Customer texts come in to the business, not to somebody’s personal phone. The worker app carries those conversations so a crew member can answer a question from the driveway without handing out their own number.
1 Open Messages
In the worker app, go to Messages. You get the list of conversations, most recent first.
An empty list says so plainly, noting that customer texts to the business appear here. If it stays empty, either nobody has texted or texting is not set up on the account yet. See how to text your customers.
2 Open a conversation
Tap a conversation to see its history. The screen is headed with the customer’s name, and the message box reads Type a message, with the send action labelled Text followed by the customer’s name so there is no doubt who it is going to.
A conversation with no history yet shows No messages yet.
3 When a message will not send
If sending fails you get Could not send the message. Check your connection and try again.
Unlike job completions and photos, messages are not queued for later. If it fails, it did not go. Check the message actually appears in the thread before driving off, because a customer expecting a reply that never arrived is worse than one who was never answered.
Loading failures are equally explicit: Could not load conversations and Could not load messages, both of which mean signal rather than anything being wrong with the account.
Why this matters more than it looks
Two reasons this is worth insisting on with your crew:
Personal numbers are hard to take back. Once a customer has a crew member’s mobile, they use it forever, including after that person leaves. Then you have a customer texting a stranger about your business and you never see it.
The office cannot see what it cannot see. A conversation in the app is visible to you. A conversation on someone’s personal phone is invisible until it becomes a complaint. If a customer agrees a change of scope by text, you want that in the system.
What to tell your crew
Answer through the app, not your own phone. If a customer asks for something that costs money or changes the schedule, tell them the office will confirm, then flag it. Anything agreed in the app is on the record, which protects the crew as much as it protects you.