Texting consent and opt-outs

StrandCalls asks for two different permissions, and they are not interchangeable. The first lets it text a caller about their own booking. The second — asked only sometimes, and only after a booking is finished — lets you market to them later.

Both are captured on the recorded call, and both can be withdrawn with a single text.

The booking-text consent

Before the AI books an appointment or adds someone to the waitlist, it asks for permission to text them. The script it reads carries every disclosure the carriers require:

I’ll text you a confirmation now and a reminder the day before. Messages come from [your business]. Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP anytime to opt out. Is that okay?

If the caller says yes, the booking proceeds normally and the confirmation goes out. If the caller declines, the job is still booked — the AI notes NO SMS — caller declined on the appointment and promises no texts at all.

That note is the reason a booking sometimes has no confirmation text against it. It isn’t a delivery failure; the customer said no.

The marketing opt-in

The second question is separate, and the AI only asks it when all of these are true:

• your account is on the Growth plan and texting is enabled;
• the caller has no yes and no opt-out already on file — it is never re-asked of someone who already said yes, and never asked again after an opt-out;
• the booking succeeded;
• the caller already agreed to the confirmation texts;
• it is not an emergency call.

The wording is fixed, because two of its phrases are legally load-bearing:

One more thing — would you like occasional automated texts or calls from [your business] about seasonal specials and maintenance reminders? Saying yes isn’t required to book with us, and you can text STOP or say stop anytime.

“Automated” and “isn’t required to book” are the phrases that make this prior express written consent under the TCPA. Anything short of a clear yes — silence, “maybe”, “I guess” — is treated as no. A no isn’t stored as a decision, so a customer who declines today may be asked once more on a future booking call; a yes and an opt-out are both permanent until deliberately changed.

On a yes, StrandCalls stores the consent against the booking phone number along with the ID of the call it was captured on, and immediately texts a written confirmation of the sign-up. That pair — the recorded call and the text — is the evidence you would need if the consent were ever challenged.

Consent is per-number, and it is the gate on campaigns

Every outbound campaign audience is filtered on this flag. A customer who booked with you but was never asked, or who was asked and hesitated, cannot receive a campaign — no filter, import, or list upload gets around it. If a campaign preview shows zero recipients, this is almost always why.

What a customer can text you

Your StrandCalls number takes texts as well as calls. Anything a customer sends lands in the dashboard against their record; a few first words are treated as commands:

They text	What happens
CANCEL	Their earliest upcoming appointment is cancelled, and a deposit inside the refund window is refunded
CONFIRM	Their upcoming appointment is confirmed
RESCHEDULE	They get a link to their booking in the customer portal, or an invitation to call back if there’s nothing to manage
STOP / STOPALL / UNSUBSCRIBE	All texting to that number stops — see below
a photo	Stored on their caller record — see photo intake
anything else	Forwarded to your email, and the customer gets a “we’ll get back to you” acknowledgement

Keywords are matched on the first word, so “cancel my Thursday appointment” works as well as a bare CANCEL.

What STOP actually does

STOP is broader than marketing

When a customer texts STOP, the carrier blocks every text from your StrandCalls number to that phone — confirmations, reminders, deposit links, and dispatch updates included, not just marketing. StrandCalls cannot override it, and neither can you.

Alongside the carrier block, StrandCalls records the opt-out on the caller’s profile and:

• suppresses that number in every campaign of yours that is still queued, on both the text and voice channels;
• flags the number so scheduled sends — recurring-visit prep texts, for instance — skip it instead of failing;
• shows Texts blocked and Marketing opt-out badges on the caller in Callers, so a booking with no confirmation text has a visible reason.

The customer can undo it from their side by texting START to your number, which is a carrier-level command. Inside StrandCalls, the marketing opt-out is never cleared by any dashboard edit — re-consent has to be captured fresh on a later call, which is deliberate: a consent record you can silently flip back on is not evidence of anything.

Voice campaigns and press 9

A voice campaign carries its own opt-out. Every call announces “press 9 to stop receiving calls from us”, and pressing it records the same cross-channel opt-out that STOP does — the customer does not have to remember which channel they were reached on.

Blocked callers

Separately from consent, you can block a phone number outright. A blocked number gets no automated texts and no campaign sends, and its inbound texts are dropped without a reply. Blocking is for abuse, not for opt-outs — an opted-out customer should stay reachable for a booking they make themselves.

Note

Your own numbers are exempt. A blocked number that matches a recognized owner phone still reaches owner mode, so you can never lock yourself out of your own assistant by blocking a number.

Next steps

Texts and notifications Every text StrandCalls sends, plus A2P registration and what stops working before it's approved.

Campaigns and membership plans Who a campaign can reach, the daily caps, and the send window.

Troubleshooting Texts not arriving, campaigns with no recipients, and bookings with no confirmation.