The SMS channel
SMS lets you send and receive text messages with customers, with conversations landing in the same inbox as Email, Web Chat, Voice, and every other channel. The underlying delivery runs on Vonage.
What you get
- Two-way SMS. Customers text your number and a conversation is created (or resumed) in Atender. Agents reply from the conversation view, and the customer receives the reply as a normal text.
- Multiple numbers per tenant. Run several SMS numbers — one per market, one for sales, one for support, whatever fits your operation.
- Per-number routing. Each number can be routed to a specific team or Agent Stack, or left to land in the general inbox.
- System-selected outbound fallback. When an outbound SMS does not already have a sender from its conversation or another specific context, Atender selects a sender from the tenant’s assigned SMS numbers.
- Inbound webhook delivery. Inbound texts arrive in real time via Vonage’s webhook — no polling delay.
- Channel switching. Customers chatting via Web Chat can move the conversation to SMS to continue on their phone, with the full history carried over. See Configure channel switching.
- Auto-translation. SMS works with Atender’s auto-translation. A customer’s message in a different language is translated for the agent; the agent’s reply is translated back before sending.
How SMS numbers work in your tenant
SMS numbers are not self-provisioned through Settings → SMS today. Numbers are assigned to your tenant by your account team via Vonage, and once assigned they appear in your Assigned Phone Numbers list. In that list you’ll find:
- Routing per number — General inbox (default), Team, or Agent Stack.
- Friendly name — an internal label set by your account team, so the right number is easy to recognize in dropdowns.
Assigned numbers can be routed individually. For outbound SMS, Atender uses the sender supplied by the current conversation or another specific context when one is available. If no context selects a sender, the fallback sender is system-selected from the tenant’s assigned SMS numbers.
If you need a new SMS number (different country, a campaign-specific number, etc.), contact your account team.
How it fits
An SMS conversation is a regular conversation in Atender. It carries the same lifecycle (Active, Snoozed, Done, Archived), can be assigned, tagged, and merged, and surfaces in the same inbox views as any other channel.
A conversation that starts in Web Chat and is switched to SMS continues with the same conversation ID and history — the agent sees one thread, not two.
What is NOT in the SMS channel
A few things tenants familiar with other SMS tools sometimes expect:
- No tenant-self-serve number provisioning. Numbers are assigned by your account team — there’s no “Buy a number” button in Settings → SMS.
- No MMS attachments. SMS is text-only today. Media attachments are not surfaced as a tenant-facing feature.
- No mass-broadcast / SMS campaigns. The channel is built around one-to-one conversations. Outbound campaign tooling is not part of SMS.
Where to start
If your account team has assigned SMS numbers to your tenant:
- Configure routing for each assigned number — pick a team, an Agent Stack, or leave the number routing to the general inbox.
If you don’t see any numbers in Settings → SMS, contact your account team to have them assigned.