Hours/Minutes Scheduled Notifications
Answered
Having the ability to send out automated notifications hours/minutes before the start of a reservation would greatly benefit my ability to send customers time-sensitive reminders.
I utilize the Checkfront system to manage a semi-automated, contactless event rental venue, so the notification system is the most important asset in my workflow. I even use the Twilio SMS integration to remind customers to check their email for more information (this has been extremely useful). Customers can schedule a tour online, then tour the venue in person themselves, all without speaking to or interacting with anyone.
Last week, there were 3 scheduled tours where no one showed up. Today, I found out that the customers simply forgot on the day of their tour. So, naturally, I logged in to create a new notification for 1 hour prior to the tour start time...
Currently, "1 day" is the shortest length of time before a scheduled reservation notification can be sent out, but in everyone's fast-paced lives, a little last-minute reminder is usually appreciated. The ability to send out a notification "AT THE START OF", "HOURS BEFORE", or "MINUTES BEFORE" the reservation start time would be very beneficial.
If your business could benefit from this feature too, please "thumbs up"!
-
Official comment
Hi everyone!
We’re excited to let you know that, based on this and other feedback, we have added this feature! You can now schedule your automated email notifications hourly in addition to the day, week, or month options. Note, hourly schedule options are not currently available for SMS through our Twillio integration.
I thought a quick recap on additional settings would be helpful as a few of you had questions around when the notification goes out. There are additional settings on notification schedules that allow you to set it before or after the booking start date, end date, or created date.
For those that mentioned this, this should provide you with more insight and control around when it is sent.Having said that, this won't always account for emails getting to everyone at the same time. While the emails will be sent at the same time, the speed at which your customers receive emails can differ depending on the email client or service they are using.
Another tip while we’re here! Don’t forget that you can use custom booking form fields in notifications to share additional information across staff and/or customers. For more information on this you can review Working With Variables in our Knowledge Base.
At this time we are not going forward with any decisions to allow for set times or minutes on scheduled email notifications. If you feel this feature would significantly, positively impact your workflows we’d like to continue collecting your feedback around the use cases for this to share with our team.
If you have any questions or would like some help using this new feature or just making sure you're getting the most out of your notifications, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our Support Team.
Cheers!
Comment actions -
Would also like this ability because with it we could set up a notification email to be sent an hour or 30 mins later to any abandoned bookings. All bookings during the process have the status of “Pre-Booking” so we can’t set up a notification as “instant” or everyone would get this abandoned cart email. Sending it 1 day later is Ok but the buying intent is probably faded by then. Sending it an hour later is optimal and can potentially lead to more closed business - which is a good thing especially in the times we are in. It also helps to prevent mistakes by customers - for example we had a large group show up today for a tour but we had no one scheduled for that time to work as she had forgotten to finish her booking and complete payment. This notification email coupons have solved the problem.
-
Background:
We run online live group courses – each course runs as live classes for a set period for a specific group. But the group is made of individuals who can book their place at any time in advance.
Problem:
It appears that our scheduled notifications can go out at various time of the day specified. So even if we say we want a certain email to be sent 1 day before the start of the event as a reminder of login details etc, each student will receive it at different times. It seems that the time it is actually sent may be related to the time that the booking was made. But this is silly!
We also need to send out emails at the end of each day with summaries, reminders etc, so it is important that each student gets it at the right time & at the same time.
When we have a group booking, we actually want everyone in the group to receive the email at the same time. Otherwise it leads to confusion as students then ask why they haven’t received it yet, when others have.
So, my question is:
Is it possible to assign an actual time of the day that a notification is sent?
Many thanks in advance…
-
Andrea Maguire I agree with you.
I did notice what seems to be random time for sending notifications. And I thought it could be base on the time the booking was initially created (!)...
I do support the idea of being able to specify at what time of the day a notification is sent, and I'd like to add that this parameter should be part of each notification (individually), and not just a global parameter for the entire booking system.
-
This is great news Ravenna! Thanks to you and the team for getting this done. I just set up my abandoned cart notification emails and they work perfectly. I just chose “Pre-booking” under Booking status and then under schedule I selected 1 hour, after booking, creation date. You guys should put out a use case for this and make a big splash. Some of your competitors have been touting abandoned email notifiers as a competitive advantage for years and now you match them toe to toe on this. This is a great feature to shout from the hills. Hoping it helps improve the bottom line as well since there is a reason so many companies use it. Happy thanksgiving!
-
Obi Grant Although it's not on an immediate (3-6 months) roadmap, our product team will be investigating requirements to update Twillio with this new option.
David Alston Thanks for that great feedback! I've shared this with the team and I do believe we agree with you! Stay tuned for more :)
-
Hi Dan J , I suspect the items for which the notifications are sending for are set to night or day allocation, therefore the hourly schedule is going to use the start time of midnight.
I encourage you to submit a ticket to our Support Team so that they can have a look at the specifics of your account settings to confirm this. As well, they can investigate if there is some unexpected behaviour happening with hourly notifications for items with this allocation.
-
I was excited to see the new 'hours' scheduling feature BUT unfortunately it doesn't work! At least not when you have an event that lasts full days.
So now I have to go back and change all the notification schedules back to what we had originally - until the bug is fixed - so not happy!
Please fix it soon as the feature is much needed.
-
Hello Dan J
We anticipate that an update to this should be going out next week. I see that your report of this issue has also been logged with Support, therefore you should see a message in your account when this update has been released.
I will also update this thread once I can confirm the fix is live. -
Was excited to see to see this new feature, as I can’t tell you how stressful 09:00 on a Saturday morning is for us when one group turns up late and risks ruining the logistics for the day…
A timely SMS reminder 2 hour before the start date/time would be a brilliant and well received addition by customers and staff alike.I’ll try email, but SMS via Twilio is more timely and immediate than email….
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Comments
18 comments