WhatsApp reminder
The WhatsApp reminder is coming very soon. This page explains how it will work when the service becomes available: we'll tell you in the dashboard. Until then, the reminder goes by email, as usual.
Email gets read by whoever reads email; WhatsApp gets opened by everyone. To remind a guest of a booking —which they check on their phone— it's the right channel.
What it does
It sends the booking reminder on WhatsApp, as many hours ahead as you choose in Notices. It's the only notification that goes by WhatsApp: the confirmation, the request received and the decline arrive by email.
It carries a "Change or cancel" button, the same link as the email, so the guest can cancel it themselves and the table is freed.
How to switch it on
Once the service is available, you'll turn it on in Notices → Send reminder, with "Also by WhatsApp". It will start switched off, and until then it isn't part of any plan.
- "Send reminder" has to be on: if you switch it off, no reminder goes out, by WhatsApp or by email.
- It comes with the Pro plan (up to 50 reminders a month) and the Custom plan (up to 200). Basic doesn't include it: in Notices, the switch is disabled.
- Beyond the limit, if the guest left no mobile number, if that number isn't on WhatsApp (a landline, for example) or if the booking has no link to change or cancel it, the reminder goes by email, as usual.
- The WhatsApp agent that answers messages is something else: it isn't part of any plan.
One number for everyone
Messages go out from a single taula.ai number, not one per restaurant. They carry your restaurant's name, so the guest knows immediately who they're from.
This number doesn't read replies. If a guest replies, we tell them to contact the restaurant directly.
Status
Meta still has to approve the templates and the number has to be registered. Until the service is available, the reminder goes by email and no booking ever fails because of it.
What data Meta receives
When the service becomes available, messages go out through Meta's WhatsApp Business platform, which receives:
- the guest's phone number and the language of the message;
- your restaurant's name, the date and time of the booking and its code (or, if it has none, the party size);
- the link on the "Change or cancel" button, which is personal: whoever has it can change or cancel that booking.
Meta tells us whether the message was delivered and, if the guest replies, sends us the reply: nobody reads it and we don't store it, and the guest gets an automatic notice, at most once a day, that the number only sends notifications. It's in the Privacy Policy and Annex I of the Terms.