Your Winback Questions, Answered Straight

Six months of silence is the trigger. Shorter than six months and the customer may still be in a natural service cycle — an HVAC customer who just had a spring tune-up isn't lost, they're just done for the season. Push too early and you look desperate. Wait past 12 months and response rates start declining without a strong hook to pull them back.

Six months is the sweet spot: the customer hasn't forgotten you, likely has a new need forming, and hasn't yet signed a maintenance agreement with a competitor.

The threshold adjusts by trade type. Plumbing customers tend to call year-round as problems arise — six months is usually right. HVAC customers follow seasonal patterns, so the dormancy window might flex to eight or ten months depending on their last service season. We set the threshold during onboarding to match your trade and how your customers buy.

Not 'we miss you.' Nobody books a $400 water heater flush because they got a generic blast from a company they haven't called in 18 months.

Every message is built around a specific, time-relevant hook: the age of their equipment, the upcoming season, a reminder tied directly to what they had done last time. A plumbing customer who had a main line cleared eight months ago gets something like:

'Hey [First Name], this is Mike at [Business Name]. You had your main line cleared back in October — clogs tend to come back every 12-18 months, especially after a wet winter. We have openings next week. Want me to get you on the schedule before the spring rush? Reply YES or call [number].'

That message works because it's specific, it's timely, and it gives the customer a reason to act now — not a coupon, not a guilt trip, just a relevant reminder from a contractor who knows their history.

You approve all messages before anything sends. You see the exact copy, the trigger logic, and the list segment it targets. Nothing goes out without your sign-off.

Texting a prior customer about the same type of service you've already provided them falls under an established business relationship — the consent basis that permits outbound SMS under federal rules. They hired you, you did the work, your number may already be in their phone. You're not a cold stranger prospecting a random list.

That said, compliance is not optional, and an established relationship is not a blank check. Federal rules set the floor; state laws can go further. Here's exactly what the system enforces automatically:

Most contractor lists are a mess — phone numbers in a spreadsheet, names missing, duplicates scattered throughout, work numbers mixed with cell numbers. We've seen it all. Here's what's workable, what gets scrubbed, and where the floor is.

What can't be salvaged: numbers without an area code, international numbers, or contacts with no prior service relationship who would require explicit written consent. The honest floor: fewer than 50 cleanable contacts won't produce enough bookings to justify setup cost. You'd generate maybe three to five jobs — not enough to move the needle. We'll tell you that during onboarding, not after you've paid. A viable campaign typically needs at least 100 to 200 cleanable mobile contacts.

You don't log into anything. Here's how you know it's working.

Appointments start appearing in your calendar. Every booking the system generates is tagged — so when a customer you haven't heard from in nine months replies to a reactivation text and books a water heater replacement, that appointment shows up tagged in your calendar notes.

At 30 days, the agency sends a plain-language report: contacts messaged, responses received, bookings generated, and estimated job value recovered. No dashboard, no metrics interface to navigate.

After that, a monthly SMS summary gives you one line of data — reactivation-attributed bookings in the prior 30 days. Enough to confirm it's working without managing anything.

If the campaign goes quiet — no reactivation bookings in a 30-day window — you'll hear from us before you notice it yourself.

Lost customer reactivation is included in the full AI Client Builder setup: $9,997 one-time + $497/month. There is no separate charge for reactivation as a standalone feature — it's part of the complete automation system that includes the AI Receptionist, Missed Call Text Back, and the full service suite.

The $5,000 recovered in 60 days performance guarantee covers the full system. The measurement is straightforward: jobs booked through any part of the system — calls answered, missed calls recovered, and appointments generated by reactivation sequences — are totaled against the average job ticket you report at onboarding. If the system doesn't recover at least $5,000 in booked job value within 60 days, you don't pay.

Reactivation contributes directly to that recovery total. A plumber with 200 dormant contacts where just 5% book a single $500 job generates $5,000 from reactivation alone — before the AI Receptionist books a single new call.

For full guarantee terms — how job value is calculated and what counts as a recovered booking — see the lost customer reactivation service — full details and pricing.

Yes. If you operate plumbing and HVAC under the same business, your contact list is segmented by service history before anything sends. Customers who used you for drain cleaning get a plumbing-specific message. Customers who had a furnace tune-up get an HVAC message timed to the next service season. They don't receive each other's messages.

This matters because a cross-sell message to someone who hired you for drain cleaning looks like spam. A relevant reminder about the same service type they already trusted you with looks like customer service — and books at a higher rate.

Segmentation is built during onboarding. Tell us which trades you operate and what your service history data looks like; we configure the sequences from there. Multi-trade shops and general contractors can run parallel campaigns simultaneously, each hitting the right contact with the right message.

They reply STOP. That's it.

The system processes the opt-out instantly. That number is permanently suppressed across every automated sequence in your account — not just the reactivation campaign, but all future outreach. It will never receive another automated message, and no action is required from you.

You don't manage a suppression list. You don't keep a spreadsheet of people who opted out. The system handles it and maintains the record automatically.

If a customer calls to opt out verbally, the agency manually adds that number to the suppression list on your behalf — one message to us is all it takes.

Non-compliance with opt-out requests is where most SMS violations originate. Ignoring a STOP reply is the fastest path to a legal complaint. The system makes opt-out handling instant, permanent, and automatic.

If you've worked through every question here and you're ready to put a reactivation campaign to work on your dormant list, ready to start? book your reactivation setup call.