Question
Scenario A
I receive one of the error messages below when I send an outbound Text message.
- We couldn't deliver this message
- We couldn't send the message
Scenario B
When I review the message details in my Text history, the status of my message is either Undelivered or Failed:
Why are my SMS messages failing?
Answer
There are multiple reasons why an SMS message can fail. Some common reasons why SMS messages may be failing to send:
- The destination handset is unreachable.
- The destination phone number does not support Text.
- The SMS message exceeds the 160 character limit.
- The end user sent an opt-out code to one of your messages. For more information on opt-outs, see the article: About opt-out keywords for Zendesk Text.
- The daily limit of 2,000 messages a day per number has been reached for outbound SMS sent by US and Canada toll-free numbers.
If SMS messages are still failing to send or if you need your US/CA toll-free numbers verified, contact Zendesk Customer Support with the ticket ID where the SMS message failed.
11 Comments
This is an issue we have been dealing with and have limited the characters and even called and asked customers if they have "unsubscribed" and have not found any evidence of either of these options to cause this failure. Still trying to figure out why they aren't going through? Perhaps a volume issue?
Hi Virginia,
The above are the common reasons messages can run into issues. I have opened ticket so we can go into more detail on what is happening in your account and we can look more specifically into the issues your customers are facing.
Carl McDowell - hello! any updates on this issue Carl? We're running into the same problem.
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This comment has been edited by the Zendesk Community Team to remove an image that contained personally-identifying information.
Sorry to hear you're experiencing issues with SMS messages failing to send. It may be better to reach out to our Customer Care team via Messaging so we can troubleshoot this there. Most likely we will need to look at account specific information to find a solution here so we want to make sure we handle this sort of request privately. More information on how to reach out to our team here: Contacting Zendesk Customer Support
Let me know if you run into any issues contacting our team.
Hello -
I noticed that this error seems to be occurring when more than one phone number is associated with the user profile. In this scenario, even if the SMS was created on the secondary phone number, Zendesk will attempt to reply to the primary number on the user profile.
To get around this, you can set the SMS number as the primary number by removing and readding the other phone number(s) on the user profile.
Alternatively, I published an app that can do this from directly inside of the ticket interface.
Hope this helps!
Brandon
Hello!
I have noticed that our texts with links in them are not sending. Is there a way to work around this block?
Hi Hannah,
To help find the reason why your messages are not being sent, I've created a ticket for you as there are multiple possibilities on the reasons. Some of the common reasons:
Hello Team, how do you change the sender name for SMS/Text? We want it to show as the name of the company.
It is not possible to set a business name or caller ID for outgoing SMS messages. This is going to be controlled by the receiving device and if they have saved the number with contact information.
A workaround could be to introduce your business name or advise your customer to save the number for future communications within the SMS body.
An additional option for US Talk numbers is registering for CNAM. This is a feature offered by our carrier to display a business name for outgoing calls. More details here: Does Zendesk support CNAM ? Hope that helps!
Hi Shannon Pesta - that makes sense but can also confirm as to why the customers cannot reply to a text message from Zendesk?
Outgoing SMS messages from Zendesk can be replied to. I will create a ticket for us to continue troubleshooting! Talk to you there!
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