Text Advertising - Doing it the Right Way

As several of our customers have found out in the past, we did not offer an option in the program to send text message advertisements. This blog post will explain why that was as well as detail how we’ve chosen to implement a text advertising feature that is easy to use while still meeting all of the legal requirements that go along with text advertising.

Our story starts back in 1991 when the US government passed the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (or TCPA). While originally intended to apply to automatic dialing systems, the Ninth Circuit held that the TCPA applies to unsolicited cellular telephone text messages as well.  So what does this mean? This means that unless you get express, documented consent from a customer then you can not legally send them text advertising. While texts of an informational nature are protected by existing business relations (for example, texts notifying someone of their appointment time) any text that could be construed as an advertisement requires customer consent.

You may think, “But my customers aren’t going to complain…and even if they do it’s no big deal, right?”. Definitely not right! There have been a few companies that made that mistake and paid in a big way. Papa John’s Pizza was approached by an advertising company that didn’t know the law and offered the opportunity to increase their sales through text advertising to everyone that had called to order pizza. Their final bill once they reached a settlement? $16.5 million. Before that, Jiffy Lube had an even larger bill – $43 million!

Digging into the details on both of these you find the same two problems – a lack of understanding of the laws that cover proper usage of text messaging and a lack of respect for their customer’s wishes. No one likes to get unwanted messages and our laws back up those wishes. That said, navigating those laws and implementing a policy that ensures you don’t run into the same type of expensive problems I mentioned earlier can be difficult and take time away from where you’d rather spend it – with your customers!

We understand that our salons don’t spend their time researching telecom laws and best practices and wanted to make sure that we didn’t add a feature to the program that could get our customers in trouble with their customers or even worse yet, get sued for misusing text messaging. For a long time we chose not to allow text messaging as we didn’t want to open salons up to the risk nor require them to put expensive policies in place to ensure they followed the letter of the law.

That all changes now though! We’ve come up with a well designed system that removes most of the compliance work from the salon’s plate, ensures that customers don’t receive unwanted text messages, and allows you to follow the letter of the law without having to know what that law says!

So on to the details of this new feature. Our Text Message Advertising program works with the Customer Online Booking that many of our salons already use. Because of the limitations of the ways that customer records can be handled it does require the Customer Online Booking to operate.

For customers using one of our business’ online booking pages opting in and out of receiving text messages is as easy as logging into their account and clicking two links to get to the opt in screen! There they can see the information about the text advertising program, read privacy and terms of services pages customized to your business, and opt in or out of receiving both text confirmations and text advertisements. In addition, if you don’t already have the customer’s cell phone number and text carrier they’ll be prompted to enter it then.

Once a customer has opted in to the text advertising, they will receive text messages whenever the salon clicks on the “Send Text Message to All Customers” or “Send Text Message to Specific Customers” buttons (in the latter case only if they’re one of the specific customers selected). When you can use these buttons are governed by the agreement the customer signs on to originally and the laws. This means that if you’ve already sent out two text messages that week the program will make you wait until a week has past since the first one before allowing you to send out another. In addition, the program will stop you from sending out text messages before 8am or after 9pm.

Lastly, there’s a new section under Customer Display / Check In that allows you to opt customers out of the text advertising program. This is very important as customers can text the word STOP as a reply to your text messaging and legally you are required to immediately opt them out of the program. This is the one part that does require involvement on our business’ end of things. First, it’s very important that there’s always someone working at the business whose job includes checking replies from customer emails sent out through our program. If someone receives one of these STOP messages the message will include the customer’s cell phone number in the address. You can pull the customer up by this phone number by going to Customer Display and typing the phone number in the following format: (###) ###-####. That’s the area code in parenthesis, a space, and then the last 7 digits of the number with a dash in the middle. Type their number in that format, hit the Enter key on the keyboard, and a list of matching customers will show up in the white box below. Once you pull up the customer, you should click the button right beneath the cell phone number area to opt them out of the program, and then either click No for text messages or change their carrier to No Text Messages. Customers may also text the word HELP to you – in that case you should text them back your business’ contact information so they can reach out to you for further information.

That’s it! We’ve taken care of all the other worries for you. As long as you make sure to take care of the STOP and HELP requests from customers the program takes care of all the other legal concerns for you and makes it possible for you to reach your customers in a new way without worrying about the legal and technical details. Because of the setup involved this feature must be turned on with our support team after we ensure everything is in place for you to use the text advertising program. Please contact support to get started.

New Feature - Calendar Updates

We've made an exciting addition to all of our emails that update customers about their appointments. Now, each of your booking, confirmation, and find appointment emails will include a calendar .ics file. For your customers that have a calendar set up on their computer or phone, they can click on this file attached to the email and have the information about their appointment automatically added to their calendar.

Click here for more information on .ics files and as always if you have any questions don't hesitate to contact tech support.

New Feature - Scheduled Emails

We've added an exciting new feature to our existing Email Program - Scheduled Emails! Have an email you want to make sure goes out next week? Have that special event coming up that you want to make sure your customers remember? Scheduled Emails are for you!

Setting up Scheduled Emails is almost as easy as sending emails out immediately. Just go to the Send E-mail button at the top of the screen and then choose Add Scheduled Email on the right side. Once there you just need to pick a date to send the email, a subject, as well as optionally selecting employees, dates, and all/new/existing customers. Then click Create Message to open the familiar Email screen, create your email, and click Save. It's that easy!

Once your Scheduled Email is created you're done - the email will automatically be sent out in the early morning of the selected date. If you need to make any changes you can get back to a list of your Scheduled Emails with the Modify Scheduled Email button. Even better, this list shows all your Scheduled Emails - even the ones that have already been delivered - so if you'd like to send out an old email again it's as easy as picking that one from the list, selecting a new Send Date, and clicking Save.

We hope this new feature helps everyone out and allows you to create your marketing as you have time and deliver the emails when it's best for you. As always, if you have any questions don't hesitate to contact Technical Support.

Premium Online Booking

We've often had requests for new features for the online booking. As we responded to those requests the online booking has grown - from the entire employee access section to new methods for booking groups we've added more and more value to the online booking.

There's been a few requests that we haven't been able to add to the regular online booking due to their complexity and setup requirements. We've now implemented enough of these features that we're offering them as a new option - Premium Online Booking.

Premium Online Booking includes all the great features of our regular Online Booking as well as the following new options:

• Full Tech Card Viewing - We now have support for showing your technical card information in the Employee Access section. As always, you can choose whether to allow this on an employee-by-employee basis as well as whether you want to turn this on for the salon or not. With this feature turned on the technical cards that show up on your work tickets will also show up when you click a customer's name on your schedule. You can also choose how many past cards you'd like to show, whether that's just the last card or as many as possible!
• Time Card Access - We've also added the ability to have employees clock in and out through their mobile apps. Depending on the setup of your salon's internet and WiFi setup it could be possible to limit this to only be accessible when the device is connected to the salon's WiFi which means the employees could only use it to clock in when they were on site. If you're interested in this feature don't hesitate to contact us for help in determining if your network and internet can support the on-site only portion of this feature.
• Custom Online Booking Links - Normally we set up a single customer booking and employee access link for each salon but sometimes that's not enough. Many times booth rent employees would like a link for just their customers to use. Sometimes a salon might want to have a separate online booking link for their mobile device users so that they can customize the appearance for smaller displays. Whatever the reason you need it, we now offer the ability to create additional online booking links that are customized for your needs! Each one of these links can have its own settings so you can have only certain employees show, only certain services, change the color scheme, or change any other settings in the online booking.

All of these features are available for an additional $25 / month - call us today to get started!

EMV Chip Card Update

As I mentioned in a blog post last fall we had gotten our program ready to support the EMV chip credit card readers. We've been steering our customers away from them since the beginning since it was clear to us the industry wasn't ready when they tried to roll these out - it seems now that the industry has come to the same realization. The rest of this blog post is an update we just received from our partner that provides our credit card integration, OpenEdge.

New Post from OpenEdge

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EMV Update

We value our partnership with you and strive to keep you informed related to significant updates across the payments landscape. You may have seen recent stories in the news regarding EMV chargeback policy changes. We’re contacting you to provide an update on how these changes affect you and your merchant customers, and what merchants can expect if they have not already upgraded their systems for chip card acceptance.

What’s the Latest on EMV?
The U.S. continues to see a slow rollout and implementation of EMV. We are now well beyond the start date of October 2015, and most merchants at this point realize there was no need to panic. In fact, only 17% of small to medium businesses using an integrated POS have upgraded to EMV.
The card brands have also taken a step back to evaluate the EMV rollout with both Visa and American Express recently modifying their chargeback policies for merchants who are not yet ready to accept chip cards. Those changes include a decision to block all US counterfeit fraud chargebacks under $25, effective July 22, 2016. According to their own research in the U.S., American Express discovered that 40% of counterfeit fraud chargebacks occur on transactions that are below the $25 threshold.

In addition, beginning October 2016, VISA and American Express issuers will be limited to charging back 10 fraudulent counterfeit transactions per merchant account, and will assume liability for all fraudulent transactions after the limit has been reached on an account. Both of these changes will remain in effect until April 2018. These changes to the EMV chargeback policies are designed to give merchants more time to upgrade their systems for chip cards while limiting merchant fraud losses.
Specific to the verticals that OpenEdge serves, we see low to moderate chargeback risk, with extremely low numbers of chargebacks reported. In fact, over the entire OpenEdge portfolio, only 0.005% of sales volume has been reported as EMV chargebacks.

What Does This Mean to Merchants?

This is good news for your customers. These changes give merchants more time to update their systems for EMV while reducing excessive chargebacks. Please note that there is no action required by your customers related to the updated EMV chargeback policies from Visa and American Express. The changes will be implemented automatically – no intervention is required.

Beyond the new chargeback policies, several of the card brands are also working on resolving another merchant EMV concern – the time it takes to approve a chip transaction. Visa and American Express are both working on technology to speed up transaction times. Visa has introduced Quick Chip for EMV which allows consumers to remove their card from payment terminals before the transaction amount is finalized or before the authorization response has been received.  American Express recently announced the launch of Quick Chip, a service designed to provide a quicker route to process chip card transactions.

Additionally, OpenEdge will continue to leverage our card network partnerships to provide technology that improves the performance and overall customer experience of EMV processing.
We look forward to continuing to serve you and your customers with secure integrated payment solutions.

Please contact us if you have any questions regarding the recent EMV chargeback policies or other topics impacting payment processing.

For more information: https://openedgepayments.com/emv/update.html

Credit Card Updates and EMV

I'm sure the calls have started coming for many of you...salespeople claiming that your credit cards will stop processing soon or that you'll be facing liability on all transactions if you don't switch to their company's card processing. Unfortunately, the upcoming changes to credit card regulations have left the door open to people trying to exploit the uncertainty to make money. Hopefully this post will both set your mind at ease and give you a look at some of the new features that we've made available in our OpenEdge/Accelerated Payments (X-Charge) integration to get businesses ready for EMV and streamline your credit card processing.

To start, as OpenEdge explains in their EMV FAQ, " EMV is a chip technology used globally in place of magnetic stripe. EMV chip technology helps to reduce card fraud in a face-to-face card-present environment, provides global interoperability and enables safer and smarter transactions across contact and contactless channels." Basically, EMV allows more secure credit card transactions that require a card present that's nearly impossible to fake and therefore greatly reduces fraud.

To process EMV transactions you need to have a new EMV-capable credit card swiper. As OpenEdge mentions in the FAQ the liability shift for merchants begins in October 2015. However, this simply means that if a customer presents a credit card that has an EMV chip in it and you choose to swipe it instead of using the new EMV method of processing that any chargebacks would automatically be the business's responsibility instead of the credit card processor. That said, it's exceedingly difficult for a salon or spa to win a chargeback on a regular credit card transaction so the added costs of this liability may be very little compared to the current system. In addition, OpenEdge points out, "Currently, the card networks will be charging the same interchange rates for EMV and non-EMV transactions. OpenEdge has no control over network interchange rates or knowledge of changes in the future."

As it stands now you have a chance of additional liability on chargebacks in a situation where you would have won a dispute if you'd had an EMV reader and no extra charge per transaction whether you process with EMV or not. We leave the decision up to our customer's as to whether they want to use EMV terminals or not but each business should definitely discuss the costs of upgrading to EMV devices with OpenEdge and balance that cost again their comfort level with the added liability. You can read more about OpenEdge's handling of EMV at their EMV web site - don't hesitate to call us with any questions at 937-832-3969 with any questions.

In order to prepare our software for these changes we've made many changes under the hood with our credit card processing and a few changes that you'll notice with the flow of credit card transactions. Our first change - and one of the more important - occurred in our Maintenance area under Computer Info. We've removed the 'Path to Credit Card Software' box and replaced it with a much easier to use 'Credit Card Setup' button. This button will guide you through the setup of your credit card processing on that computer. Very important to note - especially for future versions of X-Charge that will mandate that you change passwords in X-Charge every 90 days - is the ability to set the UserName and Password for X-Charge within this section. This will be required once you've updated to make the X-Charge integration work correctly so everyone will need to set this up even if they're already processing with X-Charge through the program. In addition, the system will ask for your Processing Account (or MID). This is the name that you'll see in X-Charge when you go to Transaction and choose Processing Account. For most businesses already using X-Charge the system will automatically fill this in for you but for new customers or customers with multiple processing accounts for their independent contractors you'll need to get this information from X-Charge. We've tailored the questions in this section to your setup so as long as you have the MID, UserName, and Password for X-Charge the setup in this section should be quick and easy but as always, please contact support with any questions.

The next most noticeable change will be with the flow of processing a sale. In the past, when Spa/Salon Manager processed a credit card sale there was no interaction with X-Charge until you'd swiped the customer's card, printed their authorization receipt, had them sign it and write in their tip amount, entered the tip amount in our program, and clicked Continue. Due to the new PCI and EMV requirements we've moved away from this process. Now, as soon as you've clicked continue on the Check Out screen and the Credit Card form pops up you'll notice X-Charge process the transaction. If you have an EMV device, Pin Pad device, Signature Capture device, or any of the other devices X-Charge offers that interact with customers these devices will then take over the sale and collect their information. If it's just a standard credit card swipe sale X-Charge will prompt you on the screen to swipe the card. This represents a change to the current system but ensures that whatever device you're using X-Charge will be able to take care of the card for you. Once you pass this step you can print your authorization receipt. That receipt will now have added information from the original sale including authorization codes, EMV information, and all other pertinent information to the transaction. Finally, you can add your tip before hitting Continue, when the program will adjust the sale to include the tip.

We're very excited about these changes - they're cleaner and they insure that even if the final processing hits a snag you still get paid for the sale itself as opposed to before where if you handed the card back to the customer before the transaction was complete you ran the chance of having them walk out without paying, and they ensure that whatever changes come in the future with the devices X-Charge offers we'll be able to support them. The last change directly relates to EMV transactions. We'd hoped to offer EMV transactions without changing any functionality in the program but unfortunately the regulations on EMV with OpenEdge's processors does require a couple changes. Specifically, those processors do not allow EMV transactions to be adjusted which has a couple effects on our software. First, for any customers that choose to use EMV devices their sales will no longer run as a Purchase and then Adjustment. Instead they would run as what's called a Pre-Auth and then a Force. This means that one benefit we got from the new updates - the fact that if there's a problem with the final processing of the card you're still guaranteed to receive payment for the non-tip portion of the sales - goes away for customers using EMV. The second and larger issue is that since we're prevented from adjusting EMV transactions you would no longer be able to change the amount on a credit card payment through Correction. The only method for changing a payment on a credit card transaction for businesses using EMV terminals would be to Void the transaction, contact the customer for the card information, and then re-run the sale. Please keep these limitations in mind when weighing the pro's and con's of utilizing an EMV device.

Some of our Cloud customers are already running the new version of the credit card processing and we should have all Cloud customers on the new version by October. For our customers using the installed version that would like to prepare their software for EMV, please contact technical support to plan your upgrade.

Fixing App Access on a new iPhone

With many of our customers upgrading to the new iPhone 6 I felt it was important to provide some information on how to upgrade our App on your phone in case it doesn’t automatically work. I’ve included a guide below to help fix the Notification settings for our app on the iPhone and get back into your App. As always, don’t hesitate to contact support with any questions.