Turn Every Missed Call Into a Booked Job: The Text-Back Recovery Workflow

The constraint. In home services, a missed call is usually a lost job: the caller just dials the next company on Google before you get around to calling back. Recovering even a quarter of your missed calls can add real weekly revenue with zero new ad spend.

The workflow (7 steps):

1. Capture the miss. Your phone system or a tool like OpenPhone or CallRail logs every missed/abandoned call with the number and timestamp.
2. Trigger a text in 60 seconds. Wire the missed-call event through Zapier or Make so an SMS fires while buying intent is still hot.
3. Draft the text with AI. Feed the caller's number, the time of day, and your service list into Claude or ChatGPT with a prompt that writes a warm, specific text: acknowledge the miss, offer two concrete booking windows, and ask what they need.
4. Human checkpoint (don't skip this). Route the drafted text to your CSR/dispatcher to approve or tweak in one tap before it sends. Never auto-fire outbound messages with no eyes on them.
5. Handle the reply. AI drafts responses to the common questions (price range, availability, "are you licensed and insured") and your CSR approves each before it goes.
6. Book it. Push confirmed jobs straight into your scheduling tool (Housecall Pro, Jobber, ServiceTitan).
7. Score it weekly. Track recovered-call → booked-job rate every week so you can see the dollars, not just the activity.

What it's worth. Miss 40 calls a week, recover 25% at a $400 average ticket, and that's roughly $4,000/week you were throwing in the trash, about $200K a year.

Caution. Keep customer contact info in your business phone/scheduling tools rather than a public chatbot.