Managing customer text messages and emails

SortScape allows you to send text messages (i.e., “SMSs”) and emails to your customers, letting them know of your next visit. This saves you time because you no longer have to type the same message over and over again from your mobile phone.

You can also send bulk email messages to customers using our email campaigns feature.

Enabling customer text message notifications and emails

To disable or enable customer text message notifications, log in as an administrator and go to the customer messaging settings screen.

From this screen you can enable or disable customer text messages.

How to send a text message or email from a visit

From the visit screen, in the app or desktop, go to the top right hand corner and click on the relevant icon - SMS or Email. Choose the template you wish to use and then click send.

Customer notification templates

SortScape allows you to create message templates so that you can send a standardised message to each of your customers. To help you get started, there are default message templates for both text messages and emails, which you can override with your own custom template. You can create any number of message templates.

Invoice message templates also include Payment received templates when SortScape’s built-in invoicing is enabled. These control the wording of payment receipt emails and text messages sent when invoices are paid. See Sending payment receipts for invoices.

Template order

When sending text or email messages to customers manually, your team chooses a template from a dropdown. You control the order of those templates by reordering them on the messaging admin page for that type of message—for example visit templates on Visit messages, quote templates on Quote messages, and so on. Open Settings → Messaging, choose the relevant page, then drag templates; the template at the top of the list appears first in the dropdown.

• Visit message templates
• Quote messages
• Invoice messages
• Request SMS

Template tags

You can add “tags” to your template so that each message is customised to the person you’re contacting. For example, the tag cust_first_name would get converted to “Sue” if you’re sending a message to Sue Abbott. See the example below.

Message tag example

Hi cust_first_name, we will be at cust_address on job_date. Please call or text me at user_mobile if you need anything. - user_first_name user_last_name

converts to:

Hi Sue, we will be at 18 Banner Road on Friday, 29 January. Please call or text me at 4107748838 if you need anything. - Harold Rasmusun

The full list of notification tags can be found when creating and editing templates.

The user_mobile tag

The user_mobile tag inserts the mobile number from the SortScape user profile of whoever sends the message—the number customers see inside the message text when you ask them to call or text you back.

This is separate from the phone number customers see as the sender of the SMS itself. SortScape sends SMS from a system number assigned by our SMS provider, not from your personal mobile or from whatever appears in the message body.

You cannot configure user_mobile to pull from a custom field or an arbitrary number. It always uses the sender’s profile mobile. To change what appears in your templates:

• Use your own number (or update it): Edit your mobile on your user profile (Settings → My profile). Any message you send—or automatic reminders sent from you—will show that number wherever user_mobile appears.
• Use another team member’s number: For automatic visit reminders, set Who it is sent from to that employee. The user_mobile tag will then use their profile mobile.
• Use a number that is not stored in SortScape (for example a shared CRM or office line): Remove user_mobile from the template and type the number directly in the message text instead. Tags cannot reference numbers outside SortScape user profiles.

Recent messages

SortScape provides a message log so that you can view and search all text messages and emails recently sent to customers. To view messages sent recently to customers, log in as an administrator and click on the “Cog” in the upper right-hand corner of the screen and select “Customer messaging” from the menu. Scroll down to the “Recent messages” section.

Email messages in the Recent Message list may show a status. You can read about the various email statuses here.

If an email was dropped because delivery is blocked for the contact, admins can allow emails to that address again.

View recently sent text messages and emails for all customers

Text message replies

Viewing text message replies

We capture any replies customers make to the text messages you sent from SortScape. Only administrators can view customer SMS replies in the Customer Messages inbox (top right in a browser; bottom of the screen in the mobile app).

Employees and contractors do not have access to Customer Messages. See Managing employee permissions for what each role can access.

Non-admin users who sent a text message may still be notified of replies by email or push; see Text message reply notifications below.

Text message reply notifications

By default, email notifications about SMS replies will be sent to whoever initially sent the text message and also to all admin users.

If you need those reply notification emails to go to other addresses, you can set these as the reply-to address in the Customer Messaging settings.

Template format

We currently only support plain text for email and text message templates. Support for HTML and email templates is something that we might add in future versions of SortScape.