HVAC calls arrive exactly when nobody can answer them: both techs are on jobs, the weather just turned, and every furnace or AC unit in the county seems to fail on the same afternoon. The homeowner doesn't wait — they call the next company on the list. TextBack answers the call you couldn't, by text, in seconds.
Start your 7-day free trial · What are missed calls costing you?
The season's first heat wave lands and every marginal AC unit in town quits within the same six hours. Your two techs are already on roofs. Six calls ring out in an afternoon — each one a homeowner deciding, in that minute, who gets the repair. A text that arrives while they're still looking at their phone keeps your name in the conversation your hands couldn't join.
A furnace dies at night with kids in the house. That caller is not leaving a voicemail and waiting until morning — they dial down the list until somebody responds. The first response usually gets the call-out, the repair, and the customer for the next decade of tune-ups. A text-back in seconds is a response, even before you've seen the alert yourself.
Plenty of good HVAC shops run with no dispatcher at all — the owner is the office, and the office is in a crawlspace. Maintenance reminders and spring tune-up requests ring the same number as emergencies, and every one that rings out is a booking your competitor's receptionist just took.
Invoca's 2026 home-services research found that only 34% of HVAC calls are answered by a person — the rest hit voicemail, ring out, or get a busy signal. Across businesses generally, published research puts unanswered calls at 28–48% (CallRail's 2025 all-business figure is 28%; Invoca's home-services figure is 48%).
And the calls that get missed in this trade are not small: SearchLight Digital's analysis of 126,650 home-services leads put the average HVAC job ticket at $2,110. One recovered service call a month covers TextBack's founding price many times over — the arithmetic is on the pricing page, not in a promise.
Conditional call forwarding sends only the calls nobody answers — missed, busy, or after hours — to your TextBack number. Your customer gets a friendly text in seconds, from your business by name, and can reply 1 to book a real appointment slot, 2 for a free quote (they can attach a photo of the problem), or 3 for a callback — or just write back in their own words. The AI drafts your replies; you approve every one before it sends. If the caller goes quiet, one gentle follow-up goes out; when a job is done, exactly one review request follows. Spanish-speaking callers are answered in Spanish, end to end, and STOP or ALTO ends texts instantly. You keep your number, your carrier, and your phones — nothing is ported, and turning the forwarding off is the whole exit if you ever leave.
Free trial: 7 days, and the clock starts when TextBack catches your first missed call — not at signup. Cancel during the trial and you're never charged for the subscription (the one-time carrier registration fee is the exception, if your registration was already filed). Full pricing, in one place →
During a heat wave we get more calls than we could ever book. Does texting everyone back just create a backlog?
It creates a queue you can actually work — every caller gets an instant text and a thread in one inbox, in the order they called, instead of a voicemail box you excavate at 7pm. Callers who book a slot book themselves; the rest are warm conversations, not lost ones. You work the list when you're off the roof.
Does it handle after-hours emergency calls differently?
The text-back fires the same way at 9pm as at 9am — that's the point: the no-heat caller's first response doesn't wait for business hours. Your after-hours wording is yours to set, and callback requests surface at the top of the inbox so the urgent ones are obvious.
We already run field-service software. Does TextBack replace it?
No — and it doesn't claim to. TextBack is the phone layer: it catches the call, runs the text conversation, and books into its own calendar with reminders. Your dispatch and invoicing tools stay exactly as they are; nothing here asks you to rip out software your techs already know.
What does it cost an HVAC shop, all in?
$49/month per location at the founding price, locked in while you stay subscribed, with no setup fee. The one-time $25 carrier registration fee is charged when your registration is filed — it is not a subscription charge, and cancelling the trial never charges the subscription. The free trial runs 7 days and the clock doesn't start until your first missed call is caught.
The HVAC guide: missed-call text back for HVAC companies, in depth →
Missed call text back software, compared — the honest hub →
For other trades: Plumbing · Electrical · Roofing · General Contractors