Your business texts its clients from a number of its own. A client who writes back reaches your business alone, and a reply of STOP stops your texts and no one else's. Every text and email the app sends is kept until it has gone: if the service it goes through is busy or down, it waits and tries again by itself.
Your business's own number
BookNovi gives each business its own texting number and registers it with the carriers in your business's name (in the United States this is called 10DLC registration). Registration usually takes a few days. Under Settings, Messages, the Texts line says where it stands:
- Being registered: the number is yours, and texts go from it once the carriers have approved it.
- Sending: texts go from your own number, and replies to it come to your inbox alone.
- Registration refused: the carriers turned the registration down. Ask BookNovi about it; nothing is sent from it meanwhile.
- No number yet: your business sends no texts until it has one. Email still goes.
While your own number is being registered, BookNovi can send your texts from its shared number, a number several businesses use. The Texts line then says Shared number, and that your texts go from it until your own number is ready. Two things work differently on the shared number:
- A reply to it comes to the business whose conversation with that person through the shared number is the newest. Once your own number sends, every reply to it is yours alone.
- A client who replies STOP to the shared number stops texts from every business that uses it, not just yours. The carriers hold that number to it.
What a client's STOP stops
A client who replies STOP (or STOPALL, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, QUIT, and PARAR, ALTO or ARRET in Spanish and French) to your number stops your texts to them, at once: reminders, confirmations, offers and your own replies. Their record's Appointment reminders by text goes off, and a reply you write to them says why it cannot go. It stops your business alone: another business they text with keeps texting them. When they reply START, your texts go again.
A STOP sent to BookNovi's shared number stops texts from that number for every business that uses it, until the person replies START to it.
Why a message waits, and when it tries again
Each text and email is written down first and then sent, usually in a moment. When the text or email service is busy, has a problem or does not answer, the message waits and tries again by itself. Under the message, its conversation says Tries again at, with the time and the reason. It waits as long as the service asks, or else a minute after the first try, then five minutes, fifteen, an hour and three hours.
After its sixth try it stops, and its conversation says Not sent after 6 tries, with why. A to-do goes in the To-do list of whoever wrote it (or whoever has the conversation) so nobody has to find it by chance. A message that can never go as it is, such as one to a number that cannot take texts, to an email address the service refuses, or to a number that replied STOP, stops at once and says why.
A message cut off in the middle of being sent is never sent twice: the app asks the text service whether it went before it tries again, and an email goes again under the same key, which the email service sends once.
Messages go out at the pace the text and email services allow, and every business takes its turn, so a large business's campaign never holds up a small business's reminder.
Sending a message again
Once the reason a message did not go is put right, choose Send again under it. It starts over from its first try, to the same number or address; for a new number, write to the client again. A reminder or a confirmation is not sent again once its visit has begun, and a number that replied STOP stays off.
Reminders at their minute
Each visit's reminder is set for its own minute when the visit is booked: its start, less the reminder time under Settings, Messages, What Goes Out. A visit moved moves its reminder, and one canceled takes it away; nobody has to open the app for it to go. Changing the reminder time moves every reminder still to come. A visit booked inside the reminder time gets its confirmation and no reminder.
A text to a number no business has
A text to one of BookNovi's numbers that no business has (one let go, for instance) gets one short answer, at most once for each person, saying the number does not take replies and to use the number or link the business gave them. It is kept by its numbers alone, never what it said, and belongs to no business.
Best practices
- Ask each client for a mobile number and their yes to texts when they first book: the switches on their record are what let a reminder go.
- When a message says Not sent after 6 tries, read why before you choose Send again: a wrong number needs the client's new one, not another try.
- Keep your own number once it is registered. Clients save it, and a reply to it reaches your business alone.
- Set the reminder time once, under Settings, Messages, What Goes Out, so every visit's reminder goes at the same point before it.