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Workflows

Missed-Call Text-Back

Ep 01 · Twilio · Google Sheets · Slack

62% of calls to home-service businesses go unanswered. 85% of those callers never try again. They just call the next company on the list.

A plumber under a sink cannot pick up the phone. The caller does not leave a voicemail, because almost nobody does anymore. They call the next plumber. That job, and often that customer for life, just went to a competitor because of 20 seconds of bad timing.

What it does

When a call to your business rings out, this workflow sends the caller an instant text: sorry we missed you, what do you need? It logs their number and the time in a sheet, and pings you so a human can take over the conversation. The customer feels answered within seconds of hanging up, which for most callers is enough to stop them dialing the next company.

Businesses running missed-call text-back typically recover a quarter to nearly half of their missed calls into booked work. For a trade where a job is worth a few hundred dollars, the math stops being subtle very quickly.

How it works

Your phone system reports the missed call to the workflow. A filter checks the call was genuinely missed rather than answered, then three things happen at once: the caller gets the text-back, the lead lands in your sheet with a timestamp, and you get the alert. Nothing auto-sends beyond that one text; the follow-up conversation stays human.

Setup

  1. Import the workflow file into your n8n instance.
  2. Create a Twilio account, get a phone number, and point its voice handling at your real phone with the workflow's webhook as the no-answer fallback (the note inside the workflow has the exact setting).
  3. Connect your Google account on the Sheets node and pick or create a leads sheet.
  4. Connect Slack (or swap the node for an SMS to yourself) for the owner alert.
  5. Call your own number, let it ring out, and watch the text arrive.

The template runs on n8n, any recent version, cloud or self-hosted. Every place that needs one of your accounts is marked with a note inside the workflow.

Get the workflow

The file arrives by email. No newsletter, no drip sequence: at most an occasional note when a workflow you grabbed gets an important fix. See privacy.

Rather have this running in your business without touching a single node? That is the actual job. Write to hello@nurho.net or start with the ROI calculator to see if it is even worth automating.