Step-by-step guides
Longer, practical walkthroughs of the things you have to get right before automated messaging works at all.
What your AI should refuse to answer
An AI front desk that answers everything is a liability. Which questions it must hand to a human, why a confident wrong answer is the failure mode that matters, and how to test yours in an afternoon.
· 6 min readSMS automation that customers do not block
Which texts a business may automate and which it may not, why the quiet hours you set are measured against the wrong clock in most systems, what a sensible frequency cap looks like, and the four numbers that tell you it is going wrong.
· 6 min readAsking for reviews without annoying anyone, or breaking the law
When to ask, how often is too often, why the channel you ask on is a legal question rather than a preference, and the difference between asking for reviews and monitoring them.
· 5 min readAI appointment booking: what has to be true before you turn it on
An AI that books appointments is only as good as the availability it reads. The five things that have to be right first, why double-booking is a data problem rather than an AI problem, and how to tell whether a vendor has solved it.
· 6 min readFixing your speed to lead: measuring it honestly, then actually changing it
How to measure the time between an enquiry arriving and a human-quality reply, why the number most businesses quote is wrong, and the five changes that move it, in the order they pay off.
· 5 min readHow to evaluate an AI receptionist: what it should do, what it costs, and where it fails
The questions that separate an AI receptionist from a chatbot with a nicer greeting: what it is allowed to say, what happens when it does not know, what it actually costs once messaging is counted, and the failures worth planning for.
· 8 min readConnecting a business mailbox to a shared inbox
What you need from your mail provider, what changes in the mailbox after you connect it (and what does not), how threading and folders work, and the mistakes that cause duplicate or missing mail.
· 7 min readWhat your software vendor should tell you about card payments
The questions worth asking any vendor that takes your card: where the number goes, what they store, what happens when a payment fails, and what a payment link should say before you click it.
· 5 min readChoosing a business texting number: local, toll-free, or the one you already have
Whether to text from a local 10-digit number, a toll-free number, or text-enable the number already on your signage, and what each one costs you in registration time, throughput, and answer rate.
· 5 min readSetting up missed-call text-back without annoying anyone
What a missed-call text should say, how fast it has to arrive, what to do after hours, and the compliance question everybody gets wrong, plus an honest note on what Frontiva can do today.
· 6 min readA2P 10DLC registration: a practical guide for small businesses
What A2P 10DLC registration is, why your business texts get blocked without it, what you need to gather, and roughly how long each step takes.
· 4 min read