Messaging customers
Sender numbers
Texts and calls reach your customers from Queue Join’s own phone numbers — one in the UK, one in the US. Which one affects how much a message costs, whether it arrives at all, and whether the customer recognises it enough to read it. There is nothing to set up: it is chosen for every customer automatically.
How the number is chosen
From the customer’s own phone number. A customer with a US or Canadian number hears from the US number; everybody else hears from the UK one. There is nothing to set, and nothing that can override it.
This routes on the customer, not on where your shop is. It is the receiving network that decides whether a message looks legitimate, and a customer in one country receiving a number from another is both dearer to send to and much more likely to be filtered out before it ever reaches the handset. Calls are the sharpest case: a call into the UK from an overseas number costs many times a local one. So a tourist at a UK shop who joins with their American phone is texted and called from the US number — the cheapest, most reliable way to reach them.
See which numbers your customers will see under Account settingsSender numbers.
STOP, and what happens next
A customer can reply STOP to any text, or ask to stop in their own words — “please stop texting me”, “wrong number”. Neither is a request you get to weigh up: it is recorded against them and messages stop.
What STOP does and does not do
- Stops messages to that person, marketing and transactional alike.
- Applies to the person, not to one visit.
- Is recorded on their customer record, so your team can see why nothing is reaching them.
- Is separate from withdrawing marketing consent, which stops campaigns and leaves their own visit updates alone.
When a customer asks your team
If someone asks your team not to message them — at the counter, on the phone or by email — press Stop messaging on their customer record or their visit. It stops every message from your business to them, marketing included, and is recorded in the audit log. Unlike STOP, it applies to your business only.
If it was a mistake, Resume messages undoes it. An opt-out the customer made themselves can only be undone by them, by replying START.
Needs the permission customers.opt_out (opt customers out of messages). Owners and Admins have every permission by default.
Somebody who has opted out cannot be called by text
If a regular has opted out and then joins the queue, they will not get told when it is their turn. Your team needs to call them the old way. There is no override for an opt-out they made themselves, and asking them to opt back in is the only fix.
Nobody reads other replies
STOP, START, HELP and other ways of asking to stop are the only replies that do anything. A customer who texts back “running ten minutes late” reaches nobody: the reply is not shown to your team and is not kept. If you want customers to be able to get in touch, give them your phone number.
Getting your messages delivered
Networks — American ones in particular — filter business messaging heavily, and getting through depends on being registered and on your sign-up page showing certain things. Those disclosures are already built into your join and booking forms and published on a public evidence page, which is what a network reviewer looks at.
- The phone number field on the form itself.
- A consent tick box that is never pre-ticked.
- A description of what you will send, and how often.
- The standard message-and-data-rates note.
- HELP and STOP instructions.
- Links to the terms, the privacy policy and the SMS policy.
The same three links also appear on the waitlist status page and the booking confirmation page — the pages the links in your texts open — so a reviewer who follows one still finds the policies.
There are two ways a customer opts in, and a registration form will ask you to tick both: on the web form, reached by QR code or a link, where they type their own number under the disclosure; and verbally, at a busy counter, where they give a member of staff the number and are told what will be sent before it is entered. Both are described on the public evidence page at /sms-opt-in, which is the URL to give a reviewer.
Do not reword the opt-in disclosures
The wording is shared between your forms, your printed materials and the public evidence page precisely so they cannot drift apart — a screenshot that disagrees with the live page even slightly is how registrations get rejected. Your own marketing consent wording is separate and yours to write.
If you have customers in the United States
American business messaging requires a registered campaign before delivery becomes reliable, and registration is reviewed by the carriers rather than granted automatically. Until it is approved, delivery to American numbers is patchy in a way that is not a fault in your setup.
Elsewhere — the UK, Ireland, most of Europe — no equivalent registration is needed and messages deliver normally.
Rich messages and WhatsApp
Customers texted from the UK number — everyone outside North America — get a rich RCS message where their phone and network support it. It arrives from Queue Join’s RCS business profile rather than from a phone number, and where RCS isn’t available the same message arrives as an ordinary text from the UK number instead. You do not choose per customer, and it is always one message, never both. Customers with a US or Canadian number always get a plain SMS from the US number.
Every text opens with your business name, so whichever of these it arrives from, the customer knows who it is from.
WhatsApp messages come from Queue Join’s own WhatsApp business account on the UK number. There is nothing for you to register or verify. The US number has no WhatsApp, so customers with a US or Canadian number get their text straight away instead. Marketing campaigns don’t use WhatsApp at all: they go by push, email or text.