Notifications overview
With Qmatic Experience Cloud, you can make sure your customers get the right information at the right time. Whether you are sending confirmations, reminders or follow-up messages you can adjust them to suit your business needs. There are also options to send alerts to staff, for example when an appointment customer has arrived, or when the waiting time has exceed a defined level.
In this article, we describe the different notification channels, the different types of notifications, and the possible notification triggers.
Notification methods
The following channels can be used to send notifications:
Email: Emails are suitable for e.g. appointment confirmations and reminders since you can send long detailed messages with HTML formatting.
SMS: SMS messages are suitable for real-time notifications such as when a visit reaches a certain position or when you want to send a link to Mobile Ticket when a visit is created.
Note
There are also settings to enable in-app notifications to notify staff about certain events. See Desktop notification in Serve view and Managing notifications in Monitor queues view
Note
When you select notification channel for a notification type, there is an option to select Email then SMS. In this case, the system first tries to send an email, but if a valid email address is missing, an SMS is sent.
Notification types
You can communicate with customers during every step of the customer journey. In the following sections, the occasions when notifications can be sent are described.
Appointment notifications
The following types of notifications are available for notifications:
Booking confirmation: Sent when a customer has booked an appointment.
Booking reminder: Sent when an appointment is coming up.
Check-in reminder: Sent when it's time to check in for an appointment.
Cancellation confirmation: Sent when an appointment is canceled.
Visit notifications
Visit notifications are the notifications that are sent from the point when the customer arrives at the branch until the visit is ended.
Visit notifications can be sent when the following events occur:
Visit Create: Sent when a walk-in visit is created or when an appointment is checked in. This can be used to inform the customer of their queue number if you don't have any physical tickets, or send a link to Mobile Ticket.
Visit Position: Sent when a visit reaches a certain position in the queue. This can be used to inform customers that it is soon their turn.
Note
You can define for which positions (max. 2) Visit Position notifications should be sent in the Notifications unit type.
Visit Transfer: Sent when a visit is transferred. This can be used to let customers know that their visit has been transferred to another queue or pool.
Visit Call: Sent when a visit is called. This can be used to inform customers that it is their turn.
Note
For Visit Call notifications to be sent, the Visit Call setting must be enabled in the Notifications unit type.
Visit End: Sent when a visit is ended. This can be used to thank them for the visit and send a link to give feedback.
Visit update (triggered manually): Sent when a staff member wants to send a message during a visit. This can be used to manually send a link to Mobile Ticket if the customer did not enter their phone number when getting in line.
Note
This requires that the Send SMS setting is enabled in the unit types for the Serve view and/or the Check in view.
Staff alerts
You can send the following notifications to staff:
SLA alerts: Sent when the defined service level agreement (SLA) has been reached.
Arrival alerts: Sent when a customer arrives to a specified queue or service.
Custom alerts: Sent when a custom event occurs, for example when a customer has given bad feedback.
Staff alert recipients
When you edit the settings for a staff alert, you can configure who should receive the notification. First, you select the receiver type. You have the following options:
User: Sends the alert to the selected user.
Role: Sends the alert to the selected role.
Direct: Sends the alert to the email addresses or phone numbers you enter. If you enter more than one, separate them by comma.
Primary Resource: Send the alert to the primary resource of the appointment. Only applicable for arrival alerts.
If the staff alert is based on Queue and you select User or Role as recipient type, you can also select if the alert should only be sent to users that
have the selected role (if receiver type is Role), and
are logged in to a counter, and
are serving the selected queue.
SLA alert level and reset level
For SLA alerts, you can set the alert level that should trigger the alert. For waiting customers, you enter the number of customers. For waiting time, you enter the waiting time in minutes. You can also set a reset level, which is the level when the alert is reset and can be triggered again.
Example: Let's say you are setting up an SLA alert for number of waiting customers and you set the alert level to 10 and reset level to 5. This means an alert will be sent when there are 10 customers waiting. The alert will not be sent again until the number has decreased to 5 and then increased to 10 again.
Notification triggers
Notifications are usually sent automatically based on events in the system. The only notification type that can be sent manually is Visit Update which can be triggered from the Check in view and the Serve view. There is also an option to manually resend the appointment confirmation.