You can communicate with your customers through Collins by sending them emails with important information. To send an email:

• Click into the customer enquiry/booking
• Click on the Messages tab
• Select “Compose Email”. This will take you to your emailing module.

Starting from the top of the screen;

> ‘Reply to’ - This will be pre-filled with the email set up in your Emails & texts section of the Settings. If you would like the customer to reply to a different inbox than the one that the system has been set up with, for example, if you are going on holiday and want someone else to pick up the emails while you are away, you can remove it and type another one here.

> ‘CC’ - You can add the email address of anyone else you wish to include in the email, for example, another member of staff or a friend of the customer. If you would like to add multiple email addresses, you can separate them with a comma and space.

> Then select the ‘Type of Email’ -

• Confirmation - Selecting this option pulls through a confirmation template to send to the customer. If you choose to include the booking summary, it will also pull through all the details of the booking, including; date, time, until time, packages and pre-orders, deposits paid.
• Cancellation - This option pulls through a cancellation template, so you can confirm the cancellation of a booking.
• General - General is a blank template for to use as you wish. The subject of the email is ‘Your Booking Enquiry at VENUE NAME - DMN-XXXXXX’ This is mostly used to send fully booked emails, to request a deposit from the customer in order for them to secure their booking, to send initial private hire information etc.

> Include booking summary - This box is ticked by default and will pull through the general Booking Details, any Pre-orders, Dietary Requirements, Pre-order Comments, Minimum Spends and Payments taken at the end of the email, however, if you would like these booking details omitted from the message, untick this box

> Include customer requests - If a customer has made any special requests, they will be omitted from the confirmation email if unticked. See here for more info.

> ‘Attachments’ - Here you can choose from the attachments that have been pre-uploaded into your admin or upload an attachment straight from the laptop you are using.

> 'Pre-Defined Messages' - This time-saver tool allows you to pull through your Pre-defined Message templates set up in settings. If a template is chosen, it will auto-populate into the text box, where it can be edited and additional text can be added.

Before sending the email you can ‘Preview’ the message and then once happy with the email select ‘Send’.  If a guest then replies to the email, all replies will be going to the email address set up in the Emails and Texts section of the Settings.

Once an email has been sent, you can see a Message History of all emails:

USEFUL - We also have an extra bolt-on called Collins Mail that will allow for customer replies come back into Collins. See more it here and if interested please contact your account manager or collins-support@designmynight.com