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At the enterprise real estate company I work for, we are using Twilio in the following way: a real estate agent uses our web application to share a home listing with a buyer. The problem is the buyer receives the text from "a twilio number" e.g., a (310) number that is NOT the real estate agent's personal telephone number. It is my understanding that this is a technology limitation, that there is no technical solution for this problem, other than to 1) not offer this feature, and/or 2) build an Android app so text messaging integrates with the users phone and phone number.

I'm wondering if there is a technical solution that we have not yet considered. Does anybody know how we can send a text from our web application that harness our user's personal phone number? Is this possible either using Twilio or a competing platform?

Sergi
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1 Answers1

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When you send the message to the customer, your web application could remember which real estate agent sent the message and route any replies to the same agent, again using Twilio. Also a handy way of doing it if the agent leaves the company

Forgot to mention, the other way to do it is with Twilio Proxy, https://www.twilio.com/docs/proxy

Matt.
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  • Hi, Mayt, thanks for ur reply. I understand the part about routing replies to the same agent that sent the text. Can we additionally route the original outgoing call through the agent’s personal phone number rather than from a collection of random (123) [our biz area code] numbers? I will have the team investigate docs>proxy thnx – Sergi Oct 31 '18 at 13:07
  • @Sergi you could try verified called ids, https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-us/articles/223135427-What-s-the-Difference-Between-a-Verified-Phone-Number-and-a-Twilio-Phone-Number- Once you have the agents verified caller id you can make the calls on their behalf and connect the two people, however you would need to initiate the call from some application/code. – Matt. Nov 01 '18 at 05:35
  • the following from the article makes me think it's not possible to accomplish our goal: "Outgoing SMS and MMS messages are not supported. Incoming calls and messages to verified numbers will continue to route through your original provider." My understanding is that we can use verified phone numbers to make calls; but not to send text messages from our web application. Do you concur? – Sergi Nov 01 '18 at 14:54
  • @Sergi that sounds correct. The other option is when you send the first message to the customer just include the agents details in the message, could even follow up with a message x hours later, asking if you want the agent to call. – Matt. Nov 01 '18 at 23:11
  • @sergi, quick example of how to connect the agent with the customer using verified caller id. https://gist.github.com/matbor/a4f451eda8188312448a443d0dbef9a8 basically once you submit the form it will call the agent first and then once connected will call the customer. – Matt. Nov 01 '18 at 23:16
  • "send the first message to the customer just include the agents details in the message" -- yes, that's how we are currently handling things. Our users don't appreciate that technique. Thanks for walking through this with me Matt. – Sergi Nov 02 '18 at 14:01