Customer Email & Texts
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Write to a customer from ReadyHelm by email or text, and their replies come back to the same place. It works for contacts who aren't on ReadyHelm. A customer who is on ReadyHelm also sees your messages in their app. Messages is for conversations with owners inside ReadyHelm.
Customer email is on every plan. On a contact's page, the Email tab lists your threads with them.
+ New email takes a subject, the boat it's about (or Not about a particular boat) and your message. You can start from a template and attach files. Emails go out in your organization's name, and replies come back into the thread. Each delivery shows its status (sent, delivered, bounced and so on).
- Your signature is added to what you send; Save signature keeps it.
- Tick private to me to keep an email out of your teammates' view: the customer still gets it, and it shows Only you on the thread.
- A forwarded email can be taken back out of the thread with Remove.
- If the customer is on ReadyHelm, the email also shows in their app, and they get it by email or text as they chose.
Email you send from your own mailbox
Writing to a customer from your usual email? BCC your organization's ReadyHelm address (shown under BCC or forward to … with a copy button), or forward a customer's email there, and it's filed on the customer's thread.
A message that doesn't match exactly one customer waits under Messages that didn't match one customer on Customers. File it to a contact, create a New contact for it, or Discard it.
Limits
Customer email is for one-to-one messages about your work. Each organization can send 300 emails a day (purchase orders count too). Sending pauses if recipients mark three of your emails as spam within 30 days, or if 5% or more of your emails bounce over a week (once you've sent at least 50). Your Admins are told why, and ReadyHelm support can turn sending back on. Replies keep arriving while it's paused.
Texts
Texting customers is on Pro Standard and up.
Texting isn't open yet. ReadyHelm will let you know when it is.
Getting a number
Under Admin & Settings → Integrations → Text messaging, an Admin:
- reads and accepts the texting terms;
- chooses Get a number for a local number your organization texts from.
Enter Your regular phone line: someone who calls the texting number hears that it only takes texts, and which number to call. Give back this number releases it; customers who text it no longer reach you, and it can't be gotten back.
Texting a customer
On a contact's page, the Texts tab shows each mobile number with its consent. Text a number only when the customer agreed: Confirm they agreed to texts and say how (they gave you the number for service, asked for texts on your web form, or opted in through ReadyHelm). A customer who replies STOP isn't texted again.
Texts go out between 8 am and 9 pm in the customer's time zone. One written outside those hours waits, and says when it will go. Picture messages work too.
This month's texts
Your plan includes a number of texts a month for each licensed seat; the card shows how many you've used and when the count renews. Admins can Buy texts through Stripe. Bought texts don't expire and are used after the monthly allowance. A picture message counts as several texts.
A boat's Messages tab
A boat's Messages tab shows everything said about it, in one timeline: emails, texts and owner messages, plus the events around them. Show messages about narrows it to one job or quote. Link a customer to the boat to write to them from here.
Adding a customer's file to the boat's record
Next to a file on an email or text thread about a boat, ➜ Add to boat record reads it with First Mate (using your organization's credits). Choose what it is: a registration, an insurance policy, a receipt for equipment, or a service record. What First Mate finds comes back as proposals: approve, fix or reject each one, or Approve the confident ones. Saving adds them to the boat, and the owner is told what was added. Read it again as something else retries with another document type; Discard adds nothing.
Your own email address and templates
These are on Pro Plus, under Admin & Settings → Integrations.
- Your own email domain: send customer email from your own address, like [email protected]. Set up your domain, add the records shown where you manage your domain's DNS, then check. Changes can take up to a day to show. Once it says Sending from it, customer email and purchase orders go from your address. If the records stop checking out, ReadyHelm sends from its own address again, tells your Admins, and switches back when they're fixed.
- Message templates: starting points in the email and text composers. Make your own (+ Email template, + Text template), or Make your own version of a standard one. Text templates are up to 320 characters.