Please note: If you plan to use Routific's Customer Notifications, you are required to obtain consent from your customers before sending them commercial electronic messages via email or text. If asked, you should be ready to provide proof of this consent.
Before we begin, ensure you've upgraded to the Professional + plan to use Customer Notifications. Go to My Account and see your subscription there.
Now, let's set up your customer notifications in 5 steps:
Choose either email or SMS notifications
Turn on your notification templates
Customize your notification templates
Add email or mobile phone numbers to your Customer Profiles, CSV import, or individual customers
Test your notifications
1. Choose Email or SMS Notifications
Navigate to the Customer Notifications tab. The Notifications Settings should be the first section you see.
When you first add Customer Notifications to your account, notifications are all disabled by default to ensure you don't accidentally send any notifications to customers.
You can choose either SMS or email notifications. At this time, you cannot choose both. You can change this setting at any time.
IF YOU CHOOSE SMS NOTIFICATIONS...
Keep your message to 150 characters. In an effort to combat spam, carriers are more aggressive at rejecting long messages.
*Please note that enabling SMS messaging on Routific will require some extra verification steps that may take 24-48 hours to complete. This is a new security measure to ensure SMS messages are compliant and legal. Thank you for your understanding!
IF YOU CHOOSE EMAIL NOTIFICATIONS...
Enter the name you want your customers to see when they receive a customer notification email from you. Typically, this name will be your company name.
A few things to note:
1) Customers can reply to this email, so you want to ensure this is a valid email address that is monitored by your team in case your customers reach out with questions.
2) The email notifications are sent from notifications@routific.com. As soon as the customer hits reply however, the to: field will be pre-populated with your email address.
In the example below, we've filled out our company email address as 'suzanne@averysjuice.com'. Customers will receive email notifications from notifications@routific.com, but if they reply, messages will be sent to 'suzanne@averysjuice.com'.
Finally... Enter your company name, address and phone number. This will appear in the footer of your email and is required for email compliance regulations, such as CAN-SPAM and CASL. Your emails will also include an unsubscribe link. Read more on how we handle unsubscribes here.
2. Turn On Your Notification Templates
Navigate to the Notifications Templates section. You will see four different types of notifications:
Planned Delivery
Out for Delivery
After Delivery
Cancelled Delivery
Turn on whichever types of notification you would like to send to your customers. Find out what each template is and when they're triggered here.
*Once you turn notifications on in your account, notifications will send for all dispatched projects! If you're testing, please make sure to remove customers' emails and phone numbers from their stops before turning notifications on.*
3. Customize Your Notification Templates
To change or customize your email notifications, please use this form.
To change or customer your SMS notifications, please use this form.
This added security measure ensures all SMS and email messages are legal and compliant. Thanks for your understanding.
4. Add Email Addresses or Phone Numbers
Customer Notifications will only be sent to customers that have an email filled out (if you're using email notifications) or a mobile phone number filled out to be sent (if you're using SMS notifications).
Customers without the appropriate contact details filled out will not be sent notifications.
Note: Phone numbers must be formatted as country code, area code, phone number. For example, "+1-626-555-1234". Spaces, (brackets), - dashes, and + plus signs are all accepted in the phone number field.
You can add the contact details to your CSV upload, to your Customer Profiles, or by adding them individually for each customer you want to notify.
5. Test Your Notifications
Before you publish a route and start sending notifications to your customers, make sure to run a test with your own phone number first, to ensure all the templates are working properly.
You can make sure you're triggering all the notifications by following this list of triggers.
Related Articles:
What are Customer Notifications?
Customer Notification Triggers
Common Issues with Customer Notifications
Managing Email Unsubscribes from Customer Notifications
Re-Ordering Stops with Customer Notifications