I am unable to send text messages to customers from square appointments. when will this be fixed?

[mdbodysculpting]

I am unable to send text messages to customers from square appointments. when will this be fixed?

This functionality used to work before. And broke somewhere around Nov 2022.  It has been broken since.

It is a shame that I have reached out to every level of square customer support, and even the management on twitter and no one thinks this requires fixing. 

An appointment booking system where a company cannot contact its own clients?? that is what square appointments is. 

and not to mention the ads i keep getting to sign up for text marketing?! if your text marketing works and square appointments text is broken someone is not thinking software programming right (i wanted to use a curse word her e but oh well...)

[TheRealChipA]

HI @mdbodysculpting.  I’m surprised that every level of square customer support didn’t mention this.  But, from what I understand, somewhere around November of last year, Square had to fix a privacy hole.  Square Appointments was supposed (because of SMS privacy regulations, as I understood it) to only allow appointment reminders and such to be sent via SMS.  SMS was not to be used to send any text messages except for the pre-defined ones that are part of the appointment flow.  

Having said that, if a customer replied to one of those texts and started a conversation, then it seems that from then on you can send them messages through the Square Messages platform, since by messaging you first they gave implied consent to receive replies/conversations from you.  This is the way the Messages platforms works, in order to meet federal SMS regulations as I understand them.

Can you clarify.  Are you stating that your customers don’t get texts with appointment confirmations, reminders, cancellations and such?  Or are you saying that you want to communicate other things to them besides this?

[MayaP]

Hey there @mdbodysculpting we are sorry for any confusion, but there have been some updates to Square Messages. 

To minimize potential disruptions in the future, we’re happy to share that we’ve restored chat functionality with your customers who reach out to you via SMS. These communications will now be dependent on your customers starting the conversation by replying to service messages, like a receipt, appointment reminder, or order update, just to name a few. We’re also working to re-enable unrestricted outbound messaging capabilities early next year.

We know and understand how challenging service disruptions can be and we apologize for any inconvenience. 
 

[TheRealChipA]

I’m glad for that confirmation, @MayaP.  It seems to me that with this “fix” to Appointments last year, all of the platforms that allow messaging have the same two rules:

1. When a customer signs up for something (Appointment, Loyalty, Receipts etc) we can send them one-way communication via text, and one-way only.
2. The only way we can engage in text conversations after that is for the the customer to first reply to one of those messages, which gives us implied consent.

Based upon what you said above, it seems that all of the platforms are now consistent when it comes to texting customers.  I just realized that as I was reading your response.

[mdbodysculpting]

That does not help. What if I have to communicate with the customers. Once I accept the appointment I should be allowed to send communication to the customer. We are losing a lot of time, energy and sanity trying  to communicate to customer outside of the platform. Confuses the heck out of customers how they should communicate with us. 

why the heck they will start a communication with us beside requesting the appointment? 

This is  ridiculous and for you to say that this is how the functionality should work? The costumer should initiate a communication with me for no apparent reason in anticipation of someday for me to have an ability to communicate with them 

this is retarded 

[TheRealChipA]

Of course you can initiate communication with your customers — via phone calls and emails.  But there are federal regulations regarding SMS/Text communication that must be followed.  It doesn’t matter to federal regulators whether or not you want to only send texts.  You’re only allowed to send certain types of texts unless the customer opts in, period.  Whether you like it or not, this is the way it is.  It sounds like you might want to do some research and move to a platform that allows you to violate the law.  I’m sure that there is a POS platform that allows you to do whatever you want, no matter what, and will give you the tools to get yourself in legal trouble.  You’ll probably be happier there.  But insulting people here just to make yourself feel better about the fact that you can’t seem to find the solutions that you agree with won’t get you anywhere.  

[MayaP]

We definitely understand the frustration with this new change @mdbodysculpting but I do want to remind you to follow our 
Community Etiquette Guidelines in order to make sure we are having productive and respectful conversations on our forum. 

Thank you @TheRealChipA for providing your insight and support always.