers who want to understand the ROI of SMS automation before committing to a full build.
We build every workflow on the right platform for your business. For most clients this means Twilio or Plivo. For businesses with specific CRM requirements we connect directly to platforms like HubSpot, Salesforce, or whatever system you already use to manage your customers. We write every message in your brand voice, set up all the triggers and conditions, configure the two-way SMS responses and SMS chatbot logic, and connect everything to your existing systems so data flows both ways automatically.
Great for: Businesses that want a complete automated text messaging system built properly, not a basic template they have to customise themselves.
Before any automation goes live, we test every single workflow end to end. We run through every scenario. Customer books and confirms. Customer books and cancels. Customer does not respond to the first message. Customer replies with something unexpected. We find every gap in the logic and fill it before your customers experience anything that does not work exactly as it should.
Great for: Businesses that have been burned by automation that seemed to work in testing but broke down in real use.
After launch we monitor how every workflow is performing. Open rates, response rates, conversion rates, opt-out rates. We use that data to improve message timing, refine the wording of individual texts, adjust workflows that are underperforming, and add new automations as your business grows. SMS automation is not a set and forget system. The businesses that get the best results from it are the ones that treat it as something that keeps getting better over time.
Great for: Businesses that want a long term partner managing their SMS automation rather than a one-time setup.
Email open rates sit at around 20% on a good day. SMS open rates sit at 98%. That is not a small difference. It is a completely different level of attention. When your business sends a text message, almost every customer you send it to will read it. For time-sensitive messages, appointment reminders, limited offers, urgent updates, and follow-ups, SMS gets through in a way that nothing else does.
The average text message gets read within 3 minutes of being received. For lead follow-up, this matters enormously. Research consistently shows that the business that responds to a new lead within 5 minutes is dramatically more likely to convert that lead than one that responds an hour later. SMS automation makes your business the fastest to respond every single time, even at 11pm on a Sunday.
When a human sends follow-up messages, some customers get them and some do not. Whoever is busiest that day, whoever got distracted, whoever forgot to check the leads that came in on the weekend. SMS automation sends every message to every customer at exactly the right time, every single time. No customer slips through because someone was busy.
Telphi builds SMS automation that connects directly to your CRM, your booking system, your e-commerce platform, your helpdesk, and your VoIP phone system. When a customer does something in any of those systems, the right text message goes out automatically. When a customer replies, the response goes back into your CRM automatically. Your team always has a complete picture of every customer conversation without manually copying information between systems.
Every industry uses SMS automation in different ways. Telphi has built automated text messaging systems for businesses across all of the following sectors with the specific compliance and workflow requirements of each built directly into the system.
Appointment reminders, prescription notifications, patient follow-ups, and HIPAA compliant messaging.
Client intake follow-up, consultation reminders, case status updates, and secure communication flows.
Payment reminders, account alerts, appointment booking, and PCI DSS compliant messaging.
Lead follow-up sequences, viewing reminders, offer updates, and CRM integration.
Enrolment follow-up, event reminders, fee notifications, and student communication.
Abandoned cart recovery, order confirmations, shipping updates, and re-engagement campaigns.
Supplier notifications, delivery updates, shift communications, and maintenance alerts.
"The reminder sequence just works. Patients appreciate the texts and our no-show problem has basically disappeared. We wish we had done this years ago."
Dr. Kevin Walsh
Managing Partner, Walsh Medical Group
"The numbers were almost immediate. We could see the difference in the first week. SMS just gets through in a way that email never did for us."
Sophie Clarke
Head of E-commerce, StyleHouse London
"We went from chasing leads to having qualified viewings booked automatically. The speed of the first response made the biggest difference. Customers told us they chose us because we got back to them so fast."
Daniel Park
Director, PacificView Property Group
Telphi builds SMS automation on the most reliable business messaging platforms available. We choose the right platform for your message volume, compliance requirements, and the systems you already use.
SMS automation has specific legal requirements that vary across the US, UK, and Canada. Getting compliance wrong exposes your business to significant fines. Telphi builds every automated text messaging system with the correct compliance framework for your market from day one.
United States
Explicit opt-in consent required before sending marketing messages, clear opt-out instructions in every message, and full consent record keeping.
Canada
Express or implied consent required, sender identification in every message, and functioning unsubscribe mechanism in every campaign.
United Kingdom
Prior consent for marketing messages, clear identification of the sender, and straightforward opt-out on every text.
UK and Europe
Data consent and management, right to erasure, privacy by design, and proper data processing agreements for UK and European operations.
Your competitors are already using SMS automation to follow up faster, remind customers more consistently, and recover revenue that would otherwise be lost. The businesses that set this up early build a communication advantage that is very hard for slower-moving competitors to catch up with. Fill in the form below and an SMS automation specialist from Telphi will reach out within one business day. No commitment required. Just a straight conversation about what your customer messaging looks like now and what it could look like with the right automation in place.