Automated SMS notifications for customers

[jjcastillot]

Hello people, currently we operate an e-commerce here in Colombia and we want to automatically send SMS to customers when there's an update on their orders.

The thing is, once a customer confirm a purchase, there is an option to request updates via SMS, but the customer must check this option; if customers don't check it, they only receive updates via e-mail. The thing is, some customers don't check their e-mails all the time, so sometimes they don't notice when their orders are shipped, updated, etc.

Is there any way to ALWAYS send SMS updates to the mobile phone customers register? Or they have to check the SMS update option to use this feature? Do you know other method to send order updates, WhatsApp for example?

Thanks a lot for your help and supoort.

[pvoulg]

Hi @jjcastillot,

First up, you can let your customers checkout using either their phone or their email address (if you haven't already). You can choose that option by going to Settings > Checkout: 

This usually encourages customers who don't really use their email, to checkout using their phone number (in which case they will only be getting SMS notifications).

If you have already done that, one option that I've seen merchants use is adding the customer's phone number on the contact details manually (this can be done from inside the order directly). I cannot personally recommend that option, just on the grounds that this might not be permitted everywhere around the world (eg. in the EU, GDPR would require to contact the user on their preferred channel—so if they chose email you must use that), so I don't have any knowledge of whether that could be an issue in Colombia.