Of all the findings in our audit of 23 UK plumbing and heating businesses, the SMS gap was the most striking. Twenty-two of the 23 businesses we audited - 96% - had no ability to receive a text message on their business number. In 2026, when SMS is the preferred communication channel for a significant proportion of the population, this is a remarkable gap.

To be clear about what this means in practice: a homeowner who needs a boiler service, who prefers to text rather than call, who sends a message to your business number saying "Hi, I'd like to book a boiler service for next week - are you available?" - that message goes nowhere. It does not reach you. You never know it was sent. The customer, having received no reply, books with someone else.

Why SMS Matters More Than You Think

SMS is not a niche communication preference. Research consistently shows that a majority of people under 45 prefer text-based communication to phone calls for non-urgent enquiries. The reasons are practical: you can send a text while doing something else, you do not have to wait on hold, and you have a written record of the conversation.

The statistics on SMS engagement are striking. SMS messages have a 98% open rate, compared to around 20% for email. The average response time to an SMS is 90 seconds, compared to 90 minutes for email. And critically for a service business, SMS has a 45% response rate - meaning that nearly half of all SMS enquiries result in a conversation, compared to around 6% for email.

For a trades business, this means that every customer who prefers SMS and cannot reach you by text is a lost opportunity. And given that 96% of businesses in our audit set have this gap, fixing it is an immediate competitive advantage.

How to Enable SMS on Your Business Number

The most common reason businesses cannot receive SMS is that they use a landline or VoIP number as their primary business contact. Traditional landlines do not support SMS. The solution is to either switch to a mobile number as your primary business contact, or to use a service that enables SMS on your existing number.

Several services allow you to add SMS capability to an existing business number. These include:

  • Google Business Messages: Allows customers to message you directly from your Google Business Profile, with messages delivered to your phone or email.
  • WhatsApp Business: A free app that allows you to receive and respond to WhatsApp messages on a business number. WhatsApp is used by over 2 billion people globally and is particularly popular for business communication in the UK.
  • SMS-enabled VoIP services: Providers like RingCentral, Vonage, and 8x8 offer business phone numbers that support both calls and SMS.
  • InstallerOS: The InstallerOS platform includes SMS capability as part of its communication infrastructure, allowing all customer messages - SMS, email, and chat - to be managed in a single inbox.

SMS in Your Workflow

Enabling SMS is only the first step. To make the most of it, you need to integrate SMS into your customer communication workflow. This means: responding to SMS enquiries within the same timeframe as phone calls (ideally within 30 minutes during business hours); using SMS for appointment confirmations and reminders; and following up after jobs with a brief SMS asking for a review.

Automated SMS - where standard messages like appointment confirmations and review requests are sent automatically - is the most efficient approach. This is one of the core features of the InstallerOS platform, which handles all customer communication automatically so that no message is ever missed, even at 10pm on a Saturday.