Enhance your customer communication and provide a more personalised experience by setting up smart customer communications directly from your NowGo dashboard. This feature allows you to send tailored messages to your customers at key stages of their delivery, keeping them informed and engaged.
This article discusses how to set up smart customer communications, including composing personalised messages, and selecting trigger events for notifications. For detailed information about the possible variables available for customising communications, see the dynamic information article.
Create a communications plan
Create your communications plan in the NowGo dashboard. Select the events that trigger each message, configure how notifications are sent, and customise the tracking page with your logo.
Creating a communications plan
In the NowGo dashboard, click your username and select Settings.
In the Settings screen, navigate to Customer communications → Communications plans.
Click Create new plan.
In the General settings tab, configure these settings:
In the Name field, type a name for your communications plan.
Optional: In the External reference section, type a reference value. For more information about external references, see the NowGo Developer documentation.
In the Audience section, choose Consignment if messages should be sent based on contact details from individual consignments, or choose Job if messages should be sent based on jobs instead. You can also choose to send communications to the sender or the receiver. Check Use contact details on stop if consignment details are not available to default to the stored contact details.
In the Quiet hours section, set a time period during which no communications are sent. Any messages triggered during this period are stored and sent when the quiet period ends.
In the Branding section, type a URL that leads to the logo you want to use on the custom tracking page.
Click Save changes.
In the Communications & Triggers tab, click Add new communication to create a new message:
In the Name field, type a name for this message.
In the Triggers section, click Add trigger. In the Trigger dropdown, select whether the message is triggered by a workflow completion, or by proximity.
For a workflow completion trigger, select the action that triggers the message, and the outcome of the action. For example, you might want to trigger a message when a pickup is successful, so the action is Pickup and the outcome is Any success.
For a proximity trigger, select the action that triggers the message, and choose whether you want an ETA, distance, or stop rank measure. For ETA, type the number of minutes before the ETA. For distance, type the number of kilometres from the destination. For stop count, choose the number of stops before the destination.
In the Tracking page update, SMS message, and Email message sections, compose and configure the messages. For more information, see the compose messages section of this article.
Optional: In the Advanced section, type a number for the minimum number of minutes to wait between sending messages.
Click Save changes.
Repeat for each message you want to send.
In the Tracking page settings tab, configure these settings:
In the Default copy section, type a default status message and description to use when there is no information about the delivery.
In the Branding section, type a hex code to use as your header colour.
Optional: In the Additional fields and data section, type a journey name to be shown in the browser page title, and any special instructions. You can use custom data to personalise this for each customer. For more information, see the compose messages section of this article.
In the More information links, type URLs for your customers to get more information. You can use custom data to personalise this for each customer. For more information, see the compose messages section of this article.
Click Save changes.
Make sure your communication plan is active by switching the Active toggle on.
Compose custom messages
You can use variables to compose customised messages for your customers, including names, addresses, and times. This section describes how to compose a custom message, using the handlebars notation and custom variables outlined in the the dynamic information article.
There are several fields where you can include custom data to personalise your messages. This table explains each of the fields, and shows common ways of including custom data:
Field | Seen by customers | Example notation | Example content |
Tracking page status | Title card above the map on the tracking page |
| Your delivery from Acme Products is on board. |
Tracking page description | Below the map on the tracking page |
| Our driver has collected your delivery from Acme Products and is on the way. |
SMS body | In text messages |
| 🚚 Your delivery from Acme Products is on the way. Track at https://example.com/customURL. |
Email subject | The subject line in emails |
| 🚚 Your delivery from Acme Products is on the way. |
Email body | The body of an email |
| Hi Alex, Your package from Acme Products is on the way, and expected to arrive at 3:20pm. |
External tracking link | URL that leads to an external tracking page |
| |
More information link | URL on the tracking page for more information |
|
If you choose to send messages based on a consignment, rather than a job, this means that the contact details for your messages are taken from the consignment information, rather than the job information.
If there is no data available, the space is left blank. This is to avoid showing errors or confusing text to your customers.
For HTML elements, you can also use HTML syntax within the message. This is especially useful for formatting email body text.
For a complete list of all the available variables for custom information, see thedynamic information article.
View message history for a job
You can see what messages have gone out to individual customers and jobs, and view the personalised tracking links for each delivery from the dashboard.
Viewing message history
In the NowGo dashboard, click the job you want to see details for.
In the job details popup, click Info to open the Job Information screen.
In the Job information screen, navigate to the Communications tab to get the custom tracking link for this job, and see which messages have been sent. This page also shows any pending messages.
