Hello jones.eth,

as far as I know, deactivation is not possible. Maybe you can use a standard reply with a link to your chat system? Then the guests end up where you want them. It´s not nice, but a way...

Best wishes 

Leif

Hey Leif,

thanks for your reply. It just seems like there is no real solution for that in Mews. In our boarding no one mentioned that system really and none of our users had the “receive guest messages” option active. They just said that that isn’t necessary. So in our first days with Mews the messages our guests sent us just got lost in the system.

I hope Mews are updating this to allow better message handling or at least allow us to disable that until it is usable in these kind of scenarios. For now i am removing the chat button in the mails and hope that it doesn’t get used that much.

@jones.eth i think @Olivia.Dingreville is the one who can answer that best. I am certain that also MEWS is looking to support ‘us’ hoteliers best - its actually quite the nuisance in some of my hotels also, where others find it a good addon to the portal. Have the poss to create some standard responses would also be a nice feature, as i am sure some hotels will not be able to reply quickly and would want to send guests to there unified inbox with a third party anyways. 

Can someone tell me how you use the message system right now?

In our case we have the “receive guest message” option enabled for all users in the office (because everyone of them should be able to answer these messages). The problem is that when a guest creates a message the whole team gets a notification and even if the message thread is solved by one of our users the noticifaction stays for everyone else. Even worse is that everyone gets an notification when someone of our team is answering the guest.

The problem in this scenario is that either all users have look into that thread or users start to ignore these notifications and just click “all read”.

hi. we basically only turn on only for receptionists. and make it their responsibility to ensure all is answered by end of shift. office staff is not getting these messages.. so just a few people having these notifications indeed but still a nuisance at times

We do it that way too.

Yeah sorry i meant receptionists with office. The problem i described is still the same: everyone gets a notification in that case.

So you go with the everyone should look into each message approach?

im afraid so :)

Well in this case it seems we do the right thing . I hope this feature get some love soon. I think not much is needed to make this a lot better.

@jones.eth @mauritsbots  thank you for looping me in this conversation. 

Indeed as part of revamping the guest portal, we want to look into revisiting the chat functionality. We are still early in the process so haven’t landed on a solution yet. Some of the things we want to explore: making the chat smarter to handle the most common questions with less time needed from the staff, better integration with other chat solutions in place. 

Overall we feel like there is value in giving guests an easy to communicate with the staff but we also understand the current set-up can create some operational challenges. 

If that’s ok I will keep your contact so that we may reach out for a more in-depth conversation when we have more to share.

Hey Olivia,

great to hear that you are looking into improving that functionality.

I agree that an easy way for guests to get in touch is fantastic, although as the feature currently stands I would prefer to disable chat completely.

The biggest problem is that the way the assignment is currently running in the threads, a lot of employees get notifications. The fact that you can't clearly see the status of a chat is also a problem.

Feel free to conact me if i can help bring that feature forward in any way.

Hi Olivia,

nice to hear that you are going to develop this issue.

Without being asked ;-) some Ideas:
It would definitely be helpful to use different text modules, designed by each hotel so that standard questions can be answered quickly.

In addition, guests' messages should be able to signed as resolved or in progress so that all employees have a quick overview. Colors could help here. Resolved messages should be removed from the notifications.

It would be great if you could forward the messages to specific employees who should take care of them. like with the tasks. 

Best regards

Leif

Thank you for sharing your thoughts - this is helpful!

@Leif Penning @Leif Penning i think forwarding – or assigning – messages would be great. Even to yourself. If assigned the notifications should be removed for all users that are not involved any longer … maybe there should be a differentiation between new messages that you are assigned to and new messages in general. So the “answer guest messages” does not assign you but just inform you that there is a unassigned guest message and then you can assign yourself or others … ‍♂️

Exactly, the assignment should not be automatic, but it should be an option for the employee who opens the message first. This way you can distribute the tasks among the employees. That´s good for shift handover, trainees, or just to structure the shift/day.