SMS Chat: Consent & Sessions

Overview

This page covers the legal consent requirements and technical mechanics specific to SMS chat conversations with your assistant — a different scope from SMS Tool for Mid-Call Texting, which covers the assistant texting a caller mid-voice-call, and from TCPA Consent & Outbound Calling Compliance, which covers pre-call voice consent for outbound calling. This page is specifically about consent for text-message conversations and how those conversations are technically managed as sessions.

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) governs SMS the same way it governs calls, with two tiers of required consent:

Whichever tier applies, the same baseline rules from TCPA Consent & Outbound Calling Compliance apply to SMS as well:

• Consent must be an affirmative opt-in — a pre-checked box does not qualify.
• Consumers can revoke consent at any time, through any reasonable means (replying STOP, contacting support, or any other clear method), and you must honor every opt-out.
• Where a signature is required, E-SIGN Act-compliant methods are acceptable: email, a web form, a phone keypress, a text message, or a voice recording.

SMS chat requires a 10DLC-approved number from your phone number provider. 10DLC (10-Digit Long Code) registration is a carrier-level requirement for sending application-to-person text traffic at scale, and it applies regardless of which phone number provider you use — only the core system's default carrier is currently supported for SMS chat, so any number used for SMS chat needs to go through that carrier's 10DLC registration process before assistant responses will send reliably.

To enable SMS chat on a number:

1. Import a 10DLC-approved number from your phone number provider
2. Attach an assistant to that number
3. Test it by texting the number from your own phone
4. Alternatively, enable SMS programmatically by setting the smsEnabled field to true when creating or updating the phone number via the API

{
  "smsEnabled": true
}

SMS is enabled by default when importing a 10DLC-approved number.

SMS chat sessions are created and managed automatically:

• New customers get a fresh session on their first text.
• Returning customers continue their existing session if it's been under 24 hours since their last message.
• Sessions auto-expire after 24 hours of inactivity — the next incoming message starts a new session.
• Full history is maintained within an active session, so the assistant has complete context for the conversation.

You can view all SMS conversations and their message history in the dashboard's session/call logs.

• Customer-initiated only — the assistant cannot send the first message in an SMS chat conversation; the customer must text in first.
• US-to-US only — both the sender and recipient must currently be US numbers.
• Carrier requirement — only a 10DLC-approved number from the core system's default carrier supports SMS chat; other SMS providers are not currently supported.

This page is guidance, not legal advice, and it is specific to SMS/text consent and session mechanics. It does not cover every telemarketing law that may apply to your messaging program — including federal Do-Not-Call rules or state-specific telemarketing law. Consult a qualified attorney who specializes in telemarketing compliance before relying on this guidance for your own SMS program.