Sending SMS messages and automated reminders to diners

• Sending SMS messages to diners
• Enabling automated SMS reminders to diners

Sending SMS messages to diners

Send SMS messages to your diners to keep them informed about their booking or queue space. 

If you have a lot of repeat messages to send diners, you can save these as templates.

The diner can also message you if they’re running late or need to change their booking.

• Send and receive messages
• Message templates
• Close a chat with a diner

Send and receive messages

1. From the Parties list, Table plan or Planner, select a party by clicking their name
   
   
2. Select the ‘Chat’ tab in the Booking details menu
   
   
3. Type your message in your message in the text box, or select a templated message
   
   
4. Click the send button to send the message to the customer as an SMS message
   
5. When the diner replies, you will receive a notification next to their party name

Message templates

If you have messages that you regularly need to send to diners, create message templates so you can send them out at the click of a button.

1. Click Settings in the sidebar and select ‘Templates’
   
   
2. Scroll to the bottom of the page to see your message templates
   
   
3. Click ‘Add’ and enter your text to create a new message template.
   
   Your template can now be used from the ‘Chat’ tab of the Booking details menu.

At any time, click into the text field to edit a message template. 

Click the rubbish icon to delete a template.

Close a chat with a diner

Once you have completed your chat with a diner, click ‘Close chat’ to end the conversation.

Enabling automated SMS reminders to diners

Ensure your diners remember their reservations and minimise no-shows by enabling automated SMS reminders. 
This will help you know if a diner can't make it advance so that you can open up the table for other diners and not get stuck with a no show at the time of the booking.

To enable SMS reminders:

1. Navigate to Settings in the sidebar and select ‘Communications’.
   
   
2. Under Booking reminder, click 'Enable SMS reminders'.
   
   
3. Customise the timing of the reminder by selecting how far in advance the diner should receive the SMS. This can be adjusted in minutes, hours, days or weeks before the booking
   
   
4. Click 'Save' to apply this setting to all upcoming bookings.

Once this is set-up, your guests will receive the reminder text shown below before their booking:

If a guest is planning on still attending they can ignore the SMS message.
If they need to edit or cancel their booking they can simply click the link in the SMS to go through to their booking confirmation page to make amendments.

To disable SMS reminders:

1. Click Settings in the sidebar and select ‘Communications’
   
   
2. Under Booking reminder, untoggle 'Enable SMS reminders' and this will stop SMS reminders from being sent to your guests.