Mike: Your appointment confirmations aren't landing.
Chris: Not all of them.
Mike: Your estimate follow-ups, your payment links, your membership reminders — a chunk of those texts are getting filtered or blocked before the customer ever sees them.
Chris: And you don't know which ones. That's the part that should scare you.
Mike: Because from your side, it looks like the customer just didn't respond. You're blaming them for ghosting when the message never arrived.
Chris: The carrier ate it. And as of March, the rules got tighter.
Mike: How much tighter?
Chris: Tight enough that if you haven't registered your business for something called A2P 10DLC — and most small shops haven't — your text throughput is now tied to a trust score you probably don't even know you have.
Mike: A trust score. For a plumbing company.
Chris: For every business that sends texts through a ten-digit local number. Which is you.
Chris: Every text you send from your shop's local number goes through a carrier filter now. Every single one. And if you haven't told the carriers who you are and what you're sending, they treat you the same as a spam operation.
Mike: That's what we're fixing today. One registration, one website update, four templates — and your confirmations and follow-ups start landing again by Friday. I'm Mike.
Chris: I'm Chris. Let's get into it.
Mike: Okay so before we get into the fix — how bad is this actually? Because I send texts from Jobber every day. Confirmations, follow-ups, payment links. They seem to work.
Chris: Some of them work. And that's the trap. You're not getting a bounce-back that says "message blocked." You're just seeing silence. The customer doesn't reply, doesn't confirm, doesn't click the link. And you assume they're busy or they're not interested.
Mike: When the text never showed up on their phone.
Chris: Right. And here's what changed. On March eighteenth, Twilio — which is the messaging layer behind a lot of these platforms — started tying MMS throughput to something called your Brand Trust Score and your campaign use case. Before that, everybody got the same rate. One message per second per account. Now it depends on who you are and whether you've registered.
Mike: So if I haven't registered, what happens?
Chris: You're in the lowest tier. T-Mobile, for example, applies daily message caps at the brand level — tied to your EIN. If you're unvetted, you might be capped at two thousand messages a day across all T-Mobile subscribers. That sounds like a lot until you realize that's shared across every campaign, every number, every platform you use.
Mike: Wait — across platforms? So if I'm sending through Jobber and also through some answering service—
Chris: Same EIN, same cap. And when you hit it, messages just stop delivering to T-Mobile customers until midnight Pacific. No warning. You just go silent on a third of your customer base.
Mike: That's... that's a problem I wouldn't even know I had.
Chris: Exactly. You'd just see a bunch of no-shows and think people flaked.
Mike: Okay. So what is A2P 10DLC? In plain English.
Chris: A2P means application-to-person. It's any text sent by software on behalf of a business — so your Jobber confirmations, your Housecall Pro estimate follow-ups, your ServiceTitan reminders. All A2P. 10DLC is the ten-digit long code — your regular local phone number. The carriers decided a few years ago that businesses sending texts from local numbers need to register. Tell us who you are, what you're sending, and prove you have consent. That registration goes through something called The Campaign Registry — TCR.
Mike: And if you don't register?
Chris: Throttled, filtered, or blocked. It used to be more of a suggestion. Now it's enforced. Twilio's March update made throughput directly dependent on your registration status.
Mike: Nobody told me this. I set up texting in Jobber two years ago and it just worked.
Chris: It did work. The enforcement was loose. Now it's not. And the platforms — Jobber, Housecall Pro, ServiceTitan — they're all downstream of this. They use Twilio or Bandwidth or another provider underneath, and those providers are enforcing the carrier rules.
Mike: So this isn't Jobber's fault.
Chris: No. Jobber can't override a carrier filter. They can surface delivery failures — and they do, in the Client Communications Report under Insights and Reports — but they can't make T-Mobile accept an unregistered message.
Mike: Alright. What does registration actually look like? Because when I hear "register with the carriers" I'm thinking weeks of paperwork and some consultant charging me two grand.
Chris: It's not that. Brand registration through TCR costs four dollars and fifty cents. One time. Then you create a campaign — for a shop like yours, it's a Customer Care campaign, which covers confirmations, reminders, estimates, invoices, membership notices. That's a monthly fee. For most shops it's between two and ten dollars a month depending on your category.
Mike: Four fifty to register and ten bucks a month.
Chris: That's the TCR side. Your platform might add a small fee on top. But we're talking about the cost of a sandwich, not a consultant.
Mike: So what do I actually need to have ready?
Chris: Five things. Your EIN — and the legal name has to match exactly what's on file with the IRS. Your business address. A website that has a visible privacy policy and SMS consent language. A support phone number and email. And two sample messages that match what you're actually going to send.
Mike: The website part — I've got a website but I don't think it says anything about texting.
Chris: That's the number one reason registrations get rejected or delayed. Your website needs a line on your booking form or contact form that says something like — "By entering your mobile number and clicking submit, you agree to receive SMS messages from us related to your appointments, estimates, and account. Message frequency varies. Message and data rates may apply. Reply HELP for help, STOP to opt out."
Mike: That's it?
Chris: That's the core. You also need to link your privacy policy and your terms. The CTIA — the wireless industry trade group — requires program identification, consent disclosure, frequency, rate disclosure, and opt-out instructions. That snippet covers all of it.
Mike: And I just hand that to my web person.
Chris: Hand it to your web person. Or paste it yourself if you're running a WordPress site. It goes on every form where someone enters a phone number. We put the exact snippet in the checklist on the Resources page — copy it, swap in your company name, and you're done.
Mike: Okay. So I've got the website updated, I've got my EIN, I register the brand. Then what?
Chris: Then you create the campaign. You pick Customer Care as the use case. You describe what you're sending — appointment confirmations, estimate follow-ups, invoice reminders, membership renewals. And here's the critical part — the sample messages you submit have to match what you actually send.
Mike: What do you mean match?
Chris: If your sample says "Hi, your appointment is Tuesday at two, tap to confirm" — but your actual template in Jobber says "Hey, we're coming out tomorrow, call us if you need to change" — that's a mismatch. Carriers flag that. Your campaign can get suspended.
Mike: Suspended for wording?
Chris: For mismatch. They're checking that what you told them you'd send is what you're actually sending. So before you register, go into your platform, look at every automated text template, and make sure they line up with your samples. Every template needs STOP to opt out and HELP for help at the end. Every one.
Mike: Even the payment link?
Chris: Even the payment link. Even the membership renewal. If it's an automated text from your business, it needs those keywords.
Mike: Okay so let me push back on something. I've heard people say just use a toll-free number and skip all this. Or wait for iMessage and RCS to take over. Why go through the registration hassle?
Chris: Two problems with that. First — toll-free isn't a free pass. Since January thirty-first, twenty twenty-four, if your toll-free number is in "pending" verification status, your messages are blocked. Not filtered. Blocked. Zero delivery.
Mike: Pending means blocked?
Chris: Blocked. So if you set up a toll-free number and never verified it, you're sending into a wall. Now — if you do verify it, toll-free is actually a solid stopgap while your 10DLC registration processes. Verified toll-free gets reduced filtering and it's faster to set up than 10DLC.
Mike: So the play is — verify toll-free now, register 10DLC in parallel, and switch over when it clears?
Chris: That's the play for time-sensitive stuff. Your appointment confirmations, your day-of reminders — put those on verified toll-free today so they keep landing while your 10DLC campaign goes through approval. Brand vetting can take up to seven business days. Campaign approval varies. You don't want your confirmations going dark for a week while you wait.
Mike: And the iMessage slash RCS argument?
Chris: Not everyone has an iPhone. Not everyone has RCS. SMS is still the only channel that reaches every phone in the country. If you're sending a confirmation to Mrs. Henderson and she's got a four-year-old Android on Verizon, iMessage doesn't exist for her. SMS does. And if your SMS isn't registered, it doesn't reach her either.
Mike: So there's no shortcut.
Chris: The shortcut is doing it once, correctly, this week. Register the brand, create the campaign, verify your toll-free as a bridge, and align your templates.
Mike: Let's talk templates. Because I know people are going to want to know exactly what to send.
Chris: Four templates cover ninety percent of what a shop needs. Appointment confirmation with a reschedule link. Estimate follow-up with one clear call to action. Past-due invoice reminder — friendly, not threatening. And a membership renewal nudge.
Mike: And these are in the checklist?
Chris: Word for word. Copy them, swap in your company name and your booking link, paste them into your platform. But — and this matters — use your own domain for links. Don't use a public URL shortener like bit dot ly. Carriers flag those.
Mike: Why would a short link get flagged?
Chris: Because spammers use them to hide destinations. If your link is yourcompanyname dot com slash confirm, that's clean. If it's bit dot ly slash x y z, the carrier doesn't know where it goes. Same message, different filtering outcome.
Mike: Huh. I've been using a shortener for two years.
Chris: Switch it. Use your branded domain. Most platforms let you set a custom short domain — check your settings.
Mike: What about pictures? We send before-and-after photos sometimes.
Chris: Keep images under five megabytes. That's Twilio's limit for supported image types — JPEG, PNG, GIF. But carriers can enforce lower limits depending on the network. Honestly, for confirmations and follow-ups, skip the image. Text-only messages have the highest delivery rates and the lowest filtering risk. Save the photos for the invoice or the customer portal.
Mike: Text only for transactional stuff.
Chris: Text only. One link. STOP and HELP at the bottom. That's the template that passes review and lands in the inbox.
Mike: Alright — where do I check if my texts are actually delivering? Because I've been assuming they are.
Chris: Depends on your platform. Jobber — go to Insights, then Reports, then Client Communications Report. It shows sent versus failed for every SMS. If you see failures spiking, that's your signal.
Mike: And Housecall Pro?
Chris: Housecall Pro actually handles some of this automatically. When a customer opts in, HCP sends a consent confirmation — "you're subscribed, reply STOP to opt out, HELP for help." That consent status shows up in the customer thread and the profile. And if an automated text fails to deliver — a quote notification, an invoice reminder — you'll see an alert in the Notification Center.
Mike: That's actually pretty good.
Chris: It is. HCP is ahead of the curve on consent tracking. The gap is that you still need to make sure your toll-free or 10DLC registration is in order underneath. HCP can't fix a carrier block.
Mike: What about ServiceTitan?
Chris: ServiceTitan has two-way texting through Chat and Phones Pro. You can see message threads in the comms panel. The challenge is that their help documentation on delivery status is gated — it's not as easy to find as Jobber's report. If you're on ServiceTitan and you want to see delivery reasons, search their Help Center for "Chat" or "Phones Pro texting." If you can't find what you need, open a support ticket. Tell them you want to see delivery status by carrier.
Mike: So ServiceTitan users might need to push a little harder to get visibility.
Chris: They might. But the texting infrastructure is there. You just need to make sure the registration layer is solid underneath it.
Chris: One more thing on monitoring. Once you're registered and your templates are aligned, you want to watch a few numbers weekly. Delivery rate by carrier — you're aiming for ninety-five percent or better. If AT and T is at ninety-seven but T-Mobile is at eighty-two, you've got a carrier-specific problem. Probably a cap issue.
Mike: And what about reply rates?
Chris: On estimate follow-ups, five to fifteen percent reply rate is healthy. On confirmations, you want eighty percent or more confirmed within sixty minutes. If you're below that, your message either isn't landing or your call to action isn't clear enough.
Mike: Those are operating targets, not guarantees.
Chris: Operating targets. But they give you a baseline. If your numbers are way off, something in the chain is broken — registration, template, consent, or the message itself.
Mike: So here's where we started — your texts aren't all landing. And the fix isn't switching platforms or buying some new tool. It's registering what you already have.
Chris: Four fifty for the brand. A few bucks a month for the campaign. One paragraph on your website. And templates that match what you told the carriers you'd send. That's the whole thing. You can knock out the registration and the website update in one sitting. The templates are in the checklist — the A2P Fix This Week playbook on the Resources page. Copy the consent snippet, paste the four templates, and test a message to one AT and T phone, one Verizon, and one T-Mobile before Friday.
Mike: And here's the question you need to answer this week — do you have a verified toll-free number live right now, and do your website consent language and SMS templates match the campaign you're registering? If the answer to either one is no, that's your Monday morning.
Chris: That's your Monday morning. We'll see you next Tuesday.
Mike: See you next Tuesday.