SMS in Check Cherry + New Quo Integration

0:00 some reasons you might want to send out SMS to your customers. Um, you know, obviously when we say SMS, we mean text messages. Um, and there's a few reasons that that they're more useful than than email. Um, you know, first among them, uh, it's a lot more, you know, a lot of people don't check their email every day. They do check their text, you know, they see them come in. Um,

0:23 especially kind of like, you know, I think there's a stereotype of like the younger generations, you know, they don't they don't even look at email. they they only check text uh text messages. Um but with uh with our text messaging integration, you can basically do anything that you normally do with email, you can also do with text messaging. And so I think some of the most

0:43 common use cases are things like staff reminders. Um you know, if you need to send proposals, uh it can be, you know, helpful to also send it via SMS. Um you know, lead follow-ups, things like that. Uh the thing to watch out of course with sending text messages is they can kind of be annoying. So if you're, you know, just blasting somebody with with text messages,

1:07 you know, that's that's going to turn them off. Like that's going to be uh something that people, you know, that irritates certain people. And um so it's something to use sparingly, you know, like you know, maybe maybe a follow-up or two via via uh you know, with leads or something is fine, but I wouldn't you know, I certainly wouldn't do everyday text messages and things like that. I I

1:26 just want I don't think text is like a replacement for email in check cherry. I think it complements it. Um and kind of if you're in the mindset of um you know something that needs a quick response, you know, staff stuff, staff, you know, are you available things? Uh maybe a quick follow-up. Hey, sent you an automated follow-up. Hey, I sent you an email. Um could you take a look? But, you know,

1:47 if you're scrolling through a text message, you're doing it wrong. It probably should be an email. Um, you know, so you want to keep it quick, short, um, to the point. And I think, yeah, Matt said, I mean, in email, nobody, you know, nobody cares if they get an email at 2 a.m. text message, not so much. Yeah. And they, and the other thing with SMS is, um, with text messages,

2:07 I mean, you have like very limited content. You know, it's not HTML. You can't you can't include like complicated things in it. So, um, you know, if you include a link to something to an invoice, you know, that's going to be a big long URL. So, um, so you got to keep them very minimal, too. So, um, not a lot, you know, not not tons of detail like you would with a, uh, with an email. So,

2:30 all that being said, I think every customer at Check Cherry could benefit by adding text in the rotation, you know, of things. So, um, you know, so if you're here, you're in the right spot. Um, yeah, and let's take a look at Yeah. So, with all that said, so um with Check Cherry, you do need to connect an SMS provider. Um and that's going to be under our integrations. Um

2:53 currently that includes Twilio and and now Quo. Um we'll get into that a little bit later. Um and talk about how to enable those, what they do, why you might pick one versus the other, um how to set them up, all that type of stuff. But before we do that, let's just look real quick at how text messaging works in Check Cherry. So, basically, it's the same as email.

3:12 Once you've connected an SMS provider, you know, anywhere that you currently can send an email, you know, if you want to send a one-off email, you can do that under the messages tab, you know, from somebody's booking, you can come in and you can write an email to them, but you can also now send them a text message. And what you'll notice is, you know, there's a phone number pre-filled,

3:32 there's a content instead of, you know, a rich text with bold and italics and all that. It's simply, you know, it's just text. I mean, it it it can't do as much stuff. Um, but you can also make it make use of things like templates. You know, if you've got templates in your account, you can choose from those as well. Um, we do support the send later feature. So, if you're working

3:51 on something at, you know, 3:00 a.m. and you don't want to send that right now, um, you know, I think that's useful with with email, but it's real useful with text messaging. And, you know, we'll default to, you know, uh, usually the next day in the morning or something. Um, you can also in places like say when you're sending a proposal, um, if I go to the proposal page, you know, I've

4:14 got this send email button. Uh, once you enable an SMS provider, you'll also see this MS SMS button and super simple. Same thing, prefills in. Um, again, you'll notice it's kind of a stripped down. You know, it's got the link to the proposal and very minimal. Um you can you know you can edit all these templates of course and then let's see I think those are the main manual ways and then

4:40 um and it applies to things like sending designs or you know sending requests for designs or things like that. Basically anywhere you see that email button you'll you'll start to see that SMS button. Um well let's take a look at automated messages. So, if I go to manage automated messages, um that's where you can set things that are, you know, in order to automate them a little bit more.

5:00 And you can also set various follow-ups. So, say we wanted to remind our staff the day before an event that they need to be there. Um, we do have some templates. Feel free to go through those, but let's create it from scratch instead. So, what you can do, you can use any of the triggers. You know, you can do it based on, you know, a day after they book the booking comes in. And you can do things

5:22 like a day before the the book date. Um you could do a a message a day after the end of the event. Um you can do lead reminders, proposal reminders, all that stuff. But once you choose those, then um what you're going to see is this drop down here. So um you know it defaults to send email, but you can just change that to send SMS. And so we can say, you know, call it whatever you want.

5:47 staff reminder say um and we could say one day before the scheduled date um send a reminder to the staff and just a reminder you're scheduled to work tomorrow and basically all of the same tokens are going to work. So you can do things like um an event link uh you know where it's located, times, dates, all that stuff. Um, so why don't we do let's see, let's look for link here for

6:21 our event link. And so you can include a link to that. And that'll just give them a link to see the details. Once you save that, then now um every day um a day before the booking, we'll send out those SMS notifications. Um, one thing to I guess be aware of or or just know know how it works is that when you do something like um based on a day, you know, we're not spe specifying a time in here,

6:43 but generally that'll be about 11:00 a.m. in your local time zone, sometime between 11 and 11:30. Um, and we'll send out that message and that'll go to any of the staff assigned. If you've got multiple staff, it'll take care of it. Um, and you're all set. Um, if you want to do things like sending to your customers, it's basically the same pro uh process. You know, if you want to do a lead

7:05 reminder, you could say new message, you know, after a lead comes in, I want to send them an SMS, you know, maybe whatever, you know, right away, an hour later, whatever. And again, you can send it to the client and put in your messaging. So, it's pretty simple. Um, you know, there's not not too much to it. If you've done the emails, then you'll find this real similar to

7:28 do. Just remember to look for that um that little drop down there. Yeah, I think the point is that you get all the different all the conditions based on the dating in your checkerry account are there, you know, so you can do um all kinds of great stuff. Send later, you can even do the review messages, you know, to not not send it. I mean, so it works. It's very very very similar.

7:48 Yeah, messages are great with with text messaging because um for anybody not familiar with that that feature, basically any message, any email or SMS that goes out, you can enable this and what that'll happen is on that automation, it's going to go into a queue into this messages queue here. Um and you'll have a chance to review it, approve it, you know, decide whether to send it out, all

8:11 that type of stuff. Um so that can be helpful. um especially with SMS where you don't want things, you know, necessarily being annoying. So, um the other thing that's that's worth worth touching base on is what happens when somebody replies. Um with Czech, we do have a way to it's going to depend on the on the provider you set up, but we do have a way to um we will handle those

8:35 replies. Basically, what we're going to do is is send you a message notifying you that a that a uh a text came in. So, um, you know, you can't necessarily be on your phone sending, uh, messages back and forth through Check Cherry. I mean, I guess you can use the app for sending messages, but in general, it's it's, uh, you know, we're going to notify you when a message comes in.

8:55 Um, but it's not like you're using iMessage, uh, directly or something like that. And so, with that said, let's take a look at the integrations. So to um to enable the integrations, what we're going to do is go to manage business settings integrations. And if you've already got it enabled, if you've got Twilio or Core enabled, um you'll see that at the top. But let's go ahead

9:22 and disconnect these. And what you'll see down here once um once it's disconnected, you'll see this SMS integration section down here. And there's two choices, Quo and Twilio. Um, and why don't I switch to the slideshow and show a little bit about how those work. Share that. Okay. Okay. So um so again so uh between the

9:56 two providers um you know why would you choose one or the other? Um so starting with Twilio um we've supported Twilio for probably like eight or nine years. You know it's kind of always been the default and you can kind of think of Twilio as as kind of a programmatic phone number. Um it's great for automation. It's it's very like developer focused and it's been around forever. Um, as a

10:22 result, it has a lot of different integrations and so you may already have it. You know, we find especially in the photo booth world that a ton of people already have Twilio. You know, you need to set it up for some other service. You know, maybe your photo booth software uh sends out text messages after. And the good thing about that is um you can reuse that same number with Check

10:45 Cherry and with other services. Um, so if you've gone through the hassle of of creating a Twilio account, getting that all set up, um, it's a great option for that. Another reason you might use Twilio is it has great international support. I think I saw something likeund something 70 or I don't know, but lots of countries. Um, so that's a good thing if you're not in the US. And

11:07 the pricing is um can be a lot cheaper than other things. So depending on um you know what type of number you get, what you know how many messages you're sending. Basically they they do more of a usage based pricing. You know there's not really a monthly fee per se. Um but you generally start at like a scent per text message. Um I think there's maybe a dollar a month or something for a

11:31 phone number. A couple bucks a month if you do an 800 number, things like that. But it's pretty like it's pretty minimal um in terms of price unless you're sending like tons of text messages, right? Um, some downsides though is are that it's uh that initial phone number setup is just more complicated. Um, it's kind of hard. It it tends to trip people up. Uh, it's very finicky and I don't

11:52 I don't think they do a good job of of explaining how it works. Um, and the UI as a whole is kind of confusing and and it is aimed at I think at developers and you know so it's a little it's a little you know it's a little tough to use. Um, Quo is the one that we're we're announced or that we're uh adding support to. Um, it used to be called Open Phone. Um, I don't know

12:14 why they changed Quo. I think Open Phone's kind of a better name, but basically, you can kind of think of it more as a business phone system, and it's just something we've seen a lot of people using in in the um in the industry. Yeah, a lot of our customers have been using it. Um, we actually decided to try it out. you know, we were considering adding it and then um we ended

12:33 up that's what we use internally at Check Cherry for our business phone number. You know, when we do phone calls, outgoing calls, things like that, we're we're using them. Um and basically kind of how they pitch it is it's designed for small teams to bring calls, texts, and contacts into one app. Um basically, it kind of looks like this. You know, it's got like your your messages all in

12:53 one place. You can go back and forth with people. You can, you know, they have an app. you can sit on the app and send messages back and forth. Um, you know, all of your your phone calls, your SMS, everything is like right there. So, um, if that's something you need, it can be very helpful. Um, some downsides, it has fewer integrations. You know, they haven't been around

13:15 a long time. They're more aimed at being that that phone solution than necessarily an integration solution. Um, but that said, they do have an API that we're able to use. Um, they're US and Canada only. So, if you're outside of those countries, um, Twilio is your only option. And their pricing is is more of a monthly type of thing. So, I think it's, you know, depending on what you're what plan

13:39 you're on and things like that, it's like 15 to, you know, 15 and up a month. So, um, you know, if you're only sending a handful of text messages, it's going to cost you more than just using Twilio. Um, and then one of the benefits is it's a lot more userfriendly. Got some uh I have some chats here. Absolutely. Um Scott says, "Really love Quo. So happy the integration is here." Um

14:02 that's awesome. Scott Zen says, "I have a Zoom phone number. Do they plan to integrate Zoom?" So no immediate plans to integrate Zoom. I don't know that they do text messaging. I didn't I wasn't even aware of that. They Yeah, I didn't know that. Um um but no immediate plans, but obviously we're open to other providers. Um, and then Gerald and Richard have some questions and we'll get to

14:22 those kind of as this goes on about, you know, will it work the exact same as Twilio and how do I respond? Just to clarify, we'll we'll we'll touch on that later. Um, and then, uh, DJ Adams says, I'm switching from Ring Central to Quo is is is switching, I guess, uh, worth it? Um, and so I don't know, Scott, maybe you can answer that, uh, for him. Um, I haven't used, uh, Ring Central. Um,

14:45 you know, I think it's going to kind of depend on, um, are you happy with the Twilio integration? Are you already using that? And kind of at the end of this, you'll kind of have have more information. U Oh, you haven't used either yet. So, yeah. And Scott says, "You switch from Google Voice to Quo. So much easier, pricer, pricier, but worth it in my humble opinion." So, yeah, we'll see. I mean

15:09 I don't you know um again really the reason Quo has been uh the first or the second should I say integration is we just saw a lot of our customers using it and so we're always listening to what's going on and um and we think you guys are going to like it and there'll probably be others down the road um you know but yeah this is where we're at today. Yeah. Yeah. with um you know part of

15:33 the part of the process of integrating quo was was abstracting a lot of the the systems behind the scenes. So um so if we do you know if there are things that people also use that they would prefer um we're certainly open to it um obviously they need some kind of an API or way to integrate but um we're certainly not not married to any any service at all. So um so let's go through the Quo

15:55 setup real quick. So once you sign up for a a Quo account, and they do have, I think, a free trial and stuff, but basically you'll kind of come to a page like this. Again, they're they're more like oriented around like a messaging center, so you can see all your chats in one place or, you know, your text message threads all in one place. Um, you can see your calls. They do some AI

16:15 stuff that's kind of nice about like summarizing incoming calls and, you know, summarizing outgoing and all that type of stuff. It's nice, too. So, um, but for the purposes of setup, what you're going to want to do is within your Quo account, you're going to want to go into the settings and look for the API section. And within that, you can generate an API key. And so, basically,

16:40 you'll just click that button, give it some kind of a name. Uh, they don't want spaces or any characters. So, you know, pick something uh one word and they'll give you a long, you know, string of characters that you have to put in. Um, so copy that and save it for later. You're going to need that on the Check Cherry side of things. Um, and you know, after you copy that, come over to Czech

17:06 Cherry. Um, go to the manage business settings integrations that we were talking about before. uh scroll down, look for that quo integration, hit enable, and you're going to copy and or you're going to paste that API key right in here. So, um you know, just drop that in. You know, copy and paste. So, have a couple tabs open, however you want to do it. Um it's also going to ask for your

17:29 phone number. Um you know, I think think we're expecting it in kind of that international format. um I think will normalize it automatically, but just to be safe, put it in that, you know, plus one and then your number format. Um once you do that and hit save, then you're going to see it in your integrations at the top. Um these are your enabled integrations. So you'll see quo here.

17:53 Um the upshot of that, you know, once you enable that, then Twilio will no longer be an option. You can only have one or the other enabled. There's not really a reason to have both. Um, but that's basically it for the setup. Uh, we'll talk a little bit more about some of the the gotchas with with some of this um a little bit later, but that's it for the setup on Quo. You know,

18:14 it's pretty simple. You generate that API key, you copy and paste it into C cherry, and you're done. Um, once you do that, you'll see all of the different um SMS features we talked about before. Twilio um a little more complicated, but if you know where to look, it's really it's not too bad either. So, basically, when you log into Twilio, you're going to come, you're going to see this

18:36 account dashboard, or you're going to land on the account dashboard. Down toward the bottom, you're going to see a few different numbers here or or, you know, whatever you want to call them, strings. Um, you're going to see account, SID, O token, and your Twilio phone number. You're going to want to copy all of all three of these, or, you know, open up Check Cherry in another tab. Next

18:55 thing you're going to want to go do is under this devel develop tab, you're going to want to go to phone numbers and look at your active numbers. Um, this assumes you've already created a number. You know, if you haven't, go ahead and create a number under that buy a number link. Um, but once you've got a phone number, you're going to see all of them listed here. Click on one of them,

19:14 and it's going to t take you to this configure tab. And what you're going to need to put in here is this long um address. you know, your business name.checkcherry.com webb hooks Twilio message received. Uh, we'll show you a little bit later where you can find an article on this stuff, but basically you're just going to put this in. Um, when a a call comes in, you're going to have a web

19:39 hook, and what this does is this notifies C cherry when something happens. So, if you've got our um voice forwarding feature enabled, then we'll forward that along to your phone. Or if you've got the um text message uh web hook enabled, then we'll be able to know that somebody replied and we'll send you a notification. Um, go ahead and scroll down. Under messaging configuration,

20:02 you're going to put the same thing. And again, it's just your business name hooks twillios received. Um, and again, we'll we'll share an article on this later. Last thing you're going to want to do is go to the properties tab for that phone number. And this one gets people a lot, but it's gonna you're gonna see um what's called the phone number SID as well. And you're going to

20:26 need that as well. So, copy that somewhere, too. Once you have those four things, the the account SID, the phone number SID, and and the O token, and the phone number. Um again, you're just going to go to Check Cherry integrations, enable Twilio, and paste all those things in. Optionally, you can put a call forwarding number in there. What that'll do is like if somebody calls you, since

20:50 this is just kind of a Twilio number that's not, you know, it's not really a phone number. It's not your your existing cell phone number. U but you can put in a number that we can forward it to. So that way we can forward it to your cell phone or to, you know, whatever. Um and once you do that, you'll see Twilio enabled under your integration. So um again, it's it's a little

21:09 hard to find those settings, but um but that's about it. And once you do it once, you're good forever. You know, you don't have to do it again. One other thing that happens with Twilio sometimes is if you do have an error, you know, if you do have like a configuration error or if your account hasn't been verified, which we'll be talking about next, um sometimes

21:30 you'll see you'll try to send a text message to somebody and it'll just show like an error on Check Cherry, it'll say like undelivered and then um you know there's not a lot of info we get as to why something can't be delivered. But if you go to the monitor tab in Twilio, they they have this error log section and that'll tell you exactly why it failed. So if you are struggling with

21:50 Twilio and you're getting errors, um, look there. And so for the basic setup on the check cherry side, I mean, that's that's basically all there is to it. You need, you know, we need the credentials so we can tell what account it is and um, you know, and then all of the features are unlocked. Um, one of the things that that really trips people

22:15 up though is whether you go through Twilio or Quo, um, there's a process called carrier registration. Um, you'll see different names for it. A210 DLP, um, different things for it. But what this is, um, back US only. Well, it's US only. Just clarify. This is US only. Yep. In the US, but it's if you want to send messages to a US, uh, number. M so if you do you know if you are in a different country

22:43 and you want to send messages to the US you also need to worry about it right but if you're uh outside you know if you're in Canada mostly doing Canadian business then you don't need to worry about it and so what this is um it was rolled out between 20 and 203 um you know first they launched it and then they started kind of clamping down and it's a requirement by the carriers that basically

23:05 u mean you have to go through a verification process in order send text messages now. And so before that that carrier registration, you know, a few years ago, anybody could register a phone number. And so, you know, the obvious result is we just got a ton of text message spam. Um, you know, you get in text messages all the time about, you know, buying things and doing stuff and

23:29 whatever. So, um, the carriers came out with this new standard. Every business, you know, every automated sender has to undergo a verification process. Now, um, every website, you know, and it has to have your website, your business info, and everything must match exactly. Um, we're going to come back to that. Uh, you have to have very clear disclosures anywhere you collect a phone

23:52 number. You have to pay a fee to go through the registration. Um, and it's kind of, you know, it's kind of a Byzantine process. You know, it's kind of you get confusing rejection reasons. It's not not very good. And so the result of all that is we still get a huge amount span. Totally. It doesn't matter. Yeah. So uh whatever they did uh you know that's the mission not accomplished

24:14 on that but um how it works uh so registration is mandatory if you want to send to US-based numbers. Um you know the Twilio quot all these guys will let you set up a phone number um and you you know it looks like everything's great. you're ready to go, but then when you go to send text messages, they just don't get through and it's because you haven't been registered. Um, and but until you're

24:37 registered, basically the the phone companies are just going to drop your messages. Um, as you go through that regist that registration process, make sure you know what your business type is. Um, it's going to ask you upfront, you know, what type, you know, are you a business, you know, with an EIN, an employer identification number, or are you a sole proprietor, in which case you

25:01 have to use your social security number. Um, either way, you can register, but it's slightly different process. Um, it's going to ask you different questions and, um, yeah, and know that going in. Um, it's not easy to change later. So, if you're still in the process of getting kind of setting up your business, you know, frankly, I would recommend waiting until until everything's

25:24 in order and then set up your your SMS after. And, uh, the accuracy is critical. So, that means your business name has to match exactly. Um, you know, look at your paper your paperwork, make sure, you know, if you have comma LLC, put it in there. If you don't, don't. Um, your EIN needs to match exactly. Your address needs to match exactly. Um, and I guess the IRS, CP575 is what they're looking

25:49 for, but um, basically whatever the IRS has on your business, make sure it's an exact match. Uh, mismatches are the most common rejection reason. So, if you're not sure and you don't check, um, you know, they're probably going to reject you. The next thing that comes up and that trips people up is so under the new guidelines um you know consent is required to send SMS and

26:15 what that means is your customers you know anybody that you want to send text messages to um have to you have to have permission and as part of the verification process they're going to check your website they're going to check your online booking and they're going to make sure that you're asking permission So, you know, and we'll take a look on the Cet Cherry side, but if you've got a contact

26:41 form on your website that collects a phone number, you better have a checkbox asking permission. If you don't, and if you don't have the right language, they'll reject you. Um, every contact form, you know, go through your website, make sure every single one has that um has that messaging asking for permission. Um, if you don't collect a phone number, that's fine. You don't need to

27:04 you don't need to do it if you don't, but if you do collect a phone number, make sure that you have that opt-in messaging. Um, and that also applies to messages you get outside of the internet. You know, if you go to a wedding show or something and you get a whole list of people and you put their their messages in, you know, and you send them out through a Twilio or through Quo or anything else,

27:26 um, you're really not in compliance. like you need permission from direct permission. You can't um transfer permission. You can't get permission through another party. Um they're pretty like pretty specific about it. Um so just something to keep in mind and expect some processing time. Um nowadays it's not too bad. Usually within a day or two you'll get approved or or rejected, but

27:51 um it can extend up to 30 plus days. In the early days when they were first rolling this stuff out, I mean it would take months sometimes, but now it's not too bad. Um, now it's generally within a day or two. While that's happening, you cannot text US-based numbers. It won't work. And the fun thing, uh, fees apply. So whether you're using Twilio, Quo, some other service, in order to get

28:15 a a you know number registered to your business, um you have to pay this registration fee that works out to roughly 1920 bucks and then there's a small ongoing fee of, you know, something like a $150 a month. Um what's really fun is uh if you get rejected, um you get to pay the fee again. So, make sure you uh get it right uh first time. Um these fees go directly to the phone carriers.

28:44 Uh this isn't, you know, something that Twilio or Quo or any of them are doing. Um it goes directly to the carrier. So, it's um you know, yeah. And if Check Cherry ever does roll out kind of a built-in um SMS feature, a lot of these same things are going to, you know, we'll have to comply with these same things and these same kind of hurdles and verification and going through the phone. So

29:08 it's it's kind of frustrating. You know, it's it's uh we would like to make this process easier, but it is something you have to go through. So um so what do you need to do on the check cherry side to get through the registration? Um, one thing, um, and if once you enable Twilio or Quo, we'll turn this on automatically for you. But one thing that that you do want to do, particularly if you

29:30 use our contact forms or if you use our online booking, is you want to enable the SMS disclaimer. U, we'll turn this on when you enable Twilio and Quo, but if you're going through the process before you've enabled it, you might not have it on. And what you can do is go to manage booking engine and this privacy and compliance tab and just make sure this says yes. Um we'll have a a

29:52 default message in there. Um you know feel free to you know do research and if if you have a better default, you know, feel free to use it, but um generally we don't have an issue with that. And that's it on the on the check cherry side. Um that'll enable the the opt-in anywhere that we collect a phone number automatically. Um, and it'll look something like this. You

30:15 know, we'll have this little check box. You know, by providing your phone number, you grant us permission, blah blah blah. If you're using Twilio, um, what you're going to want to do is within your account, you're going to want to go to develop and then under messaging, you're going to want to look for this regular regulatory compliance section. And when you go there,

30:37 it's going to kind of show what your status is. And it's got this three-step process. You know, it's going to show, oh, you've you haven't finished it yet. Um, first off, you got to create that uh profile about your business. That's where you put in your EIN and your business name and your website and all that. Um, I didn't mention much about the website, but I my understanding

31:01 is you do need to have a website as well that has clear information about your business. um you know, it should broadly match what your business registration says and things like that. So, um yeah, make sure your website's in order, too. Um after you do that, you're going to register what's called a standard brand. And this brand is um it's a one-time thing. Most of the time, I mean, unless

31:27 you're doing something really unusual, you should be fine with what's called the low volume brand. And that's going to be a 450 $4.50 50 cent onetime fee and then once you do that you have to create what's called a campaign. And so what that is um the whole process is a little it's almost like you know they kind of think of it as like um you know a hospital sending out appointment reminders or

31:53 like you know some kind of marketing firm sending out like campaigns or something. Um, and so what they're going to have you do when you go through this campaign registration is give examples of the types of messages you're going to send. Um, obviously with a tool like Check Cherry, I mean it can be really varied. I mean that maybe you're doing staff reminders and you know maybe you're

32:14 doing invoices, maybe you're sending proposals, whatever you plan to send. Um, you know, make sure that that you kind of have some examples about that. And I think it's kind of worth looking on, you know, your favorite AI tool, you know, your your uh you know, on Google uh on chat GPT on things like that for some examples if if you're struggling with the language to use. Um

32:36 but they are kind of looking for certain certain things that that you uh that you comply with. Um, one of the things that they'll want you to comply with is that you say, you know, hey, that you have to be able to, um, let them know that they can stop reply stop to, um, to stop that messaging. And with Check Cherry's integration, um, you know, both Twilio and Quo support that out of the box.

32:59 So, you don't need to worry about implementing anything, but you do have to include that in your messaging. On the Quo process, um, it's going to be something kind of similar. What you're going to do is you're going to go to settings, trust center, and then you're going to have that same um registration process. It's going to walk you through, you know, where you set that up. Um

33:19 I really found Quo's process much much simpler. Uh what was cool about it when I went through the the setup for our account is they basically walk you through like they give you examples of exactly what to write. um they're like, "Hey, just, you know, if you're going to do this, you know, they they have a few checkboxes of what type of messages you're going to send, and they'll

33:40 like give you examples to put in there." So, you can almost just copy and paste those examples. Um, you know, obviously tweak them if you need to, but basically, they give you a lot better of of kind of starting points for um for how to do that. And once you're done, um you know, typically wait a day or two. Hopefully everything goes through, you'll get through and and um you know and you're

34:02 you're all set. So um you know after that you know um kind of some next steps beyond this um you know more resources on the check cherry side. So, um, you know, if you're looking for more details, you know, need looking for more of like a textbased description of how to set up Twilio, things like that, um, if you click on your name and go to support, um, we have lots of of resources

34:28 in there. Um, you can also just search in the the global search at the top, you know, just type Twilio and it'll come up, you know, it'll bring up an article on that. Um, give us a few days. We don't have a quo article live yet, but we will be adding it soon. Um, so give us a couple days, but we'll have a quo video and a quote article coming out soon as well. So either look for that global

34:50 search or, you know, check that support page. Um, and of course, you know, chat with us and we can we can help as much as we can. Um, you know, the problem with a lot of the registration process, which is where I see people mostly get held up, is it does, you know, it is probably something you'll need to to reach out to Twilio or Quo on because a lot of times it's it's real specific

35:11 to your business. You know, there's something, you know, the EIN doesn't match or something like that that um it's hard for us to really know. Um, feel free if you get error messages and things like that, share them with us. We'll help as much as we can. Um but but yeah, that that registration process is kind of where where I think most people kind of get a little bit stuck. So cool. Um so

35:30 yeah, so I think that's it for for my slides and what I've got questions in chat. So absolutely. Uh so he said, "So that I understand Quo allows you to use your actual number and and get replies to your actual phone number." My understanding is no, you would still have a separate number, but that would be more of a businesswide phone number. um you can port a number to quo. So, if you're

35:54 using a Google voice or something else, you can port that number to Quo, but I don't think as far as I understand, um, and I'm not, you know, I'm not an expert on it, but my understanding is you cannot use your existing cell phone number with any other, but if I have a Quo business account and I have a business phone number, and I can text message and take calls all from one number and

36:17 I can use their iPhone or Android app probably to be chatting with somebody right there back and forth just like just Absolutely. So that's the big and you can't do that withio. Correct. So that's clear. Um Carlos, go ahead. He's got his hand up. Hi guys. Hey, good to see you. Good to see you too, guys. Uh well, I'm feeling guilty. I was trying to do the the Twilio over a week already

36:45 and I got rejected because I didn't have the uh consent from the uh the potential client. So that's a common. Yeah. Yeah. It's annoying. Yeah. And the question that I have so far is the slide going to be available for us to watch it and then trying to set it up or start from scratch. Yeah. Yeah. So we'll um generally it takes us about a day or so to get these webinars um uploaded and

37:16 and the link sent out. Um that was actually one of the things I meant to mention in the support section um is that we have uh a webinars link. So that that's where this will be. So you know as I was kind of going through stuff if you want to you know obviously you don't want to watch the whole thing again but if you want to zoom forward to to that part um we'll have hopefully some

37:35 chapter markers. The webinar the webinar should be up tomorrow by midday or so. We're pretty fast about it but Jacob does the editing and he gets it up the next day. You can also use that global search to search for webinars and find them. Um, and then so here's a comment that is uh when will the quote integration when will the quote appear in integrations? Yeah, good question.

37:54 So it should be there already um under manage business settings integrations. If you don't see it, it's probably because you already have Twilio enabled. We only support one integration. Um so you'll have to disconnect Twilio. you know, maybe save the the credentials for later if you want to be able to go back, but um disconnect Twilio if you see it up here in the enabled

38:16 section and then you should see it. Um it's down here um kind of the fourth panel down under SMS integrations. And then one more followup here on the replies. So through Quo, the replies from clients from the automated messages and checkerry will send from our quo number. Yes. Then the then if I reply back, it will show up in check cherry. So, will it track replies and check cherry? So,

38:40 uh both. So, with quo, when somebody replies, we'll still be able to log it and we'll log that history so you can refer back to it. Um but it'll also show up in Quo and probably the reason you're using Quo is because all of your message, you know, your phone and and SMS in one place. Um so, frankly, probably it's easier to be there, you know, doing doing your messaging, but if

39:04 you prefer to be in Check Cherry, that's fine. Um you can you can reply from either place. Um both place supports replies. We'll we'll log it either way. Um so yeah, it's just it's up to you. And then Gerald's got his hand up. Hey Gerald, good to see you. Good to see everybody too. Um I've got like three quick questions and some of them is just like a yes or no, so you probably

39:26 don't have to show. Uh so my first one um for the auto text messages, is there a condition to check um that you've got that approval already so that we're not sending out like we're sending it out to all the all the clients on a particular thing? Is there is there a filter there to make sure that it only sends a text? There actually isn't. Um it is something that that we probably

39:44 should have in some capacity. um the during the um the sign up or you know as they come through the um the booking um you basically the the way we have it worded we kind of treat it as a mandatory um thing they need to check. Reason being with um with services where um somebody is like booking you for for a service um that that is fine. You're allowed to do that. you can kind of make it

40:18 mandatory. If it's something like optional, like, hey, I'm I'm just, you know, whatever, you know, subscribing to a newsletter, it has to be optional. Um, so we kind of treat it as mandatory. So, everybody that that goes through does um, you know, does check it, but you're, you know, there is a gap there of of if somebody came in before, if you manually added somebody. So, sounds good.

40:38 I'm probably going to use it when I send like when I get a lead coming in, basically just send them a text message, hey, I sent you an email with a link to the lead. So, it wouldn't wouldn't be doing a lot. my understanding. I mean, read the the, you know, the the requirements are are worth reading through. They're not too complicated, but there are some things like you're allowed

40:54 to reach out to somebody, I think, like once, you know, unprompted and and you can um somebody come, you know, replies to sends you a message unprompted, you can you can reply like there's different different, you know, exceptions and things that are worth. Cool. My other question was is that when you send a text message, do we get a notification that it was delivered and that

41:11 they've actually read it? Because I have tried to send text messages. I have no idea if any of them have ever gone out because I've never um Well, so what we'll do is from Twilio and I think I think from Quo as well. Um we'll get kind of a a um an accepted or declined. So like or accepted or failed. So if the phone number didn't work um you know within a minute or two we should we

41:35 should get a reply in that message history saying oh that didn't delivered. Yeah. um bounced or dropped or whatever the thing is. Okay. You don't get a notification if they've actually read it though. Like like you not possible. Yeah. So yeah, with SMS, uh there's no way to know if they read it. There's no tracking built into it. Yeah. And my last question was is that at the bottom of

42:00 when you were filling out the Twilio stuff, it had call forwarding. Um is that my question is I guess if we put in the call forwarding there our own cell number can we reply back um on ourselves. So if you forward it through I I just don't know how I don't have to reply back like if somebody if somebody did get it and they replied back how do I know that and how do I

42:21 respond back to them because it' be Yeah. So the forwarding uh what that'll do is that's for voice calls. So if somebody calls you, we're able to forward that along directly to you. Um for the text messages, what we'll do, what we do on by default when you enable the text messaging is um we have a message. Maybe we don't. Um let's see. I think we set

42:49 we send out a me an email to you letting you know that somebody replied. Um, basically, um, you could also even set up an SMS saying, um, you know, you could text yourself that somebody replied if if memory serves. Um, can we back to that though? Like if you send if they do that and you send us an email and say they replied and maybe we can even see what it is. Can

43:12 we reply back to that? You have to click the link in your email which will take you to a page in C cherry that's like um it'll be basically it'll take you to this page. if you click the link in your email. Wonderful. So then you can type. Okay. I was just afraid they would reply. I couldn't reply back to them. Yeah, that's that would be an issue. Okay. Awesome. Thanks, guys. Appreciate

43:34 it. All right, Theo, you're up next. He's got his hand up. Thank you. Um, quick question for you. So, I recently had to redo my Twilio. Couldn't get it to go through with the local number, but got it to go through with a toll-free number. But in the check cheery dashboard or whatnot, I still showed the the local number. How do I switch that to the toll-free number? Yeah. So that should be under

44:00 that that manage business settings um integration page. Um we should show the settings for Twilio. Like if you've got it enabled, it should be up here. And what you'll want to do, you'll make you want to make sure to do two things. Um obviously the phone number, you want to change that. And then you'll also have a different phone number SID. Basically, every phone number has its own

44:20 SID for it. So, if you change those two things, you should be good. Um, you know, maybe double check your account, your other account settings, too. But, um, but yeah, go ahead and and change those two and you should be good. Okay. Yeah. And then part of what Gerald's question just was, so, do I need to put my actual business phone number for the call forwarding or leave that

44:42 alone? I mean, you can leave. It's up to you. But basically, what if you do put your business number there, then when somebody calls you, um, which is kind of rare to be honest, but if somebody calls you, we'll forward it along to your we'll connect it to your your direct, um, to that number, to that business number. So, um, generally, I mean, people don't really call text message numbers

45:03 that often, but if they do, um, then what'll happen is that'll just go directly to your, uh, to your line directly, so to your business line. Okay, thank you. Yeah, and one other feature, um, I didn't mention it, but it's it's worth uh worth calling out. So, this is a recent addition to both Twilio and now Quo. Um, I'm not sure if if Larry's on the call, but it was his idea and

45:27 uh um and I think it's a you know, a no-brainer, but one of the things about text messaging is if you get a text message at 3:00 a.m., that's kind of going to suck. So, um, so we now, uh, finally support a feature called quiet hours or quiet time or whatever where basically we will not send text messages between those times. And so, if you put in a start time and, you know, whatever you

45:48 want, you know, 6 p.m. to to 8 a.m. or something like that, any message that the automated message system goes uh tries to send, instead of going out directly, it'll get delayed until um until the morning. So, um, so that's worth enabling to, uh, you know, just in case you have something go out, you know, you don't want stuff going out in the middle of the night generally. Um, and

46:10 then the other thing that'll do is when you go to send a message manually, you know, say you come in and and do that, um, you know, that message will prefill in this send later option. If you really do want to send it immediately, you know, feel free to uncheck that or change the time. But basically, we'll preset that for you so that um you know, so you don't accidentally send

46:32 something in the middle of the night. Um that just applies to text messaging. It won't affect email. Um you know, I I don't think it matters if an email goes out at 3:00 a.m., but um but for the text messaging, um you know, that that's a helpful thing to enable. So Kayla just commented, "Do we have the ability to delay auto emails yet?" So um how would you want to do that? Maybe you

46:57 can delay, you can go in and delay an email, u but not an auto email. Maybe give me an example, I guess. Give us an example what you're looking to do. And then Richard, hey, sorry about the chaos in the back. Um, say, you know, someone fills out our lead form and I have an email going out to them, you know, 30 minutes after they are look are looking at a booth, you know, it automatically

47:22 feeds into a lead. I have an auto email going out, but they do it at like 11:00 at night. I don't want it to look like I'm sending out an email at 11:30 p.m. So, delaying any auto Yeah, quiet hours for emails, basically. Oh, interesting. Um, no, right now the quiet hours will be for SMS. Yeah, it's an interesting Yeah, it's an interesting. But you want to make it

47:45 look like you're not working late. Is that Exactly. They don't need to know that. Yeah, you can do it manually. So like if a lead comes in and um you know you want to send them a message, you can you can manually send um you know delayed later emails, right? But just not automated. You could also mark it as to be reviewed and you would have to manually review it right now. That would

48:08 be another workound, but that would be a lot of work too. So yeah, I do that for our contact form. I just don't do that for um those auto emails. I guess the only other last workound would be um disabling the automated messages entirely. Yeah, but just for that that one one customer. Yeah, I totally see where. Cool. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I like it. Yeah. And then uh

48:32 Richard's saying, "Can you explain the duplicate thing and the automated messages?" Saw it in the top right above the require approval, sending a message. Absolutely. So, a lead comes in, say somebody goes through your contact form, they fill out their info, um, you know, and, uh, they get a message. If they come through an hour later and fill it out again, do you

48:57 want them to get another message? Basically, that'll control yes or no. Um, and it's a little like, it's not always super straightforward, right? So, if you do online booking, um, then somebody might come through and start to fill things out and you have a message go out to them. Uh, you probably don't want them to get additional messages on that online booking. You know, if

49:20 they come back a day later and then now you're sending another follow-up and they come back a day after that, now you're sending another. You know, sometimes people don't like that or they don't want that to be happening. Um, what this setting does is just dduplicates it. So once we've send this sent this message to somebody, uh we won't send it again. It only applies to

49:39 this message. Um if you have a different message, they'll get that. That's fine, but they won't get the same message uh multiple times. And this really only applies to the leads. Um you know, if somebody actually books you for two events, you know, you probably do want them to get it. So it's really just kind of a lead specific feature. And it just makes sure that the same email address

49:58 doesn't get the same message more than twice, even if they do something that would normally cause them to get it. So, cool. Well, we got nine minutes. Any other questions? Uh, you know, we can we can chat. Um, oh, Ron says, "Can you please tell me again where to get the quiet times for SMS?" Yeah, so you'll see that under manage business settings integrations. And then if you if

50:23 you already have Twilio or you know in the future Quo enabled um it'll be in the configuration settings and um just toward the bottom there. So yeah, just put in um and these are these are the times that we won't send. So put in like 8:00 p.m. until like 6:00 a.m. or something. So Audi's here. He made it. Go ahead. You got your hand up. Good to see you. Hello guys. Yeah, I've been here. Just

50:49 stay lowkey. Uh from you guys experience so far, which one would you suggest? Like because I have Twill but just for some reason you never be able to set it up the right way. Uh which one would you really suggest between the uh QA or whatever it's called and TW? Which one like from you Matt? I believe you've played with both. Which one? Yeah, they're kind of different use cases. is I mean

51:16 they're different like one of them's like trying to be like a a you know phone call software to manage your business um and one's just like being a programmatic number. But what I would say is Quo is a lot easier to use. So if you're like stuck with the verification and trying to get Twilio to work and it's just confusing um Quo is like a lot easier in my experience. Um,

51:39 you know, they they give you examples as you kind of go through like even their like videos and their docs are better. Like like honestly like I mean if you want to stay with Twilio like you might even look at quotes documentation for for what they recommend saying because it's just a lot I don't know like it I just found it a lot easier to use in my opinion. Um but they do you know they

52:01 are different different products. Um, but the only I would say the only downside is if you're only going to send like 10 SMS messages a a month or something like it's kind of annoying to pay 15 or 20 bucks a month for that. So, hey, but you get a phone number, right? Call people. So, um, so it, you know, there's reasons to choose both, but for ease of use, I would say quo for just, you

52:24 know, cheapest option, like, you know, just want a programmatic phone number, don't want any of the other stuff, don't care about, you know, AI, whatever. Twilio is probably gonna be easier or better. Theo, go ahead. Thanks. Yeah. So, I just, like I said, got approved with Twilio, but I'm going be honest with you, I hate the way it looks and it did take quite some time. Will I have to

52:49 reverify if I go to quote or could I just transfer the number and not reverify? That's a good question. Um, I don't know. I know they have a way to port numbers. Um, I think of that as like like I know you can like port your phone number from one like cell carrier to another. Um, I I don't know how all the porting stuff works with these guys. Um, so you may be able to port that number

53:11 from one to the other or you may may not. I'm not really sure. Um, one thing I will say, if you have Twilio working, you probably won't ever have to log into it again. So, um, you know, so there there is that, you know, once once you go through the the hassle of getting it set up, you're kind of done. But um but yeah, I'm not I'm not sure if you'd have to get reverified or not to be honest.

53:32 Okay. Well, then that's good to know that I won't have to like because Yeah, just the way it looks is horrible. Yeah, it's Yeah. And Twilio used to be great. Like they were so easy to use when we first integrated with them. Like everybody loved them because it was like, you know, it's a great way to get phone numbers. You didn't have to log into Twilio. Like there was like a connect thing

53:53 and and we could like do it all. And then yeah, they've just I don't know, they've gotten uh not as good for sure. So, Soul Studio says the team is really looking for a time for staff in the scheduling. So, I'm not following that 100%. Maybe you can unmute yourself and chat with us. Tell us what you're looking for. Definitely guys, I'm so sorry about that. Had a basketball game for

54:11 my daughter, but um good seeing you guys. Yeah. Um, basically the team right now is really looking to have a schedule like so basically when we have multiple events or multiple packages um going in from all the different packages and bundling a way to assign them a certain time slot right now like if we have a multi-day event or we have double events we're running into the problem where it's

54:34 like okay when do I show up? Oh I see. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah so it's a thing um limitation of Check Cherry. So, um, basically what he's looking for within bookings, you can have like kind of like multi multi packages, multi package or things like that, different times for each package. Yeah, right now our staff assignment is just assigned to the full booking. Um, but yeah, it's it's on

54:57 our kind of road map. I don't know an exact DTA, but kind of some some staffing updates are pretty high on the list um of of things we it just it just so happens it's a really hard problem for us to solve based on our architecture. That's that's the only reason it's not in there. When we did multiple packages, we saw it and we're like, you know what, this sucks, but let's just keep

55:18 on working on other stuff and see how much it comes up and all that. It's just Yeah, it just so happens to be um a difficult problem to solve, but doesn't mean we won't get to it. We might have to rework some things, all that stuff, but we get it. Yeah, probably the highest thing, but it's it's up there. It's in the top certain top handful of things that I think are going to come out. So,

55:39 yeah. Hey, Matt. Great job. Any other questions? We got a couple more minutes. Uh if not, we'll we'll be back in two weeks. Patrick's here. Go ahead, Patrick. Wait, let me unmute you. There he is. Hey guys. Hey man. Uh when are you going to add a mobile number uh to the to the field? Remember we talked about this? add a mobile number to the contact form. You

56:14 have one num one phone number. Uh if I remember you wanted multiple numbers on a two on a user account. Yeah. On a user account. So yeah. So he wants like a corporate person basically to have I see you know and I don't I think where that's hard is like which which text message do we send to and you know um and you can use that you can currently do a custom field with the number. It's

56:43 just not going to send text messages. I think it opens up some questions in terms of you know how you know if when we send a text do we send it to just the same one? I mean, yeah. So, yeah, cuz I I I guess I I do a lot of corporate events and a lot of times they're at work and they just put their work phone number and then you have to, you know, you mean like a day of contact,

57:04 I think you called it. Yeah. Yeah. So, and sometimes that day of comes on, you know, it goes through a form and I don't do that till later till later on. So, I don't know. Okay. Well, I would add him as a custom question. Day of contact. Here's what I would recommend. So, on the lead form, I would do two things. Um, change the the phone, the built-in phone. We

57:26 kind of treat that as a mobile phone because that's what we find most people do. Um, so I would rename it to specifically call it mobile phone. Um, because that's the one that we're going to like use for SMS, things like that. And then what you can do is um, if you add a custom field, I would use that for just kind of the like business phone. I'd call it like business

57:47 phone or company phone or whatever. And we're not really going to be able to do much with that. um you know, company phone, but that way you have it and just leave it as a