Messages is where everything a client writes lands, whichever way they wrote: a text, an email, the chat on your website, or a message to your Instagram or Facebook. The team works it together, each conversation given to someone or to nobody, open or done. The app also sends confirmations, reminders and word of changes by itself, by the ways each client's own record allows.
What goes out by itself
- Open Settings and choose the Messages tab.
- Under What Goes Out, switch on what should be sent (the switches are listed below).
- Choose when the Reminder goes out: from 2 hours to 3 days before, or no reminder.
- Choose Save.
- Use Send Yourself a Test to see a text and an email as a client would.
The switches:
- A confirmation when a visit is booked, with a link to see, change or cancel it.
- Word of a change or a cancellation.
- Also for visits the team books or changes. Off, only bookings made on your booking page are confirmed.
The same card says whether email and texts are on for the app, and how many were sent this month. A demo business never sends anything.
The inbox, worked as a team
Open Messages and its Inbox. Each conversation is one client on one way in, the newest first, with when it last moved, who has it and how many messages are new for you.
- Which conversations picks what the list holds: Open (all that are not done), Mine (given to you), Unassigned (given to nobody), Waiting on Us (the client's last word has no answer yet), Done, and Everything. Each says how many it holds.
- Search names, numbers and messages finds a conversation by the client's name, a number however it is written, an email address, or anything said in it.
- When your business is written to more than two ways, Which way in shows one alone: texts, email, the website's chat, Instagram or Facebook.
- What is new is your own. A conversation stays new for you until you open it, whoever else has. Mark all read reads everything for you; in a conversation, Mark unread brings the client's last message back for you to come back to.
- The list shows fifty at a time; Show more brings the next fifty.
In a conversation:
- Who has it gives it to someone on the team with the Messages switch, or to Nobody. The person given it is told in their To-do list. Answering a conversation nobody has makes it yours, so two people never answer the same client.
- Type Your reply and choose Send, or press Ctrl+Enter (Cmd+Enter on a Mac).
- Mark done when nothing more is needed. The client's next message brings it back, as does a reply anyone writes in it; a reminder, a confirmation or a campaign does not. Reopen brings it back by hand.
Show earlier messages reads further back in a long conversation. New message writes to a client first, by text or email.
On a client's profile, the Messages tab shows Their conversations, every way they have written, each opening in place to read and answer.
Beside the Inbox, the Receptionist answers texts, email, the website's chat and Instagram and Facebook for you, inside your rules (see The receptionist). A conversation it works is tagged Receptionist in the inbox.
Replies to the reminders and confirmations land in the same conversation. Messages sent from the contact form on your website arrive here too, as an email conversation you answer from the app. A client's reply to an email the app sent goes to your own mailbox, not the inbox.
Pictures and files
The paperclip beside the reply attaches a picture (JPEG, PNG, GIF or WebP) or a PDF, up to 5 MB each and five at a time; with one, the words may be left out. By text it goes as a picture message; by email it is attached; in the website's chat, on Instagram and on Facebook it shows in the conversation.
Pictures and files a client sends by text, Instagram or Facebook are kept with the conversation and shown in it; choose one to open it full size. They are kept in your business's private file store, seen only by the team with Messages, and copied into your backups. A demo business never sends a picture or a file.
Saved replies
The answers your team gives every day, written once. Choose Saved replies above the list to add, change and remove them. A saved reply may hold blanks the conversation fills in: Their first name, The business’s name and The booking link, put in with Add to the reply.
In a conversation, the bookmark beside the reply opens Find a saved reply; choosing one puts it in the reply box with its blanks filled, to send as it is or change first. The ones your team uses most come first. A business keeps up to 200.
The chat on your website
- Open Settings and choose the Messages tab.
- Under The Chat on Your Website, switch on A chat on every page of your website.
- Change What the chat says first if you like, and choose Save.
Every page of your published website then shows Chat with us in a corner. A visitor writes with their name and email (a mobile number if they like), and the conversation lands in the inbox, matched to the client with that email or number when there is one. The receptionist and the chatbot answer it as they do a text, and anyone on the team can answer from the inbox: the conversation shows On the website now while they are there. A visitor who has left gets your answer by email, in the language they chatted in, with a link back to the chat. Robots that fill the form are turned away, and one browser can send at most thirty messages an hour.
Instagram and Facebook messages
Once BookNovi's connection to Meta can read and answer messages, each Instagram and Facebook account you connected under Marketing, Social accounts shows Messages in the Inbox with a switch for each account. Switched on, what people send that account lands in Messages, beside your texts and email, with their name and any picture they sent, for the team and the receptionist to answer. Meta takes a business's reply within 24 hours of the person's last message; after that, the conversation says so, and you reach them by text or email instead. An Instagram account brings its messages through the Facebook page it is tied to. Until Meta allows messages for BookNovi, the card says it is not switched on yet.
A reply drafted for you
When a client writes and the receptionist does not answer (it is off, outside its hours, or has handed the conversation to you), the inbox chatbot drafts a reply from your business's own facts: your hours, address and phone, your services and prices, your cancellation policy, and the knowledge cards that bear on what was asked. The conversation shows A reply drafted for you with what the message is about and why it waits. Choose Send it to send it as written, Change it to put it in the reply box and send your own words, or Dismiss to put it aside. Your own reply in the box makes a waiting draft go stale: nothing drafted is ever sent behind your back. The inbox marks a conversation with a draft waiting as Reply drafted.
Under Settings, Messages, two switches govern it: Draft a reply to each client message nobody has answered (on to start with; off, nothing is drafted), and Send the simple ones by itself. With the second on, a question about your opening hours, directions and parking, or how to reach you goes out by itself, and only when the facts answered it in full; a price, a booking, a policy or anything the facts do not settle always waits for a person, and the draft says so. The chatbot needs the assistant switched on for the app; without it the inbox works as it always did.
Team chat
The Team tab beside the inbox is where the team talks, across every location: one-on-one chats and groups. Choose New chat, then One-on-one and a person, or A group with a name and the people in it; a group can be about a client, so a conversation about one is found with their name.
In a chat, type a message and press Enter to send it (Shift+Enter starts a new line). The buttons under the box name someone with @ (they are told), add a picture, or link a client and one of their upcoming visits into the message. Reply opens a thread under a message, one level deep, so an answer to one thing never gets lost in the stream. Your own message can be changed or taken back. Under a message you sent, Read by names who has opened the chat since.
A person named with @, and the other person in a one-on-one chat, gets a to-do in the To-do list and, when they have not had the chat open in the last fifteen minutes, an email with a link that opens it. A group's other members are told only when they are away and no more than once an hour, so a lively group never floods anyone. Mute keeps a chat off your badge and out of your to-dos unless you are named; Archive puts a chat away for everyone, and Bring back returns it; Members shows who is in a group and adds people. Anyone can leave a group; only whoever started it can take someone out.
HIPAA-safe notifications
Under Settings, Messages, Privacy, the switch HIPAA-safe notifications keeps service names, notes and diagnoses out of everything that leaves a record: a client's confirmation, reminder and word of a change say when the visit is and give the link, never what it is for or with whom; the receptionist and the chatbot name a visit's time alone; the inbox's list shows that a message came from or went to a client rather than its words; and a team chat message that links a client tells people about it without the words. The record itself, inside the app, does not change. A clinic, a med spa or any business that keeps health details turns it on.
Who gets what
Each client's Details say how they may be reached: appointment reminders by text and by email, offers and birthday messages by text and by email, and the newsletter. Nothing is sent a way a client did not allow. A reply of STOP ends texts to that number, and the Spanish and French words for it work too.
Clients who use another language get their texts and emails in it (see Languages).
When messages are not switched on
Until email and texts are connected for the app, Messages says so, with See what is needed in Settings. Everything else in the app works without them. Workflows still put their messages on your to-do list, and sending one opens your own phone or mail with the words filled in.
Best practices
- Switch on the reminder a day before. It cuts no-shows more than anything else you can do.
- Leave Also for visits the team books or changes on, so a client booked by phone gets the same confirmation as one who booked online.
- Answer from the app rather than your own phone, so the whole team sees the conversation and it stays with the client.
- Send yourself a test after any change, and read it as a client would.
- Give each conversation to someone, and work from Mine and Waiting on Us: nothing waits without a name on it.
- Keep a saved reply for each question you answer every week: parking, prices, how to book.
- Mark a conversation done once it needs nothing more, so Open is only what still needs you.