Can I Stop Recoverly From Texting Certain Numbers?
A reasonable question I hear from owners before they sign up: "If I install this, is it going to text my wife? My foreman? The supply yard? Every spam call from a 415 number?" Fair concern. Most business phones get plenty of calls that are not new leads, and an owner does not want a follow-up text to land on the wrong contact.
Recoverly is not a blanket auto-text system. You can exclude specific phone numbers from missed-call follow-up so they never receive an automated text. The list lives in your dashboard, and you can add or remove numbers any time.
Why some numbers should not get a missed-call text
- •Employees and crew leads who call you all day long.
- •A spouse, parent, or family member you do not want pinged with a business text.
- •Suppliers, vendors, and dispatchers who call about parts and pickups, not new work.
- •Repeat nuisance callers and known spam numbers.
- •VIP customers you specifically want to call back yourself, not hand off to an automated thread.
- •Test numbers and your own phone (handy when you are setting things up).
How Excluded Numbers works
- •In your dashboard, open Settings and find the Excluded Numbers section.
- •Add the phone number you want to skip. You can include an optional label like "Foreman" or "Supply yard" so future-you remembers why it is there.
- •If that number calls and you miss the call, Recoverly does not send the customer text. The normal AI follow-up conversation does not start for that caller.
- •You can remove the number later. Normal missed-call text-back resumes for that caller the next time they call.
There is nothing more to it. The list is per-business — your excluded numbers do not affect any other Recoverly customer, and other businesses’ lists do not affect you.
How this is different from STOP / opt-out
These two settings sound similar, but they serve different purposes:
- •STOP / opt-out is controlled by the recipient. If a customer replies STOP to any Recoverly text, that number is opted out automatically and is always respected — regardless of any excluded list. This is required by US carrier rules and is not optional.
- •Excluded Numbers is controlled by you, the business owner. You decide which numbers Recoverly should never text in the first place, even if they have not opted out themselves.
Both settings prevent unwanted texts. STOP is the recipient’s right. Excluded Numbers is the owner’s judgment. Both apply.
Why this matters for trust
A lot of owners are cautious about adding any kind of automation to their customer communication, and they should be. The wrong text at the wrong moment can hurt a relationship that took years to build.
Excluded Numbers exists because missed-call text-back should apply where it helps — new callers you would otherwise lose — and stay out of the way where it does not. You decide where the line is. The system does not assume.
What Recoverly still does for normal callers
- •Your phone rings first. If you answer, nothing changes.
- •If you do not answer, the call is forwarded based on your no-answer call forwarding setting.
- •Recoverly then sends a short follow-up text to the caller so they do not feel ignored.
- •It collects basic details — what they need, where, and rough timing.
- •It sends you a clean summary so you can call back with the right context.
No phone bot, no call center, no CRM to manage, no quoting, no scheduling promises. You stay in control of the actual relationship.
See the kind of text Recoverly actually sends for a normal new caller on the missed-call text examples page, or work out how much a single missed call may be worth to you with the missed-call cost calculator.
Related reading: will customers be annoyed by an automated missed-call text, and what if the caller is not a new lead.
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