Following the recent SMS outage, Square Appointments feature removed the ability to text clients who haven't texted us first - i.e. we can only text "reply" now.
Clients who haven't texted us - regardless if they have an appt. or not - shows the following alert message (instead of the text box) when you attempt to text them:
The ability to text clients first is very much needed!
The client has already booked an appointment with us (or joined the beta Waitlist group), willingly shared their phone number as a way to communicate with them, and now - we can't contact them?? This doesn't make any sense after you all rolled out all the SMS features of late, like requesting payment or a Google Review.
This has affected our business because:
- We can no longer text clientele check-in information! We work out of building that is "locked down" following Covid. We generally text our clients information to help them locate the studio and now folks are getting lost because they don't check their email.
- Our clientele skews younger & prefers SMS texting over email. Emailing results in our clients missing messages or never responding.
- The Beta Waitlist feature is built on the premise that we can text clients about open availability and now you can't for new clients!
I would pay more to have a dedicated SMS phone number attached to my business that can be used to message anyone in the Client Directory. I don't spam my clientele! The ability to communicate via text is the main benefit of Square Appointments (in comparison to other platforms who have better scheduling features!)
Please reinstate the ability to send SMS text messages to new clients, who have willingly shared their phone number when booking an appointment or joining the beta waitlist group!