Real-time communications can be an impactful way to stay connected at every stage of an appointment. With 2-way communications, you can send and receive replies via SMS (texting) and/or in parallel through the pet owner chat portal simultaneously. This feature allows you to share additional content such as pictures, videos, links, and more as part of your messaging.
2-Way Chat is Not: Email communication. Although email is still part of our communications feature set, current features involving email remain unchanged at the time of writing this article.
Team Side Communications
Management or staff communicate through their portal, as shown in the PC screen and mobile views below:
- Access the 2-way chat by clicking on the communications icon in your navigation.
- Select the client you wish to communicate with.
- Texts sent from you are right-justified for clarity.
- Attach files, pictures, videos, or links to send to the client as part of your message.
- View an example picture sent to the client.
- Texts received from the client are left-justified for clarity.
The same options are available when logged into your easybusypets.com account on mobile phone or tablet.
Differences between devices include the extra options to capture video and pictures in real-time using the integrated camera on your device.
Filter
With hundreds or thousands of pet owner customers, the filter will help speed up your time to communicate:
1. Click the "Filter" pull-down button to show the options.
2. Choosing a specific date range results in a shortened client list, displaying only those with messaging exchanges during the selected dates. Messages outside of this date range will not appear in the main window.
3. Search for a specific client to communicate with.
4. In addition to standard 2-way chat, messages are sent out from invoicing and appointments as well. You can view all these messages consolidated and integrated into the main chat window.
Enabling SMS Texting & Pricing
If an account does not have SMS enabled, all messages will be sent as internal messages, other logic applies same.
To enable SMS, log in as the manager, go to MyAccount > Settings > Messaging, and enable the feature.
Ensure that you check the "Enable incoming SMS messages from existing clients" checkbox so that clients can respond from their mobile phones.
Your pricing tier may already include a bundle of credits to cover a certain number of text messages. Otherwise, here are the costs:
- In the USA: $30 USD per 1,000 credits
- In Canada: $50 CAD per 1,000 credits
1 credit is deducted for each message you send via SMS and another for incoming SMS from a client reply. This covers any additional attachments you may send as part of the chat message.
Without credits system will default to portal (data) messaging. This would be the chat window when logging into your easybusypets.com account.
Client Side Communications
SMS / Texting: If SMS is enabled, then your clients will receive your communications as an SMS text. This is the simplest approach to receive real-time communications on mobile phones. Clients can respond to these messages just like any message they receive from friends and family as illustrated below:
Clients can also communicate through their easybusypets.com login portal on any device to skip the SMS.
Management has the option to create a test client to see this for themselves. This is a recommended activity to get a feel for this feature and many others.
Staff Communications
There is one chatroom between business and client. All staff (with permission to view Text Messages) can see the chatroom between the business and client.
To enable your staff to communicate with clients, ensure they have the necessary permissions as outlined below. You can also restrict the clients they can view and engage with in 2-way chat to only those assigned to them (keep "View text messages of all clients" checked off):
Finally, here's a video walk-through for extra clarification: