Replies to proactive texts are not being associated with the end user

Question

I sent a proactive text to one of my customers, but their reply did not associate them with the requester. Instead, a new profile was created and the ticket says: New text message from user: +. Why did this happen?

Answer 

This is because of the way the phone number on the end-users profile is formatted. If you use a local number, instead of the E.164 format, TyrellCorp won't match the number to the existing user profile. The system doesn't recognize the local number as being the same. For more information, see the article: What are the accepted phone number formats for Talk?

When this issue happens, the system creates a brand new profile. Then, the text creates a ticket with the subject: New Text message from user: +. To prevent this, format any number identity in the user profile in the E.164 format.

If the number is in the E.164 format but includes spaces, the system may still create a new end-user profile depending on how the carrier stores that number.