It is four o’clock on Saturday and the book says twelve tables tonight. You know most of them will come. You just do not know which ones will not.
Every restaurant takes that bit of doubt into service. A guest booked three weeks ago, life moved on, and the first you hear of it is an empty table at eight. Most no-shows are not rude. They are forgotten.
Until now, the only reminder NomNom sent was a text message. Text reminders work and they are cheap, but they are not free, so plenty of venues never switched them on and most of their guests were never reminded at all. So we have built a reminder that costs you nothing.
A reminder email, and one button that matters
Switch it on and each guest gets an email before their visit, under your restaurant’s name: the date, the time, how many are coming, and a big green I’m coming button.
One tap opens a short page with the booking on it and a single button, Yes, I’m coming. That is all. No account, no password, nothing to download.
The same email offers Change my booking and Cancel my booking, with a gentle line in between: Can no longer make it? Cancelling lets someone else have the table. A guest who was going to quietly not turn up now has an easy, polite way to tell you, while there is still time to give the table to somebody else.
A tick on the booking
When a guest confirms, a green tick appears on their booking: in your bookings list, on the booking itself, and in the phone app. Hover over it in NomNom Web and it says Guest confirmed they’re coming.
So at four o’clock on Saturday, twelve tables are no longer twelve question marks. Nine of them have told you they are coming. If one of the other three is a table of eight, you know who to ring.
Why the extra tap?
You might notice the button in the email opens a page rather than confirming on the spot. That is on purpose. Many email systems open every link in a message to check it is safe, often before the guest has read a word. If the button confirmed straight away, those checks would tick bookings on the guest’s behalf, and a tick you cannot trust is worse than no tick at all.
We learned that lesson this summer with review emails. A confirmation only counts when a real person presses the button.
Sensible about timing
- You choose when it goes: 24 hours, 48 hours or 3 days before the booking.
- Never in the middle of the night. Reminders go out between 8am and 10pm your time. One that falls due overnight waits for the morning.
- Never at the last minute. Nobody is reminded within two hours of their table.
- No doubling up. A guest who books, or moves their booking, after the reminder would have gone has only just had their confirmation email, so they do not get a reminder as well.
- A moved booking starts again. Move a booking and its tick is cleared and its reminder starts afresh, so a tick always means the guest has confirmed the date and time they are actually booked for.
- Change and Cancel only appear when they work. They follow your existing cancellation and amendment settings, so a guest is never offered a button that leads nowhere.
- Walk-ins and bookings with no email address are left out. A reminder is never sent to you instead.
What it does not do
- It never changes a booking’s status. Your statuses are your own. The tick sits alongside them.
- It does not cancel anyone who stays quiet. Plenty of guests will read the email, smile and simply turn up. No tick is not a no. It is just no news.
- It does not replace text reminders. If you already send them, keep them. Some guests live in their texts and others in their inbox, and the two sit happily side by side. (If you are weighing up texts, here is why SMS reminders pay for themselves.)
Setting it up
The reminder email is off until you switch it on. In NomNom Web, open Settings, then Email Settings, and choose the Reminder tab. In the phone app it is in the same place, under Settings → Email Settings.
Turn on Send reminder email, choose when it should go, and that is it. There is no charge for the emails, however many bookings you take.
Ready when you are
The reminder email is free for every NomNom venue. Switch it on this week and see how many ticks are waiting for you on Saturday afternoon. And if you would like a hand setting it up, get in touch. We are always happy to help.