Messaging
Message a customer about their order from the order itself. They read and reply in their account on your store, and get an email to say there's something new.
Messaging a customer
On the order's page, choose Message customer. The conversation opens at the side: Messages with the customer, about this order. In quick view, the Messages tab has the same conversation.
Messages are grouped by day. Under your team's latest message it says Seen by the customer and when, or Not seen yet.
- Writing
- Format the words as you would in an email, up to 10,000 characters. Press Ctrl and Enter (⌘ and Enter on a Mac) to send; Enter starts a new paragraph.
- Templates
- Your saved messages, with the customer's name and the order number filled in. Manage templates at the end of the list opens them in the Inbox.
- Attach a file
- One file per message. A screenshot you paste attaches too.
Each message you send goes on the order's timeline. You need permission to edit customers to send one. Without it you can still read the conversation, and a line says so where the box would be.
How the customer is told
The customer gets an email, New message from your business, with a link to read it in their account. For their privacy the message itself isn't in the email. They get at most one of these every 15 minutes for the same conversation, and none in sandbox mode. After you send, the line under your message says whether an email went.
In their account, Messages lists their conversations, with the unread ones marked. They read and reply there, and can attach files.
When they reply
The person looking after the conversation is told: New message at your location, with a button to open the Inbox. On the order's page, Message customer shows how many replies are new to you, like 1 new, and so does the Messages tab in quick view. New replies are marked New in the conversation. Opening it marks them read.
The Inbox
Every conversation is also in the Inbox, under Needs reply, Waiting or Closed, and you can show everyone's, yours or ones nobody's looking after. Someone who can only see their own orders still sees the conversations about them, and a new one is unassigned until someone replies (see Who answers). Its details show the order, with Open order.
Who starts a conversation
Your team does: from an order, or with New message in the Inbox, which asks for a subject. Customers reply to what you send.
Customers can start one about their progress photos. Each set of photos on a tracker's page in their account has Ask about these photos. They write a question and it arrives in your Inbox as "Progress photos" with the tracker's name. Asking again about the same photos adds to that conversation while it's open. The button only shows when your customer account has its Messages page on.