Limo Anywhere’s Scheduled Messaging feature has many uses, and most users employ the feature to one degree or another. Scheduled Messaging can be used to communicate not only with your clients, but also with your affiliates and your own drivers.

Before the Trip

• To Clients – a 24- or 48-hour advance reminder, via email, will prompt your passengers to notify you of any changes in a timely manner, not to mention giving them one more opportunity to confirm that midnight pick-up is scheduled on the correct date and one last chance to correct AM/PM miscommunications.
• To Drivers – a text alert before pick-up time can minimize the number of wake-up or prompt calls Dispatch needs to make.

During the Trip

• To Affiliates – use Scheduled Messaging to keep your non-LANet Affiliates up to date on the status of their trip. You can schedule an email to go out at each status change along the way, informing your affiliate of the assigned driver, and then once the driver is on the way, on location, customer in car, and passenger dropped off!

After the Trip

• To Passengers – a Customer Satisfaction Survey, sent via text when service is complete, is a great way to get feedback while the trip is fresh in your client’s mind. Travelers often check their phones once they reach their gates or check into their hotels, and they are likely to have a few minutes to respond to a quick survey.
• To Billing Contacts – use Scheduled Messaging to automatically send a reminder to your clients when their invoice is past due (by 10 days, by 30 days, etc.)

Setting up Scheduled Messaging

We’ve highlighted a few of the details you can review yourself when setting up your scheduled messaging, or when troubleshooting later on:

1. Set-up: Choose Email or SMS.

• Troubleshoot: This one is probably obvious, but the first place to look when a message didn’t go out as expected is the recipient’s email address or mobile number.

1. Set-Up: For Trip message, select desired reservation status (new/live, settled, or both).

• Troubleshoot: This one is probably obvious, but the first place to look when a message didn’t go out as expected is the recipient’s email address or mobile number.

3. Set-Up: For Trip message, select desired reservation status (new/live, settled, or both).

• Troubleshoot: Match to trip specifics. For example, certain affiliate messages might be associated only with Farm-in trips (driver status) or Farm-out trips (notification of cancellation).

4. Set-Up: Choose if this message will go out only on specific Service Types, or all (Not Selected)

• Troubleshoot: Have you updated, added, or deleted any service types that require adjusting this message setting?

5. Set-Up: Send To allows you to determine which contact(s) will receive the message.

• Troubleshoot: Is the contact information for this person up to date, and entered on the reservations? Is the correct person identified?

6. Set-Up: Select any one of your forms to attach to the message (optional).

• Troubleshoot: Have you updated or created new forms? Make sure the correct form is associated with the message.

7. Set-Up: On a Trip-related message, there are two options for triggering the message to be sent. The first is when the trip status changes. (You can choose more than one trip status for the same message – for example if you have multiple cancellation statuses associated with the same message.)

• Troubleshoot: Have you updated or remapped your statuses and/or workflow? You’ll want to make sure to update your scheduled messages accordingly.

8. Set-Up: The second option for triggering the message is based on the amount of time before or after scheduled pick up (24- hour reminders, request for feedback, etc.)

9. Set-Up: Do Not Send if Status Is … Select trip statuses that would stop the message from sending (prevent reminder messages from going out on cancelled trips, for example)

• Troubleshoot: Have you added or changed any cancellation statuses (or others)? Make sure this item is updated in message settings.

 10. Set-Up: These selections determine if individual contacts/accounts are allowed to opt out, or required to opt in, to the message.

• Troubleshoot: Check these settings on the message set-up, and on the individual account in question.

Using Zapier to Send Scheduled Messages

For reservations where you might need to message multiple passengers, a Zapier integration can help you accomplish your goal with  less manual effort by you and your staff.

Information such as additional passenger name, phone, and email is shared with Zapier. A number of email and SMS services connect to Zapier (ex. Twilio, Zipwhip, Outlook, Gmail), which allow users to create a custom workflow using these tools.

There are a lot of capabilities available with Scheduled Messaging, and many details to sort out, so if you still need help either setting up or troubleshooting your scheduled messaging, please don’t hesitate to reach out to Support for assistance at 888-888-0302 x2.