Choosing How Customer Reminders Are Sent

Summary

Every customer reminder (MOT due, service due, and so on) is sent on exactly one channel: email, SMS, WhatsApp, or browser push. Torqueflow picks the channel by walking a fixed preference ladder, skipping any channel that is unavailable or that the customer has declined. This article explains the ladder, the organisation-wide defaults page, the per-customer preferences card, and the WhatsApp template registry.

Prerequisites

• You have the settings.communication.manage capability (Owner and Manager roles) to edit organisation defaults.
• You have the customers.consent.manage capability to edit a customer’s preferences. Viewing them needs only customers.view.
• For WhatsApp reminders, your WhatsApp channel is connected and you have the settings.whatsapp.manage capability.

Steps

Understand how the channel is chosen

For each reminder, Torqueflow walks this ladder and uses the first channel that works:

1. The customer’s override for that specific reminder type (if set).
2. The customer’s default channel (if set).
3. The reminder rule’s own default channel.
4. Your organisation’s default for that reminder type.
5. The built-in fallback order: email, then SMS, then WhatsApp, then browser push.

At each step, the channel must be both usable and permitted. A channel is skipped when the customer has declined it, when the contact details are missing (no email address, no mobile number), when WhatsApp has no approved template for that reminder type and language, or when the customer has no active browser push subscription.

Set organisation defaults

1. Navigate to Settings > Communication > Reminders.
2. The channel defaults section at the top lists each reminder type (MOT due, service due, and so on) with its default channel and an Enabled toggle.
3. Pick the default channel per reminder type. This applies wherever no customer-level preference takes precedence.
4. The Enabled toggle is the kill switch for that reminder type across your whole organisation. Switching it off stops all future sends of that type.
5. When you switch a type off, a banner shows how many reminders of that type are currently in flight. In-flight reminders can take several hours to drain, so a few may still go out after you toggle. The toggle itself is recorded in the consent audit log.

Set preferences for a single customer

1. Open the customer’s detail page at /customers/[id].
2. Find the Reminder preferences card, next to the existing consent card.
3. The card shows a grid of channels (email, SMS, WhatsApp) against the two message classes: service reminders and marketing. Toggle any combination on or off.
4. Use the Default channel dropdown to set the customer’s preferred channel for all reminders. Leave it unset to fall through to your organisation defaults.
5. Expand the per-type overrides section to pin a specific reminder type to a specific channel for this customer (for example, MOT reminders by SMS even though everything else goes by email).
6. Every change is recorded in the consent audit log with who changed it and when.

Register WhatsApp reminder templates

WhatsApp requires reminder messages to use a pre-approved template. Until a template is registered for a reminder type and language, WhatsApp reminders of that type fall back to SMS automatically.

1. Navigate to Settings > WhatsApp.
2. Find the template registry card below the connection details.
3. The grid shows reminder types against languages. In each cell, enter the approved template ID (it starts with “HX”) and optionally record the approval date.
4. Use Reset on a cell to clear it. Every save is recorded in the audit log.

Let customers manage their own preferences

Customers can manage the same channel and class toggles themselves from the customer portal, including enabling browser push notifications. See Customer reminder preferences in the portal.

Expected Outcome

• Each reminder goes out on one sensible channel without staff picking per message.
• Organisation defaults cover the common case; per-customer settings handle exceptions.
• WhatsApp reminders send only when an approved template exists, and fall back to SMS cleanly when one does not.

Troubleshooting

Problem: A reminder went by SMS even though the customer’s default is WhatsApp. Cause: No approved WhatsApp template is registered for that reminder type and the customer’s language, or the customer has declined WhatsApp. Fix: Check the template registry under Settings > WhatsApp and the customer’s reminder preferences card.

Problem: I switched a reminder type off but a customer still received one a few hours later. Cause: Reminders already in flight when you toggled continue to drain for up to several hours. Fix: None needed. No new reminders of that type are scheduled after the toggle.

Problem: A customer is not receiving any reminders at all. Cause: Every channel on the ladder is either declined or unusable for them (no email address, no mobile number, no template, no push subscription). Fix: Open their reminder preferences card. Check at least one enabled channel has working contact details.

Permissions

Action	Required capability
Edit organisation channel defaults and kill switches	settings.communication.manage
View a customer’s reminder preferences	customers.view
Edit a customer’s reminder preferences	customers.consent.manage
Manage the WhatsApp template registry	settings.whatsapp.manage

Notes

• When a customer messages you on WhatsApp, Torqueflow records that as permission to send them service messages on WhatsApp. Marketing always remains an explicit opt-in.
• Browser push only counts as available once the customer has enabled it on at least one device from their portal.
• Reminder wording is edited separately. For MOT reminders see Automatic MOT reminders.