How to Connect an AI Chatbot to SMS, Step by Step

People text the businesses they trust. It’s fast, it’s personal, and almost every message gets opened. The problem is speed: a text that waits an hour for a reply might as well not be answered. Connect your Telnyx or Infobip number to Evoriqa and, by default, every inbound text is answered by AI — the same knowledge-grounded pipeline that runs on your website widget — with a grounded reply sent straight back as a text. Want a person in the loop instead? Flip the AI replies toggle off and that channel goes human-first: the text lands in one shared inbox flagged for a human, in the wait queue with its real arrival time and firing a desktop alert the second it arrives, and a teammate replies with an AI-drafted suggestion from your knowledge base.

Here’s how to put your SMS number in the Evoriqa inbox and start answering texts from one place.

This is the step-by-step version of our SMS channel overview.

What you'll need

• A Evoriqa workspace (create one free, no credit card)
• A chatbot trained on your content
• A Telnyx or Infobip account with an SMS-capable phone number you own

Step 1: Train your agent first

Before it can answer a text, your agent needs to know your business. Crawl your site, upload your docs, and add the FAQs you already get every day. The care you put in here is the difference between grounded answers and guesses. See the training guide for the full setup.

Step 2: Pick a provider and get an SMS-capable number

Evoriqa sends and receives your texts through one of two providers, chosen when you connect the channel — you bring your own account either way:

• Telnyx runs on its own carrier network, with strong US and EU rates and delivery. Buy a messaging-capable number in the Telnyx portal.
• Infobip has the widest global reach, especially across MENA and APAC, and registers senders for you. Use an Infobip messaging-capable sender.

Pick whichever already covers where your customers are. Either way, if you send to US recipients you’ll need A2P 10DLC registration, which links your number to a registered brand and campaign so carriers deliver reliably — Telnyx runs it in its portal, and Infobip’s onboarding team handles sender registration for you. It’s a review step, not an instant switch, so start it before the day you plan to go live. Until a brand, campaign, or sender is approved, carriers may filter or drop what the number sends.

Step 3: Connect SMS in Evoriqa

In the Evoriqa dashboard, open the chatbot you want to handle texts, go to its Channels tab, and pick SMS. Choose your provider and connect with that account's credentials — Telnyx takes an API key, public key, and from number; Infobip takes an API key, base URL, and sender. (Channels are set per chatbot. There’s no separate global Channels page.) Evoriqa gives you a webhook URL.

Copy that URL. This is the address your provider will call every time someone texts your number.

Step 4: Point your number at the webhook

Back in your provider’s portal, route inbound messages on your number to the webhook URL from Evoriqa.

• Telnyx: create a Messaging Profile, set its inbound webhook URL to the one from Evoriqa (method POST), and attach the profile to your number.
• Infobip: set that full webhook URL — it already carries the ?secret= that authenticates the calls — as your number’s inbound-message webhook, and as its delivery-report webhook too, so send statuses flow back.

That’s the whole handoff. From now on every text to that number routes into your Evoriqa inbox, and each reply you send carries a delivery status back onto its row. The SMS channel page has the click-by-click for each provider.

Step 5: Send a test text

Grab your phone and text your SMS number a real question, like your hours or your return policy. Within moments the AI texts back a grounded reply pulled from your knowledge base, and the exchange shows up in your shared inbox tagged SMS so your team can follow along. If the texter asks for a person — or the workspace runs out of credits — the thread flips to needing a human: it waits in the queue with its true arrival time, and if desktop alerts are on, your browser pings you the moment it lands. Turn the AI replies toggle off for this channel and SMS goes human-first instead. The text lands flagged for a human, and the AI copilot drafts a suggested reply from your knowledge base for a teammate to review, edit, and send back out on the same number.

Desktop alerts are opt-in per browser. Turn them on from the inbox header or Settings → Notifications.

When a test text doesn't come back

If you texted your number and nothing answered, the break is almost always in one of three places, and two signals point you at which: the channel's health chip in Evoriqa, and your provider's own message logs.

• Nothing arrived at all. The number isn't actually pointed at Evoriqa — the health chip reads No messages yet. Go back to Step 4 and confirm the inbound webhook URL matches the one on the Channels tab character for character. A stale URL left over from another tool, or a single stray character, fails without any warning.
• It arrived but was rejected. The chip reads Signature rejected: the credentials on the channel don't match the provider's. Re-copy the signing key (Telnyx public key) or the full ?secret= webhook URL (Infobip) and reconnect the channel.
• A reply that left but never delivered. That’s on the carrier side. Evoriqa now syncs each reply's delivery status straight into the inbox, so a reply that fails is marked Not delivered with the reason and a one-click Retry — and your provider's logs name the underlying cause.

If everything looks clean but US texts still don’t arrive, check your A2P 10DLC registration before anything else: while a brand, campaign, or sender is pending or rejected, carriers quietly filter the traffic even though the provider accepted the message.

What's different about answering over SMS

Text messages are billed and delivered differently from chat on your website, and two of those differences shape how you write your knowledge base.

The first is segmentation. A single SMS carries 160 characters. Go past that and the carrier splits the message into segments of about 153 characters each and bills each one, so a long answer isn't one text. It's three or four, at three or four times the cost. Adding an emoji or a curly quote can quietly switch the whole message to a format that fits only about 70 characters per segment, which shortens the budget again. The wording of your answers has a price. Because your agent replies from the knowledge you gave it, tight answers are the lever: a clear two-line return policy costs less to send than a paragraph that says the same thing.

The second is links. A URL counts against that same character budget and can push a reply into an extra segment, and links sent through public shorteners are filtered by carriers more often than a plain address on your own domain. If an answer needs to point somewhere, use a real link on a domain your customers recognize and keep the text around it short.

Consent is the sender's job

The A2P 10DLC registration in Step 2 is only the carrier-facing half of permission; the opt-in you collect, the opt-outs you honor, and the messaging rules where your customers live are the legal half, and they stay with you. The SMS channel page covers how a STOP reply is handled once that consent exists.

If you send appointment reminders, connect a calendar first

Reminders sent from your SMS number come back as live threads, so before you send any, connect Calendly or Cal.com. That's what lets a "can we move to Thursday?" reply offer a genuinely open time and rebook in the thread instead of triggering a callback. The SMS channel page walks through the confirm, reschedule, and cancel replies a reminder brings back and how each one is closed out.

Take it further

• Every text is auto-tagged with intent, sentiment, and a lead score, so your team knows what to pick up first
• Repeat texters merge into one contact timeline across every channel, so you’re never guessing who’s who
• In human-first mode, the AI copilot drafts replies and handoff summaries. Your team reviews, edits, and sends
• Turn on WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, or a voice line from the same shared inbox, no retraining
• SMS answers on its own by default, and so do WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram. Plus the website widget and voice line reply instantly and grounded, no human in the loop
• White-label the whole experience so it reads as your brand, not ours

One shared inbox holds your texts, your calls, your website chat, and your social DMs, all backed by one knowledge base you train once. The AI answers directly over SMS, WhatsApp, Instagram, the website widget, and the voice line. See the SMS channel page for the full picture, or create your workspace and run it on a number of your own.