For everyone1 min read
Reminders over WhatsApp
Stippa already sent reminders by email. From today it can send them over WhatsApp too, because that's where customers actually read their messages.
For a small salon, a no-show is simply a loss. The chair stays empty, the coffee goes cold, and that hour never comes back. A reminder the day before helps a lot. The customer just has to read it.
Email and its weak spot
From the start, Stippa has sent a confirmation and a reminder by email. Since last week the reminder also has a button the customer can press to say they're coming, and Stippa keeps track of who did.
The weak spot is the email itself. It ends up between newsletters, in spam, or just sits there unopened. A WhatsApp message is usually read within minutes. People leave email for weeks, but a WhatsApp message?
What's new today
From today, Stippa can send messages over WhatsApp as well. The salon switches it on in the settings and picks which messages go over WhatsApp: the reminder, the confirmation, a cancellation. The timing of the reminder can be set too, a day ahead by default.
The customer decides
Not everyone wants messages from their hairdresser on WhatsApp, between the family group and the football chat. So there's a checkbox when you book online. Only people who tick it get messages over WhatsApp. That's called an opt-in (opens an external site), and everyone else gets an email, as before.
That's fair to the customer, and it stops a salon from messaging someone who never asked for it.
How reminders fit into the rest of Stippa is covered in the case study.