How do guests message us, and how do we reply?

Guests reply to your booking emails or use Message the venue; on Pro and Complete it all lands in Messages, on the booking, where your team replies. On Free and Plus it goes to your own email.

Guests can write to you in two ways: by replying to any of your booking emails, or with Message the venue on your venue page, their booking page and My account (beside Call). Where their message lands depends on your plan.

On Pro and Complete — the Messages page

Every conversation with every guest is in one list on the Messages page, and each one also shows on its booking and the customer's profile.

• Every booking email carries its own reply address, so a guest's reply lands on the right booking by itself.
• Use All, Unread, Mine, Open and Done to narrow the list, or search by name, booking or words in a message.
• Open a conversation, type your answer and press Send — it goes to the guest as an email from your venue, and their answer comes back to the same conversation.
• Switch to Note for the team to leave a note only your team sees.
• Quick replies inserts one of your saved answers; {first name} and {time} fill in by themselves.
• Mark as done when it's handled — a new message from the guest opens it again. The … menu can assign it, mark it as unread, bring it back tomorrow at 10:00 or mark it as spam.
• Remind me tomorrow at 10:00 hides the conversation until 10:00 the next morning (your venue's time). Then it's back as unread and the bell rings for whoever asked — unless it was marked as done or spam in the meantime, or the guest wrote again first (their message rings the bell itself).
• New message writes to a customer first — about their visit, never marketing.

Replying to guests needs the Reply to guest messages permission (on for owners, admins, managers and hosts). You can switch it off for a role, or for one person, on the roles page.

In the staff portal. Staff with Reply to guest messages also get Messages in the staff portal's menu (after Bookings), the same page as the dashboard's — so a manager signed in with their PIN can answer guests mid-service. The menu shows a number beside Messages when conversations are waiting unread, as it does beside Bookings, Orders and Reviews (on a phone, on the tab's icon) — only for the pages that person can open.

Messages to guests have a daily fair-usage limit, far above what a busy venue sends — each reply or new message counts once, even if you have to try it again; notes don't count, and Message a day’s guests has its own limit (below). If you ever reach it, sending stops until the next day; the message that says so has a Contact support button if you'd like to talk to us about it.

On Free and Plus — straight to your email

Set Where should guest replies go? in Settings → Messages, under Where guest replies go (it's also asked when you sign up). The Messages page shows the address you've set, with Change in Settings → Messages. Replies to your booking emails and the Message the venue box come straight to that address — passed on through ResoFlow's own reply address, never kept by ResoFlow. Automatic replies (out-of-office and the like) are filtered out on the way. A reply whose sender's email provider doesn't confirm it really came from that address isn't passed on, so a forged email can't reach your inbox in a guest's name.

Your emails never show your own address as their reply-to: a business email whose replies go to a Gmail or Yahoo address is something spam filters mark down, so every email carries ResoFlow's reply address and the reply is passed on to you. Your guest sees your reply come from your own inbox as usual. Your emails to one guest at a time — the birthday, welcome and we-miss-you emails, review requests, the rewards round-up and the reminder to finish booking tickets — work like your booking emails: on Pro and Complete a reply lands in Messages, on that guest (a reply to a review request, on its booking); on Free and Plus it is passed on to you. Replies to your bulk marketing (campaigns, member messages, the news sign-up) are always passed on to your email — on every plan.

If you leave the address empty, replies to your emails go to your Venue notification email (Settings → Alerts and sounds) instead, and the Message the venue box stays hidden. With neither, guests aren't offered a way to reply, and a reply sent anyway gets a polite answer with your phone number.

Settings

Messages' settings have their own page: Settings → Messages (/dashboard/settings/messages, in the Settings menu's Communications group). The gear at the top right of the Messages page (Messages settings, beside the ?) opens it — so does the Messages settings button on the empty page — with ← Back to Messages at the top to bring you back:

• Message the venue on your pages (Guests can message you) can be switched off on every plan — guests then see Call only.
• Also email me a copy (Pro and Complete) sends a copy of each new message to your address. A message whose sender wasn't confirmed by their email provider stays in Messages, marked so, and isn't copied to your email. Answer in Messages so your whole team sees it.
• The bell rings for a new message, and phones say only who wrote ("Marcus R. sent a message") — never the words.

Let guests reply online (Pro and Complete)

Under Tell guests about your messages in Settings → Messages (How guests hear about it) you choose how a guest hears that you've written to them — and they can then read the whole conversation and reply on a page with your name and colours. Their reply lands in Messages, on the booking, and rings the bell.

• None (the starting choice) — off: your message goes by email, as it always has, and they reply to the email.
• Email — your message by email, with a Reply online button beside "Just reply to this email".
• Text — one text: "The Bistro: you have a message about your booking on Sat 26 Sep. Read and reply:" and the link. It's always one text, uses 1 of your text credits, and never carries your own words. Text needs texts set up for your venue.
• Both — the email and the text.

When to tell them: The first message only (later replies wait on their page) or Every reply (at most one text a conversation a day). A guest who writes to you by email always gets your answers by email.

A text needs a UK mobile on the booking. When a text can't go — no mobile, no text credits left, or they've said no to texts — we email instead, so nothing is held up. The page takes replies until 30 days after the visit; after that it says the conversation has closed and shows your phone number. Anyone with the link sees that one conversation — nothing else — and the page asks them to prove they're a person before sending. Messages never text you or your team: new messages ring the bell and your phones, as above.

Messages in My account

On Pro and Complete, guests who sign in to My account on your booking page see Messages: their conversations with you, one for each booking (and "General message" for anything they sent from your venue page), newest first, with a dot on the ones they haven't read. They can open one to read it and reply.

Running late

In their reminder and on their booking page, a guest can say they're running late — 10, 15 or 20+ minutes. The booking shows it to your team and the bell rings, on every plan. On Pro and Complete it lands on the booking's conversation too.

Your team see "Running late · 15m" on the booking in the Bookings list, on the Timeline and in the floor plan's arrivals until the guest is marked as arrived. Where your team mark customers as arrived, ResoFlow also waits once for them: their table's hold and the automatic no-show both move by the minutes they said — never by more than your own Mark them after time — and a second message replaces the first rather than adding to it.

Message a day's guests

Message a day’s guests at the top of the Messages page (on a phone, the megaphone button there) sends one email to everyone still to come on a day, or between two times — for example "We're running 20 minutes behind tonight". Sending to 10 or more guests asks for your password first — or, on the venue's device, the approval PIN of someone who can reply to guest messages.

It's only for news about their booking — offers and news go in Campaigns. A message that reads like an offer (a discount, a promo code, "2 for 1", "happy hour" and so on) can't be sent here: send it as a campaign instead. You can send at most 2 day messages a day.

You can also tick Also send a text to text guests who have a mobile, from your text credits — it's off unless you tick it, and the sheet shows how many texts each one costs (keep it short to use one). Because the text is your own words, it can only go once your text sender name is approved (usually within a working day of turning texts on); until then the message goes by email only and the sheet says so. If your venue's texts are off, the tick is still there but greyed, and says where to turn texts on: Settings → Customer notifications.

If you don't have enough text credits for everyone, ResoFlow says so before anything is sent — for example "You have 40 texts left — this goes to 60 guests" — and you choose: text the guests booked soonest now (the others don't get a text), buy more texts and then text everyone, or text the soonest now and the rest as soon as you have more texts. The ones waiting are kept only until the end of that day, then they're dropped and we'll tell you — or you can drop them sooner with Cancel the rest, at the top of Message a day’s guests. Everyone with an email still gets the email.

From the search: type "message tonight's guests saying we're running 20 minutes late" into Search or do anything and Message a day’s guests opens with the day and your message set (and the times, for "between 6 and 8") — nothing is sent until you press Send. See What can I type into the search?.

Close a day

If you have to close for a day — a burst pipe, a power cut, illness — choose Close a day… in the … menu on the Bookings list. It's there for anyone who can cancel bookings and change your opening hours. Pick the day, check the message (it starts you off with one you can change), and the last step shows exactly what will happen before anything does.

• Every booking still to come that day is cancelled — confirmed bookings and requests waiting for you — and each guest gets one email: their cancellation, with your message in it and what happens to any payment. Anyone on that day's waitlist is taken off it and gets your message by email.
• Any deposit or payment is refunded in full, whatever your cancellation rules say — you closed, not them. Cancelling a day with payments on it needs someone who can refund.
• The day is marked "Closed all day" on your Special dates first, so no new bookings land. Untick Mark the day “Closed all day” to cancel the bookings and keep the day open.
• Event tickets aren't cancelled — cancel the event itself to refund its tickets. Parties already seated are left as they are.
• On Pro and Complete your message is kept on each booking's conversation, so a guest's reply comes back to Messages. On Free and Plus their replies go to your "Where should guest replies go?" address (or, if that's empty, your Venue notification email).
• Tick Also send a text to text your message to each guest with a mobile instead of the usual cancellation text, from your text credits. If you don't have enough texts for everyone, ResoFlow says so before anything happens. The message always goes by email; when the text can't go — your venue's texts are off, or none of the guests has a mobile — the tick is greyed and says why (and, for texts that are off, where to turn them on: Settings → Customer notifications).

It may ask for your password first — or, on the venue's device, the approval PIN of someone who can cancel bookings (or refund them, when the day has payments). If the day changes while you're reading — a new booking or a new payment — you're shown the new numbers before anything happens.

The cancelling carries on by itself: you can close the window, and the bell tells you when it's done. Anything that couldn't be cancelled — a booking moved to another day, or changed while the day was closing — is listed by name with the reason, and so is any text that didn't go, so you can call those guests.

Keeping messages

Messages are kept with their booking and deleted 13 months after the visit. They're included when a customer asks for their data, and removed if they ask to be forgotten. Guests can't send files or photos.