Premium Voicemail can send an automatic SMS reply to a caller who hangs up during the greeting or leaves an empty voicemail (a missed call). You write a reusable SMS template once, choose which of your numbers sends the text, and the mailbox replies to missed callers for you. It only texts callers whose caller ID is an Australian mobile number, and each text is billed per SMS segment at your standard SMS rate.
How missed-call caller auto-SMS works
When auto-SMS is switched on for a mailbox:
- A caller rings a number connected to the mailbox and hangs up during the greeting or beep, or leaves a recording under one second (effectively empty).
- If their caller ID is a valid Australian mobile number (starting 04, 614, or +614), the platform sends your chosen SMS template to that caller.
- Private numbers, landlines, international callers and invalid caller IDs are skipped - they simply are not texted.
- A caller is only texted once every 5 minutes per mailbox, so repeated test calls do not spam them.
- Each sent text appears in the mailbox's Usage & Billing report and is billed per SMS segment at your standard SMS rate.
Callers who actually leave a voicemail message are not sent the auto-SMS - the normal email, SMS alert and webhook notifications still apply to real messages.
What you need before switching it on
Two things are required, and both are managed in MyAccount:
- An SMS template - a reusable text message kept in the SMS Templates library (next to the Greeting Library under Premium Voicemail). One template can be attached to many mailboxes.
- An outbound SMS caller ID - the number the text is sent from. Pick it from the dropdown in the mailbox settings; it lists only the numbers on your account that can send SMS (Australian mobile numbers). Special-service numbers such as 13, 1300 and 1800 cannot send SMS and are not offered.
Setting it up
- Sign in to MyAccount and open Premium Features > Voicemail.
- Open the SMS Templates library and select New Template.
- Give the template a name and write the message body, using the placeholders below if you like. Watch the character and segment counter - longer messages cost more segments, and characters outside the standard GSM set (emoji, some punctuation) switch the text to UCS-2 encoding which fits fewer characters per segment.
- Save the template, then edit the mailbox and open its missed-call settings.
- Turn on Auto-SMS Caller on Missed Call, choose your SMS Template and Outbound SMS Caller ID, and save.
- Place a test call from a mobile, hang up during the greeting, and confirm the text arrives.
To stop it, edit the mailbox and turn Auto-SMS Caller on Missed Call off. Clearing the template or caller ID also stops texts. Deleting a template from the library automatically detaches it from every mailbox that used it.
SMS template placeholders
These optional placeholders are replaced with real values when the text is sent:
| Placeholder | Replaced with |
|---|---|
{voicemail_name} | The mailbox name (for example "Sales Line") |
{destination_did} | The phone number the caller dialled |
{caller_id} | The caller's own number |
{caller_name} | The caller ID name, if one was presented |
{occurred_at} | The date and time of the missed call |
Template names can be up to 128 characters and message bodies up to 1000 characters. Keep in mind that placeholders expand at send time, so the delivered text may be longer than the template you wrote.
Auto-SMS to the caller vs SMS alerts to you
Two different voicemail SMS features are easy to confuse:
| Feature | Who gets the text | When |
|---|---|---|
| Missed-call / new-voicemail SMS alerts | You or your staff (the mobile numbers you list) | A voicemail is left, or a call is missed |
| Missed-call caller auto-SMS | The person who called you | They hang up during the greeting without leaving a message |
They work independently - you can run both, either, or neither on a mailbox.
If the caller does not receive the text
- Check the caller ID presented was an Australian mobile - landline, private and international callers are never texted.
- Make sure the call really was missed: a caller who leaves a message over one second does not trigger the auto-SMS.
- Wait at least 5 minutes before retesting from the same phone - the per-caller cooldown blocks a second text.
- Confirm the mailbox still has both a template and an outbound SMS caller ID selected and that auto-SMS is on.
- If it still fails, call the support line on 1800 272 998 or open a ticket in the portal helpdesk.