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Live Q&A: Ask us anything Square Messages

On Thursday November 19th 2pm PT/ 5pm ET the Beta Community hosted the Square Messages team, live here in the Seller Community! 

 

Jason Purdy, @jasonpurdy, the Product Manager for Square Messages answered your questions about Square Messages.

 

Have you ever wished that you could email or text your customers inside of Square instead of using your personal account? Maybe you’ve heard that we’re testing new functionality now with Square Messages in beta? Are you interested in using it?

 

What are you looking for in a perfect Messaging platform for contact between you and your customers? We’re looking to and answer the questions, ask some of our own, and take feature requests you have for this product.

 

How does a Live Q&A in the Seller Community work? 

 

Over the next week we’ll take your questions here in this thread. On November 19th at 2pm PT/5pm ET we’ll start answering these questions live and take more throughout the hour. (There is not a LIVE hangout here, we'll all be plugging away at our computers).

 

Here are some example questions for this thread:

  • What is the purpose of Square Messages?
  • I want to test Square Messages, but what if there is a bug?
  • What do you need from me to make this product the best for my business?

 

To get started testing Square Messages, please join our Beta Community, and see what other products we may be testing for now!

 

 

**Please note this date has changed due to scheduling changes with our host.

kellyj
Technical Program Manager: AI
Square Inc
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Hi all! Getting started a few minutes early here, and wanted to thank you for attending our Live Q&A with Jason Purdy.

Please direct all new questions to this thread, and we'll be sure to answer them as they come in. Please remember questions should be about Square Messages and the plans for this product to come.

 

Ask away! 

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Hello again, Sellers!

 

Thank you for the great feedback.

Some of you I have spoken with in the past and many of you I hope to hear from again. We hear you loud and clear that we need to improve permissions and security of the contact data and messages information.

 

We are also very excited to bring Messages to more places and integrations. Please reach out anytime, feedback always welcome.

 

Our Square Messages Beta is being managed in our Beta Community where you can connect directly with our team. If you are interested in testing this feature further- please join the Beta Community and send a message to @kellyj who can get you started with Square Messages. 

 

We look forward to launching this product!

 

Jason
PM, Messages

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Hello all! Popping in with a quick and exciting update...

 

@jasonpurdy is currently looking to interview anyone who is interested in having an inbound number for your customers to send messages to without having to respond to a receipt or appointment notification. Wheels are starting to get in motion! So if you're interested, make sure to first join the Beta Community.  Then request to join our Square Messages Advisory Board and look for the 30 min interview request post to sign up for a slot.

 

We're really excited about this future launch, but we need to hear your input first! Can't wait to hear from you.

Bea_
Beta Community Manager, Square
Join the Beta Community
Evaluate | Influence | Engage

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Beta Member

My clients received a message stating “This business has disabled this automated System. Please contact your direct request.

 

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@Tracismith 

 

I believe I sent a private message to you with instructions on making sure that the messaging assistant is turned on in your Square Appointments Account. 


This will solve that messaging issue. 

kellyj
Technical Program Manager: AI
Square Inc
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I am using Square as my POS at a motel. Are there any features I should be utilizing that I might not be aware of? Does the appointments feature work for bookings? Please advise and thank you.

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@sarahmic I believe you could!

 

You would first need to work out the rooms and their configurations: King, Single Queen, Double Queen, Single Double, Double Double, etc. Then you would create a Resource for each room in the Items Library of the POS - where you also add services. Services would then need to created to book each room type: Book a King Room, Book a Double Queen Room, Book a Single Queen Room, etc. Then down at the bottom of each service's creation screen, you would turn on the "Requires Resource" option, and from the selection window that appears, assign the Resources you created for that specific booking service. You would select the duration to be 24 hours and assign the price for the room for a night, say $120.00.

 

This will allow people to book one night with your motel and they would not be able to overbook because you have assigned the number of available rooms for each service. If you only have 2 King rooms, then after the Book a King room service was booked twice, it would no longer be available for bookings.

 

The difficulty here is what to do with the rooms that people want to book for a weekend... This is where Appointments might not be able to fulfill your needs for multi-night bookings - but the customer could always book the next day doing the same process above. However, if the same King room has already been booked by someone else, then there might be confusion about what room to book or if they can, etc. when trying to book multiple days.

 

Another way to look at Appointments would be to set each room as a staff member - and set its availability. This way you can see what room is being booked - however, the number of staff is how you are billed by Appointments - and can quickly escalate. I think the above option of 1 staff (you) with Booking Rooms as services and resource allocations would get you at least the one night booking. I believe there is a note section where you can ask the customer to indicate the number of nights they want to book the room for. 

 

Appointments can be set for approval as well - so you can arrange the bookings by looking at who came in first, reviewing the number of days, contacting them etc.

 

The room as a staff member would allow you to turn off its availability for the number of days it has been booked. So that is a bonus. Services are always on.

 

Hope that gives some ideas to you!

James Wilkinson
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Thank you that is quite helpful. I am currently having a website built that will feature online booking. Is it possible to link the appointment feature to my website or would these be used separately? Are there any other features that will help manage the sales side of a motel in Square that I should look at?

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The Appointments app provides code to include the booking on your own website.

James Wilkinson
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@sarahmic

 

Hello Sarah, I’ll look into the bookings flow.

 

I think a great use case for those in the hospitality industry like yourself is about receiving feedback and better answering any questions customers may have.

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Hi, 

 

I'd like to sign up for this and ask how do we get help to do some integration help. ie., I'm a drive-in movie.  I'm already using a tkx system that is listed in Square's App Marketplace as integrated with Square.  

 

Indeed, when people buy a movie tkx, I see the transaction in Square Customer Directory.  However, I'd like to hire a programmer who is able take that movie tkx data and do more with the dinner orders that people will place on my Weebly/SquareOnline site.  The tkx app vendor doesn't want to take on custom projects.  Is there someone else I should approach?

 

Cheers - Nancy

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@WEDriveIns

 

Hello, what a fun idea! If you’re seeing the customer there in the directory you should be able to message them via Square Messages. Is that what you mean?

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Beta Member

Jason,

 

I think you misunderstood my Q altogether.  But then, I think you're only answering Message/Messenger specific Q.  My Q is outside of that.

 

My Q is, I need custom integration and report generation help because my pop up, drive-in movie site is developed on Weebly/SquareOnline.  However, effectively, I have 2 systems:  a front end movie ticket system that's "integrated" with Square.  On the backend, I use Weebly site to sell dinners.

 

Although movie tkx sales automatically create an entry in Square's Customer Directory, this level of rudimentary integration is insufficient to meet my needs.

 

Who can I talk to for add'l help?

 

Thx - Nancy

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@WEDriveIns 

 

Yes, this thread is specifically for Square Messages, and not general Q&A's although our community is happy to help.


I think the perfect solution for you would be Self-Serve ordering with Square Online.  As you're already a member of our Beta Community we have a group that tested and launched the first iteration of Self-Serve dining, and are about to start testing this in correlation with Open Tickets.

 

I'd be happy to direct you to the correct forums and dig into how to best support this for your theatre after this live Q&A.  

kellyj
Technical Program Manager: AI
Square Inc
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Is this still today?

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@samsmith Hi Sam! 

Tomorrow at 2pm PST. (Today is Wednesday).

kellyj
Technical Program Manager: AI
Square Inc
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@samsmith 


We're here now! Let me know if you have questions.

 

Cheers.

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This is great. Thanks for all of you work on Square Messages. My questions are: How hopeful should I be that this will one day work with Apple Business Chat? Is it being designed in such a way as to eventually integrate with other customer service software platforms, or is it meant to be a standalone product that supplants such platforms?

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@wildheartbrew 

 

I’m excited that you’re excited about Apple Business Chat!

 

Although I can’t guarantee this, I can say we are in conversations with them, and hope to add this functionality post launch!

 

As for integrations with other partners, which software would you have in mind?

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We are looking forward to this!

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Awesome, because I continue to have issues with certain functions within my system, I have called may times  in the past, yet nothing seems to get done about it.

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@Uptownbarber1 


Is this in relationship to Square messages? Did you have a specific question to ask?

kellyj
Technical Program Manager: AI
Square Inc
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A few things about todays Live Q&A with Square Messages!

 

Be sure to join us around 2pm PST for this live Q&A. Friendly reminder that this is not a video format, we're working on Q&A's live in a video format in the future. 

 

Previous questions will be answered and posted by Jason, and you'll be able to add to the discussion as we update the answers, and answer more.

 

Feel free to post to the thread and we'll loop back ASAP. 

 

Don't have availability at 2pm PST today? That's okay, put your question in the thread anyhow, and we'll answer. Remember all questions should be about the Square Messages product or information about joining in this beta test.

 

Anything else? Feel free to @ kellyj and I'd be happy to answer additional questions before we get started this afternoon.

 

kellyj
Technical Program Manager: AI
Square Inc
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@ kellyj,

 

Pls clarify EXACTLY how are we to participate in today's Q&A session?

 

In other words, where do we logon?  What will we see---a window that allows us to type Qs and we'll wait to see you respond with As?  

 

I've never participated in this before.  I'm completely lost and can't imagine how to join the Q&A when I can't imagine where to go, what I'll see, and how to participate.

 

Thx - Nancy

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