Recovering a missed call
The design is simple and none of it ships yet. Read this as a plan you can hold us to, not as a feature you can turn on this week.
- Roadmap, not shipped
- Consent is part of the design
- Outbound calls work today
The short answer
- The intended mechanism: an unanswered call on a number in your instance creates a call record, and a text goes back to the caller within seconds offering to book or to answer a question.
- None of that is available. Phone numbers, inbound routing, SMS and missed-call text-back all sit in the local-services pack on the roadmap, and no part of it works today.
- What works today: outbound calls through your own Vapi account with the outcome logged onto the record, and email cadences from a mailbox pool.
Trigger to logged, as designed
Each step is an intention. None of them runs today.
- 1
Trigger: an unanswered call
A call arrives on a number held in your instance and nobody answers it. Planned: phone numbers with inbound routing.
- 2
A call record is written
The number, the time and the outcome land on a contact, creating one if the number is new. Planned.
- 3
The text-back sends
A short message to the caller within seconds. Planned, and gated by consent handling and STOP processing rather than sent blindly.
- 4
The human sees one thread
The missed call, the outgoing text and any reply in the same thread list as email. Planned: call log and voicemail transcription beside the inbox.
- 5
A reply becomes a booking or a task
If the caller answers, the conversation continues where the team already works. Planned, with reminders and no-show recovery in the same pack.
- 6
What gets logged
The call, the message, the consent state and every subsequent touch, with the actor named in the audit log. The audit behaviour exists today; the events that would fill it do not.
What would get configured
Status is the only column that matters on this page right now.
| Object | What you would set | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Phone number | A number on your instance with routing rules | On the roadmap |
| Business hours and after-hours behaviour | When a human answers and what happens otherwise | On the roadmap |
| Text-back message | The wording sent to a missed caller | On the roadmap |
| Consent and STOP handling | Opt-out processing on every message | On the roadmap |
| 10DLC registration | Carrier registration for business texting in the United States | On the roadmap |
| Voicemail transcription | Voicemails readable in the thread list | On the roadmap |
| Outbound calls | Vapi as the provider, call_start and call_log | Available |
| Audit log | Actor recorded on every action | Available |
Where it stops and a human starts
Today it stops before it starts, and that is the honest summary. If missed calls are the leak you are trying to close this quarter, buy a tool that closes them now. A roadmap does not answer a telephone.
When it does ship, the stopping point comes early. A text-back is an acknowledgement and a booking link, not a negotiation. Anything beyond that belongs to a person.
Consent is where the design refuses to be casual. Texting a consumer mobile in the United States brings the TCPA into it, business texting needs carrier registration, and STOP has to work every time. That machinery is part of the planned feature, though the consent itself is yours to hold. This page is not legal advice.
One thing you can do now: get the phone number onto contact records and start recording call outcomes with call_log, so the history exists on the day the automatic half arrives.
Questions
- Can I use my own texting tool in the meantime?
- Yes, and most people should. Outbound webhooks can push a SalesCrew event to whatever you already use, and the contact record still holds the history if you log the touch.
- Why publish a page for something that does not exist?
- Because the alternative is a page that implies it does. The mechanism is worth describing so you can judge the plan; the roadmap banner is there so you do not buy on it.
- What does the Local tier cost and what does it include?
- Local is $499 a month and is defined around this pack. It ships when the pack ships, so buying it today for missed-call recovery would be buying an intention.