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AI Text Message Auto Replies: Answering Incoming SMS Automatically

Every broadcast produces replies. Some are STOP requests, which must be handled automatically, but the rest are questions, and questions are buying signals. An AI auto reply system answers those texts in seconds, at any hour, using your own business knowledge, and it never gets tired of the same question. This guide shows how it works in SMS Campaign Engine, the free open source engine behind our SMS Broadcast app, using its built-in chatbot hook.

What Happens to an Incoming Text

When someone replies to your sending number, the provider forwards the message to your install's webhook. The engine checks it for opt-out keywords first, a STOP or END reply unsubscribes the contact immediately and permanently, no AI involved, no exceptions. That part is compliance and it always wins.

Everything else is where the chatbot hook comes in. A sending number can be pointed at a chat bot, and when it is, incoming messages are forwarded to the bot and the bot's answer goes back out as a text from the same number. To the customer it feels like texting with a person who happens to answer instantly.

Why This Beats Routing Replies to a Person

Manual two-way texting works at low volume and breaks immediately after that. A broadcast to five thousand people can produce a few hundred replies in an afternoon. An AI bot answers all of them in seconds, escalation-worthy ones included, because you see every conversation in the bot's logs and can step in where it matters.

The customer experience is also simply better. "What time do you open Saturday" answered at 11 PM beats the same question answered at 9 the next morning. For the strategy side of this, our articles on AI powered replies and SMS customer support go deeper.

Step 1: Run a Chat Bot

Any bot with a chat API works, and we publish a free one. The chatbot hook speaks a simple chat format: it sends the incoming message and gets back an answer. AbraTabia AI Storyteller is our open source bot server that speaks this format out of the box. It is the same style of app as the campaign engine, one small self-hosted program, one data file, bring your own AI provider key.

Its assistant bot type is the one you want for auto replies: it answers questions strictly from a knowledge base you control, rather than improvising. You create the bot in its admin area, load your content, and it is ready to take traffic. The AbraTabia AI Storyteller project page covers setup in detail.

Step 2: Connect the Sending Number

Point the number at the bot. In the engine's admin area, edit the sending number and set its chatbot connection: the bot API URL, key, and bot ID. From then on, non-STOP replies to that number are forwarded to the bot and answered by SMS automatically. Numbers without a chatbot setting keep the default behavior, opt-out processing only.

This is per number, which is useful. A number used for appointment reminders can answer with the bot, while a number used for one-way alerts stays silent. Configuration details are in the engine documentation.

Step 3: Ground the Answers in Your Knowledge

The bot is only as good as what you feed it. Load the knowledge base with your hours, prices, policies, locations, product details, and the twenty questions your team answers every week. AbraTabia can take pasted text, API pushes, or crawl your website and ingest the pages directly.

Keep answers short by instruction. Texts are not emails, and a good auto reply is one or two sentences. Set the bot's rules to answer briefly, stay on topic, and say when it does not know rather than guessing. A bot that admits "I do not have that answer, someone from the team will text you back" builds more trust than one that improvises.

Step 4: Test the Conversation

Text it like a customer. Ask real questions from your own phone: the common ones, a vague one, an off-topic one, a misspelled one. Confirm the answers are right, the tone fits, and off-topic questions get politely redirected. Then reply STOP and confirm the unsubscribe still fires instantly, the bot never overrides opt-out handling.

Mind the AI costs. Every answered reply is a call to your AI provider, which costs a fraction of a cent to a few cents depending on the model. For auto replies, a small fast model is usually plenty, the knowledge base is doing the heavy lifting. Set a spending limit with your AI provider before going live, the same way you would set a sending cap with your SMS provider.

Both halves are free and open source: the campaign engine that sends and receives, and the AI bot that answers.

SMS Campaign Engine on GitHub

Plus AbraTabia AI Storyteller for the replies, or contact our team for the hosted version of both.