Send SMS from a job

Connect once on the web

You store the API key of your seven.io account once in RepairCMS on your computer. That’s also where you confirm your customers’ consent and switch on the events that send an SMS: New job confirmation, Job status change and Repair complete. The article on setting up SMS with seven.io walks you through it step by step.

Choose the sender ID in the app

The sender ID is the sender your customer sees above the SMS. You pick it in the app, and it also applies to SMS from the web app, because both use the same connection.

1. Tap “More” at the bottom, then “Apps & add-ons”.
2. Open the “seven.io SMS” card.
3. Under “Sender ID”, choose between “Sender name” and “Business number”.
   • Sender name means the SMS comes with your business name. It has a maximum of 11 characters and no umlauts. A customer can’t reply to a sender name.
   • Business number means the SMS comes from the number in your profile. If your customer replies, the reply goes straight to the phone with that number. This option appears as soon as your profile has a business number.
4. Under “This is what your customer sees”, the app shows which sender appears at the top for your customer. The app saves your choice right away and shows “Changes saved”.

Where the app sends SMS

When you book a new job

If New job confirmation is switched on in the web app and your customer has a mobile number, the summary in the last booking step shows the “Tracking link by SMS” switch. It’s already on. Your customer then gets an SMS right after the booking with the link that shows them where their repair stands. In the overview above it, the tracking link row says “By SMS” or “By email and SMS”.

The switch can be changed by whoever is allowed to confirm the booking. Everyone else sees “Only the owner may change this” when they tap it.

When you change the status

If Job status change or Repair complete is switched on in the web app, “Change the status” shows an “SMS” switch with your customer’s mobile number. It starts off, and you decide again with every change, just like with the email. If you turned it on, the app then confirms that your customer has been notified by SMS.

When you close a job

When you tap “Complete” on the job, the “Close job” sheet opens. Under “Notify the customer”, the “SMS” row sits next to “Email” and “WhatsApp”, each with its own switch. It appears under the same condition as for a status change. “Complete and notify” sends the SMS together with the other messages you switched on. The app remembers your choice on this phone, so the switches are already set for the next job.

A single SMS from the chat

Sometimes none of the automatic SMS fits, for example when you want to ask your customer to call you back. Then you write them a short SMS straight from the job. You do this from the “Communication” row on the job. It’s included in the RepairCMS Business, Team and Enterprise plans and in the 14-day trial.

1. Open the job and tap the “Communication” row below “Customer”.
2. In the chat, tap the round button with three dots at the top right. “Contact options” slides up from the bottom.
3. Tap “Send SMS · Via seven.io, lands in chat”.

4. The “Send SMS” sheet shows your customer’s mobile number at the top with “· via seven.io”. Tap one of the three templates, such as “Ready for collection” or “Please call back”, or type your own text into the “Short message to the customer” field. The counter shows how many of the 160 characters of one SMS you’ve used.
5. Tap “Send SMS”. The app shows “SMS sent”.

The note “They cannot reply to it” in the sheet means that no reply comes back into the chat. If you picked your business number as the sender ID, your customer can still reply, and the reply goes to the phone with that number.

In the job chat, the SMS then shows up as a green bubble “SMS to …”. That way everyone on your team can see what your customer received without having to ask.

One account, one log for the app and the web

Whether you send the SMS from your phone or your computer, it goes through your seven.io account, and seven.io bills it directly to you. On the web, every SMS is listed in the “Logs” tab of the SMS app, with its result and, if it didn’t go out, the reason. If you switch an event off on the web, the matching switch disappears from the app as well. That way your whole workshop has one place that decides when your customers get an SMS.