With Sign In Scheduling you can send booking reminders to your customers via email, SMS, voice messages and WhatsApp.
WhatsApp is an instant messaging service that allows you to send and receive messages across different platforms and devices. It uses the internet to do this, so does not need cellular signal to work.
WhatsApp is available on our Pro, Premium and Enterprise plans.
This guide explains how to activate and use WhatsApp to send reminders and messages to your customers with Sign In Scheduling.
SECTIONS:
How to continue a conversation over WhatsApp
How many messaging credits does WhatsApp use?
How to activate WhatsApp
To activate WhatsApp for your Sign In Scheduling account, head to 'Manage' > 'Customer Messaging' > 'Reminders & Follow-ups'.
Click the 'Add' button to add a new reminder, and select WhatsApp from the drop-down selector.
In order to use WhatsApp with Sign In Scheduling, our support team will first need to verify your request. Once you've selected WhatsApp from the drop-down, our support team will receive a notification that you would like to use WhatsApp and can then activate it for you.
In the meantime, you'll see a message underneath your WhatsApp reminder preview confirming this.
Once your request to activate WhatsApp has been approved, the verification message will disappear and you will then be able to create additional reminders to be sent with WhatsApp.
Note: the contents of automated reminders set to be sent from WhatsApp cannot be customized.
What your customers see
When your customers receive their first automated reminder message, WhatsApp will notify them that the message has come from a business. They will be given the option to continue the conversation, or can instead choose to block or report the messages.
It's important to make sure your customers have given their consent to be contacted via WhatsApp and that they are expecting Sign In Scheduling to send them reminders via WhatsApp, to avoid the messages being blocked or reported.
The automated reminders sent to your customers via WhatsApp are simple. They contain the date, time and location of the appointment, along with the name of the staff member they'll be seeing. At the bottom of the message, there will also be a direct link that the customer can tap to view their appointment information on the Sign In Scheduling website.
Your customers will continue to receive reminders via WhatsApp at the intervals you have selected under 'Manage' > 'Customer Messaging' > 'Reminders & Follow-ups'.
Your WhatsApp reminder history can be found within the appointment activity window alongside all other communication history for that appointment.
How to continue a conversation over WhatsApp
If your customers reply to the automated reminder in WhatsApp, these replies will land directly in your Sign In Scheduling inbox.
From the inbox, you can respond to the customer's reply by clicking on it, then clicking the 'Send message' button in the sidebar.
You can then click to select WhatsApp, type your message, and click 'Send'. The message will be sent to the customer via the pre-existing conversation thread in WhatsApp.
After a customer has replied to the automated reminder, you will then be able to send further freeform messages in this way to continue the conversation. You can do this for any customer responses sent within the last 24 hours.
How many messaging credits does WhatsApp use?
When the very first reminder for an appointment is sent to a customer and a WhatsApp conversation is opened, this will use 4 credits.
If/when the customer replies to the reminder and you respond to them by sending a freeform message, these messages will use 1 credit each.
Each message sent via WhatsApp can contain up to 1000 characters, making it a more cost-effective option than SMS for ongoing conversations.
Additional information
WhatsApp messages differ from SMS messages. SMS messages are priced per segment, which means that the more characters a message contains, the more expensive it will be. More segments will be used if special characters or emojis are used, further increasing the cost.
WhatsApp is an online instant messaging service and is not bound by the same limits as SMS. Each WhatsApp message can contain up to 1000 characters, including special characters and emojis.
Additionally, WhatsApp can provide a solution for effective messaging in countries where SMS messages are strictly limited or banned.
Need more help?
We hope this guide has been useful! If you have any additional questions or need any help, don't hesitate to contact our support team.