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Text Responses
Know when customers need more time or are not coming
If customers reply to your text notifications, you can view their message and easily see if they are on their way or cancelling. Knowing changes in customer plans sooner rather than later will help you keep your quote times accurate and retain more customers. Here is how it works:
With a subscription, we assign a unique phone number to your account for sending out the confirmation and notification text messages. In addition to having a local area code for sending texts and placing calls, this number allows for a couple additional features.
Customers can send two pre-defined responses to text messages to let you know whether they are coming or not. If a customer texts back a "2," you will see a "coming soon" message in the notes area of the waitlist view. If they text back a "3" the message will say "not joining" and the row will flash. The default notification that is sent to customers when you press to notify them explains these options and looks like this (you can always edit):
If people text back something other than a 2 or a 3, you’ll see a "text reply" note in their row on their waitlist. Or you can customize the waitlist view options in your settings to show the full text reply.
Tapping on their row will open up the Edit Party screen, which will show their text. You can see things like if they mentioned how long they would be, if they had a quick question, or didn’t understand whether to use a 2 or a 3 and just replied back with something like "Cancel." You can also see other important details in the Customer Visit section, such as when you notified them it was their turn, how long they were quoted, and how long they have been waiting.
If a customer tries to call the assigned phone number in response to the text or call coming from that number, they will hear a message explaining that the number is only used for notifications and it will provide them your regular business number to call. Pro/Platinum users have the option to create a custom text-to-speech message for handling these inbound calls.
A couple other features included in Pro and Platinum are the ability to turn on a notification chime when texts are received. This page includes more details on how that works. Also staff can send custom text responses to texts received, up to three times per customer visit. The point is to keep things simple for you and your customers rather than get into a long chat with them that could be time consuming.
Here is more information about setting up outgoing text messages in general. If you wanted to use the email feature for reservation confirmations/reminders, please visit this page.
With a subscription, we assign a unique phone number to your account for sending out the confirmation and notification text messages. In addition to having a local area code for sending texts and placing calls, this number allows for a couple additional features.
Customers can send two pre-defined responses to text messages to let you know whether they are coming or not. If a customer texts back a "2," you will see a "coming soon" message in the notes area of the waitlist view. If they text back a "3" the message will say "not joining" and the row will flash. The default notification that is sent to customers when you press to notify them explains these options and looks like this (you can always edit):
If people text back something other than a 2 or a 3, you’ll see a "text reply" note in their row on their waitlist. Or you can customize the waitlist view options in your settings to show the full text reply.
Tapping on their row will open up the Edit Party screen, which will show their text. You can see things like if they mentioned how long they would be, if they had a quick question, or didn’t understand whether to use a 2 or a 3 and just replied back with something like "Cancel." You can also see other important details in the Customer Visit section, such as when you notified them it was their turn, how long they were quoted, and how long they have been waiting.
If a customer tries to call the assigned phone number in response to the text or call coming from that number, they will hear a message explaining that the number is only used for notifications and it will provide them your regular business number to call. Pro/Platinum users have the option to create a custom text-to-speech message for handling these inbound calls.
A couple other features included in Pro and Platinum are the ability to turn on a notification chime when texts are received. This page includes more details on how that works. Also staff can send custom text responses to texts received, up to three times per customer visit. The point is to keep things simple for you and your customers rather than get into a long chat with them that could be time consuming.
Here is more information about setting up outgoing text messages in general. If you wanted to use the email feature for reservation confirmations/reminders, please visit this page.