"Text us / Call me: buttons on your page instead of a form"
Text us / Call me
The snippet you already have can show buttons instead of a form. Nothing to re-paste: change the setting here and every page you have already published follows.
Leave it off and your page is exactly as it is today.
Why buttons
Plenty of people will text a business who would never fill in a form. The catch is that a bare "text us" link — the kind most sites use — sets no expectation, records no consent, and leaves the person wondering whether anyone got the message.
This does the same thing properly: the person gets an immediate text back from your line, you get their words in your alert, and the consent record is the same one the form has always written.
What the person is told
The line under the buttons is not something you set. We work it out at the moment they look at it:
- someone is on call → we say they will get straight back to you
- your working hours are open → we say roughly how long a reply will take
- outside your hours but inside legal calling hours → the same, without claiming you are open
- otherwise → we say you will pick it up in the morning
We would rather say the quiet true thing than the impressive false one. A visitor told "we'll call you right back" at 2 a.m. by a business that is asleep learns not to believe the next promise either.
What happens when someone texts you
- They tap Text us, type a sentence and their number, and agree to the same consent line as the form.
- We text them back immediately from your FirstFiveMin line, so they know it landed.
- You get an alert with their words in it.
- You have a short window to answer yourself. If you do not, your assistant picks it up.
That window is deliberately shorter than your call window — somebody who has just typed is still looking at your page. Set it on this card.
If you do not have your own number yet
It still works. The text back goes out on the shared FirstFiveMin line, and that first message is what ties that phone to your business — so when they reply later, it reaches you and not somebody else.
Your own number is better for other reasons (your name on the caller ID, your own throughput), but you do not need one to start.
Opening it by itself
You can have the bubble open on its own after a number of seconds. It happens once, it never reopens, and any click or keypress cancels it. Set it to 0 — the default — and it never happens at all.
What we will not do
- We will not text somebody who has opted out, even if they type into the box today. We tell you instead.
- We will not promise a delivery time for a message. We promise a reply, which is the part we control.
If you have FirstFiveMin Text without a plan
Text is texting. On a Text-only account your page shows Text us only; the Call me button is the assistant's job and appears once you add a FirstFiveMin plan, with the assistant answering within five minutes. Your setting is kept, so nothing changes on the day you add the plan.
The countdown after someone taps Call me
When someone taps Call me and sends their details, the box shows when the call should arrive and follows the real call: a timer while your window is open, a line saying your assistant is calling them now, or a note that a person from your business took it. The timer is not a target we picked: it comes from how quickly calls have really started, and nine in ten start before it reaches zero. If a call runs late, the box says so plainly and we record the miss. Outside your hours, and when no call can be made (for example, the number has opted out), no timer is shown. The button says that an automated assistant will call.