Customize SMS notification content?

Question

The team is asking about personalizing our customer SMS notifications — specifically, can we edit the message content and include our company name more prominently? Currently the messages feel very generic and we'd like them to better reflect our brand voice. Also curious if we can adjust timing (e.g., "technician en route" sent 15 min before arrival rather than immediately).

I've looked through the settings but only see on/off toggles, not content editing. Are we missing something, or is this functionality limited?

Thanks in advance for any guidance.

Priya Nair (Staff) · Accepted Answer

Hi Paula, happy to help!

SMS customization is available on Pro and Enterprise plans. Here's how to access it:

Go to Settings → Notifications → Customer SMS
Click Edit Template next to any notification type
You'll see variables like {{technician.name}}, {{company.name}}, and {{eta.minutes}} that auto-populate
Customize the message body (160 char limit for single SMS; longer messages split)

For the "en route" timing, look for Trigger Settings — you can set a delay or schedule it relative to departure rather than arrival.

See this article for full steps on template variables and character limits.

Gwen Albright · Answer

Just to add — we've been using custom SMS for about 6 months and I strongly recommend keeping messages under 120 characters even though the limit is 160. Why? Some carriers add prefixes that push you over the single-SMS threshold, and customers get annoyed by multi-part messages. Also, test on actual devices — emojis can render weirdly on older phones. Pro tip: We added a short URL to our booking portal in the "job complete" message and saw a 20% uptick in rebooking requests.