My company is currently using Grasshopper as our voice system for receiving and routing inbound customer support calls. It's working pretty well.
Except that it's 2014 and people expect to be able to text issues to our toll free customer support number and get responses. Grasshopper doesn't support receiving/forwarding SMS. So I want to use Twilio just for receiving inbound text and Grasshopper for voice on the same number.
It seems like a number has to be registered either with Twilio or Grasshopper and can't be shared. Does anyone know if this is possible.
The best I came up with is possibly just using the number with Twilio and forwarding voice to Grasshopper. Not 100% sure if this is possible, but I'd imagine it is.
Twilio evangelist here.
Good news if you are in the US! We just announced support for text messaging on toll free numbers, including a Beta of toll free hosting. This service allows you to keep your toll free number at its current provider for voice traffic, while you let Twilio handle the text messaging traffic on that same number. No need to port everything over to Twilio just to add text messaging to your number!
To start sending SMS messages with your toll-free phone number, use the Messaging REST API with your toll free number set as the ‘From’ number:
https://www.twilio.com/docs/api/rest/sending-messages
Hope that helps.