Texts are how customers want to talk to you. Stop pretending they're emails.
The customer who used to call your office is now texting your owner's cell. The owner sees the text on Tuesday at 11pm, can't find the customer file at that hour, and forgets to follow up by Wednesday morning. The customer goes to your competitor by Thursday. You never knew the lead existed.
Most service businesses solve this by buying a separate "business texting" tool — OpenPhone, Podium, Textline, etc. Now SMS lives in one app, customer history in another, scheduling in a third. Three tabs to answer one question. The texting tool doesn't know your customer's last appointment date. The CRM doesn't know they texted yesterday. You're back to playing data-archaeologist instead of running the business.
How POG handles two-way SMS
POG ERP ships with a built-in Inbox tab. Every inbound SMS — whether from a Telnyx number, a Twilio number, or a Vonage number — lands in lead_messages, gets attached to a lead record, and surfaces in the Inbox grouped as a chronological thread.
You see the customer's name, phone, lead status, message count, and last message preview in a left-rail thread list. Click a thread and the right pane renders the full conversation as bubbles — inbound on the left, outbound (yours) on the right with timestamps. Type in the reply box, hit Send, and the message goes out via the same SMS provider stack used by your missed-call AI replies. Outbound message gets logged to the same thread immediately.
Threads auto-refresh every 30 seconds. New inbound messages bubble to the top. Failed sends surface error_detail (e.g. "carrier rejected", "invalid number") so you know to call instead.
What's included
- Threaded view — one thread per lead, chronological inbound + outbound, error states inline.
- 30-second polling — new messages appear without a page reload. WebSocket upgrade on the roadmap for sub-second.
- Multi-provider — Telnyx (default), Twilio, Vonage. Provider chosen per-tenant via Settings.
- Per-tenant phone numbers — each tenant uses their own provider account; no shared shortcodes.
- Consent enforcement — outbound respects the tenant's SMS opt-in / opt-out flags by default.
- After-hours smart replies — inbound messages outside business hours get a calmer auto-response acknowledging the closure and offering the public booking link.
- Audit trail — every reply send logged with user + IP + timestamp + success/failure status.
How it compares
Jobber: SMS bolt-on at extra cost; threaded view exists but disconnected from the CRM. Housecall Pro: SMS available only on the higher-tier plans. ServiceTitan: full two-way SMS but $350+/mo with the contact-center module. OpenPhone / Podium / Textline: $20-80/mo standalone, no integration with your CRM, scheduling, or invoicing.
POG ERP: built-in Inbox tab on every plan including the $49/month starter. Threads tied to leads tied to appointments tied to receipts — full customer history one click away from the message.
"If you don't recover at least one lead from the Inbox tab in your first 30 days, we refund your setup fee in full."