Phone number

Settings → Communications → Phone Number is where you manage the phone number Arketa provides for your studio — used for two-way texting through the Inbox and optionally for inbound calls.

Your phone number

Arketa assigns a dedicated phone number to your studio. This number appears in the Phone Number field and is the number clients see when they receive texts from you.

Incoming calls

Choose what happens when someone calls your Arketa number:

• Answer in dashboard — Incoming calls ring through to your Arketa dashboard
• Forward to a phone number — Incoming calls ring a number you enter, such as a front desk line or a mobile
• Send to voicemail — Incoming calls go straight to your voicemail greeting

Some options depend on your plan.

Accepting a forwarded call

When you use Forward to a phone number and you have a voicemail greeting or the missed call text set up, Arketa screens the forwarded call. Whoever answers the forwarding number hears "You have a call from your business line. Press any key to accept the call," and must press a key on the keypad to be connected.

Press a key and the caller is put through as normal. If no key is pressed within a few seconds, Arketa treats the call as missed: the caller hears your voicemail greeting and can leave a message, and you get the missed call in your Inbox.

The keypress is what lets Arketa tell a person from a machine. Without it, the forwarding number's own carrier voicemail would answer the call and your callers would hear that generic greeting instead of yours.

If your forwarding number never seems to ring and callers always reach your Arketa voicemail, the call is being answered by something that cannot press a key. Check the device behind your forwarding number for Do Not Disturb, a Focus mode, or a setting that silences unknown callers — your Arketa number will not be in its contacts. Saving your Arketa number as a contact on that device usually resolves it.

Voicemail greeting

Set what callers hear before leaving a voicemail:

• Use text-to-speech — Enter custom text and Arketa reads it aloud to callers
• Leave the field blank to use the default Arketa voicemail message

Missed call text

When someone calls your Arketa number and nobody picks up, Arketa automatically sends them a text from your studio's number — no staff action needed.

How it works:

• Sends approximately 5 minutes after the missed call
• Works for every call scenario: unanswered dashboard calls, forwarded calls not picked up, and calls that drop to voicemail
• If a staff member calls or texts the person back before the 5-minute window, the automated text is skipped entirely
• Exactly one text per missed call — never a duplicate

To set it up, go to Settings → Phone numbers → edit your number (or Settings → Phone if you only have one number):

• Enable/disable — Off by default; studios opt in
• Message — Write your own message using merge fields like studio name
• Booking link — Optionally append a link to book
• Cooldown — Set a cooldown period so a repeat caller doesn't receive an automated text every single time they call

Missed call texts send through Arketa's standard SMS pipeline, so they respect STOP/opt-outs and the usual compliance rules. They are transactional and do not use Marketing Suite credits.

Frequently asked questions