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SMS conversations that arrive in Front through a connected phone number are processed by OpenCX. The AI picks up the message via webhook, generates a reply, and posts it as the AI — the response is sent back to the customer as an SMS through Front.

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Pre-requisites

Connect your Front workspace first. The AI has nothing to respond to until the webhook is active — start with Connect Front and come back here.
  • Front connected and webhook active — see Connect Front.
  • SMS channel configured in Front — your Front workspace must have a phone number receiving SMS messages.

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How conversations land in Front

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Setting up

1

Confirm SMS messages route to Front

Send a test SMS to the phone number your Front inbox is configured to receive. The conversation should appear in your Front inbox.
2

Confirm the AI processes the message

The AI should reply within a few seconds. Check that the reply appears as a message from the AI teammate and is delivered back as an SMS.
3

Trigger a test handoff

Send “I want to talk to a human” via SMS. The AI should hand off — you’ll see an internal handoff comment and the conversation unassigned.
4

Verify the rep reply loop

Pick up the handed-off conversation in your Front inbox. Reply as a teammate — the message should land on the customer’s phone as an SMS.

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What the rep sees

  • The conversation appears in their Front inbox as an SMS thread.
  • The full AI-to-customer transcript is already in the thread.
  • An internal handoff comment with summary and sentiment.
  • Replies sent from the Front inbox are delivered to the customer as SMS.

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Channel-specific details

OpenCX extracts the sender’s phone number from the webhook payload. The handle is matched against existing contacts. If no match is found, a new contact is created with the phone number as their identifier.
SMS messages are limited by carrier standards (160 characters per segment for GSM-7 encoding). Long AI responses may be split across multiple SMS segments by Front’s SMS provider. OpenCX sends the full response text — segmentation is handled downstream.
If a customer sends images or media via MMS, Front receives the attachments. OpenCX downloads and stores them, but the AI’s ability to reference MMS content depends on the attachment type and Front’s handling of MMS on the connected channel.

Email channel

Email conversation specifics.

Connect Front

API token, webhook, and teammate selection.

Front overview

What else the Front integration covers.

Troubleshooting

AI not replying to SMS, webhook errors, handoff not firing.