Two-way Texting
Serviceminder offers an optional module for back-and-forth texting with clients and service agents. Two-way texting is recommended for locations with 300 or more clients. It organizes texts under the contract, which helps build a business and follow conversations. This service has a monthly fee but may be turned off if you have inactive months. If you turn off this service, you save money but will lose https://serviceminder.io/support/index/51.
Serviceminder has an autoresponder for these texts that can be configured here: https://serviceminder.io/support/index/99.
En Route Notifications
En Route notifications are included with the base Service Minder package. This consists of an outbound (only) text to customers based on the trigger for the start time from the mobile app. More can be found here: https://mosquitosquad.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360023684773-Mobile-App-for-Tablets-and-Phones-SM.
Notification Settings
In Serviceminder, the master notifications switches are in Control Panel>Notifications. For En Route notifications, it is turned on in the first tab here:
And in the second tab here:
For individual Users, you can adjust who receives what notifications here: Control Panel > Users and edit the user in question. You'll have access to their Notifications tab.
Appointment Report
Emails are graphical and can include many types of data and messaging. The character limit for a single SMS message is 160 characters. However, most modern phones and networks support concatenation; they segment and rebuild messages up to 1600 characters.
This still needs to be improved to communicate legal requirements and marketing messages. Therefore, the Appointment Report was developed.
In Serviceminder, the Appointment Report uses the shortcode {appointment.report_url}. This shortcode generates a unique link that hyperlinks to an Appointment Report for that specific appointment when clicked in a text. That HTML report can include shortcodes, text, and graphics for messaging like special offers, requests for reviews, state-required information about the treatment, and contact information. In the first tab, a sample Appointment report is loaded in every Mosquito Squad Service Minder in Control Panel>Miscellaneous Templates. A location can use their Appointment Completion email as a base and craft an appropriate report for their area.
Here is a sample text generated from the shortcode: https://serviceminder.io/service/appointment/report/aaffa7dac0bf482f81
Here is an example of what displays when that link is clicked as generated from the appointment data inside the Appointment Report:
Here is a review of the steps required to enable Appointment Reports via texting:
- Enable two-way texting (if not already) from the Service Minder Marketplace:
- In Control Panel>Notifications, ensure you send the Completion Notice.
- Add the Appointment Report shortcode to Automatic Text Completion in Control Panel>Automated Voice and Text:
- Configure the Appointment Report in Control Panel>Miscellaneous Templates to your liking.
- Test, test, test for mistakes.
Appointment Reports sent to clients via the completion text (only available with two-way texting enabled) are an effective way to communicate greater detail via texting.
Completion Photograph
Service Minder allows for the attachment of photos to a Contact, Appointment, or Proposal. The Completion Photograph is a method of using a photo of the property treated to confirm in the Completion Email or Text which house was treated and any other information as desired.
The default logic and shortcode are set up in every Mosquito Squad's Appointment Report template as follows and can also be added to the Completion Email:
<! APPOINTMENT PICTURES AND CAPTIONS>
<span>{% for item in model.appointment_pictures -%} <img src="{{item.service_image_url}}" class="img-responsive fr-fic fr-dii" style="max-width:200px;">
<br>{{item.notes}}
<div>{% endfor -%}</div></span>
<hr>
The process for using this feature is as follows: From within the SM mobile app, once the Start button is clicked for an Appointment, take a picture and upload it. That's it. The system will store the picture on the proper appointment and use it as configured (in the Appointment Completion email, Appointment Report, or elsewhere).
Communications
Texting is a part of a communications strategy, which is covered in this article:
https://mosquitosquad.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360023686193-Communications-in-Service-Minder
Texting Industry Commands
This article has info on START, STOP, and other industry-standard commands to use in texting.
Here is a full explanatory article from the texting vendor: https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-us/articles/223134027-Twilio-support-for-opt-out-keywords-SMS-STOP-filtering-
https://serviceminder.io/support/index/99