When a customer books an appointment there are several ways to communicate with them before, during and after the appointment is completed. There are 8 message templates that you can set up to be sent automatically or manually in order to confirm the booking, provide customers with important details, remind them of their upcoming appointment and follow up once the appointment is complete. You can set up the following booking messages for this purpose:

All message templates can be set up to be sent as an SMS or an Email, or even both.

Each template supports default placeholders as well as advanced conditional formatting. You can read more about these topics here:
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​Add Advanced Data Variables
​Advanced message customization with Conditional Logic
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If you have several languages added under Settings > Localisation > Language & Region, then you have the possibility to set up booking message templates for each language. Add more languages to create a template for each of them here:

Once you added more languages, you can switch between the templates. We do not have default or suggested templates for the different languages, but of course you can type your own text in the selected language. The placeholders are in English regardless of the language you use for the template, however this is only visible to you. Once the actual message is sent, the placeholders will be substituted with the data that adheres to the language of the template.

In continuation lets dive into each template 🙌

This template is sent to the customer automatically when the appointment is booked. In case you have Booking Approval enabled, the Booking Confirmation template will be sent when the booking is approved.

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You can set up a reminder to make sure your customers don't forget about their appointment. You can define how long before the appointment should the reminder be sent:
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You can set up a 2nd reminder as well to be sent for each booking. Just click on the blue + button next to the time settings and make sure to define the timeline for both.

We now support more flexible Conditional logic in messages to allow sending a different message text for the 1st vs 2nd reminder.

Step 1: go to Settings > Messages > Booking messages and click on Edit next to Booking Reminder

Step 2: Click on the </> sign to enter advanced mode:

Step 3: add the conditional template in the black text box.
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E.g. if the 2nd reminder is sent 3 hours before the booking starts (10800 seconds) you can set up different verbiage for the 1st and 2nd reminder by adding this conditional logic template into the message template:

You can read more about conditional templates and advanced message customization with conditional logic here.

The Booking Alert is not sent automatically. It is triggered manually by clicking on the alert button on the booking:

This template is sent when you click on the green checkmark or drag and drop the booking into the serving queue, indicating that you started serving the customer:
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As the name suggests, this template is sent when the booking is completed. Both if it was completed by a user manually or if it was completed by the Expiration rules.

This template is sent a certain amount of time after the booking has been completed. It is a great way to send you booking link to the customers and encourage them to book another appointment. You can set up how long after the booking's completion the template should be sent out.

Tip: Keep in mind that the Booking Follow up template is sent after every completed booking. So if your customers visit you frequently, they will also receive a follow up email quite frequently. We suggest using this template if your customers don't visit your business every other day. Otherwise they can be overwhelmed by so many follow up emails.

This template is sent to the customer if they cancelled their booking or if a staff member cancelled the booking from within the app. It is also sent if the booking got cancelled by the Expiration rules.

This template is sent if the booking is marked as "No-show" by a staff member or if it is closed with the No-show tag by the Expiration rules.

Keep in mind that these are all the automated message templates. You can always send ad-hoc messages manually as well. Just click on the booking in the calendar and click on the "Chat" tab in the panel that shows up on the right side. At the bottom you will find the text box and the option to select sending the message as SMS or Email. Like it shows in point 13 of this article.

We hope that you have found this article helpful, if you have any follow up questions, please reach out to the customer support team via chat or email (support@waitwhile.com).