Home → Arctic Reservations → Evaluations → Sending Evaluation Requests to Your Guests
7.5. Sending Evaluation Requests to Your Guests
Now that we have discussed how to create evaluations and how to assign them to your trip types and rental business groups, let's discuss how you actually send your guests a request to complete their evaluations.
To send your guest an evaluation request, you must create an evaluation email template that is triggered to go out after the guests reservation or rental is completed. You can set up a general evaluation email template in the System-Wide Settings business group or you can create more specific requests for each business group you have. If you want to request evaluations from both your reservation guests as well as your rental guests, you will need to set up a separate evaluation email template for each type of evaluation you wish to request; one that uses an "After Trip" trigger and one that uses an "After Rental" trigger. If you have packages that include reservations and rentals, multiple reservations, or multiple rentals, you will want to set up an evaluation email template with an "After Package" trigger for your package guests.
To set up a "triggered" evaluation email template, go to the "Email" menu and choose "Templates". This will take you to the "Browse Email Templates" page. If you are just going to create a single evaluation email template for each type of evaluation you want to request, you can create them in the System-Wide Settings business group. If you are going to create business group specific evaluation email templates, you will want to select the appropriate business group from the "Business Group" drop down menu at the top of the page.
Once you have loaded the appropriate business group, whether that is the System-Wide Settings business group or another more specific business group, scroll to the bottom of the page and click the green "+ Add Trigger" button and choose either "After Trip", "After Rental" or "After Package". This will tell Arctic that you want the email to go out after one of these three events.
Once you make your trigger selection, Arctic will take you to the "Create New Template" page. Here, you will create your email template just like you have all of your other email templates. You will be able to pull in specific trip, package or rental information by using the "Placeholder" menu. (Note: the selections available will be based on the trigger you chose i.e. "After Trip", "After Rental" or "After Package").
To insert the evaluation links, you will choose "Activity > Evaluation URL" from the "Placeholder" menu as shown here:
Arctic will use this placeholder to insert a personalized link for your guests that will take them to the appropriate evaluation. If your guest is getting this link from the "After Package" trigger, the link will be for the Evaluation Form associated with the last activity in their package whether it was a rental or reservation. This will keep the guest from having to complete multiple evaluations.
After you have completed the "Content" section of the "Create a New Email Template" page, you will be ready to enter the "Trigger Settings". These settings tell Arctic how you want it to handle the emails generated by this trigger.
In the first field, the "Store In Outbox" field, you will tell Arctic whether you want it to store the emails generated by the trigger in the outbox. You can choose "No, Send Immediately" or "Yes, Store in Outbox for Manual Review". It is recommend, when setting up a new trigger initially that you choose "Yes, Store in Outbox for Manual Review" to be sure the trigger is working the way you want it to. Once you are certain the trigger is configured how you wish, then you can edit this setting to be "No, Send Immediately" and Arctic will send the emails as they are generated by the trigger.
Next, in the "Send After" field, you will tell Arctic when to send the trigger. You will enter a number of days after the activity ends. It is recommended that you set your trigger to be between 2 and 3 days after the activity is completed for multi-day activities and 1 day after the activity is completed for day trip activities. This will ensure the email gets to your guests shortly after they arrive home and the details are still fresh in their minds but not in the midst of all of the other email they may have to catch up on after their vacation. Setting the triggers this way will make it more likely your guests will take the time to complete the evaluation.
If you are setting up an "After Trip" email trigger, in the "Email Primary Guests Only" field, you will tell Arctic if you want to send the trigger to only Primary Guests or to all guests. This field only applies to "After Trip" email triggers and allows you to restrict sending the email to just the primary customer if you prefer.
Finally, in the "If part of a package" field, you will be able to tell Arctic what to do if your guest's activities were part of a package. Arctic only considers guests who have multiple activities booked that match an existing "Package Definition" in your system. If your guest has multiple activities on a single invoice but the activities on the invoice are not part of one of your "Package Definitions", Arctic will trigger emails for each activity on their invoice. For example, if your guest booked four activities that are all on the same invoice, Arctic will send them four evaluation requests. Your guest can choose to complete them all or to complete just 1 or none at their discretion. If it is a regular occurrence for your guests to have more than 2 activities on a single invoice, setting the "Store In Outbox" to "Yes, Store in Outbox for Manual Review" is recommended. This will allow you to reduce the number of triggered evaluation requests your multi-activity guests will receive. Sending more than one or two evaluation requests can overwhelm and annoy guests. It is best to cull the triggered evaluation requests down to only one evaluation request as it is more likely your guests will take the time to answer one evaluation and will not be annoyed with having received multiple evaluation requests.
If you are using the Package Feature and are going to set up an "After Package" trigger evaluation email template, you should select "Do Not Send" for the "If part of a package" field. This will ensure that your guest only gets a single evaluation request. If you are using the Package Feature but are not going to set up an "After Package" trigger, you can choose to send the evaluation request, for the first activity in the package, for the last activity in the package or you can also choose "Still Send", in which case Arctic will send a separate evaluation request for each activity your guest booked. Again if you are going to use this setting, it is recommended that you set your "Store In Outbox" field to "Yes, Store in Outbox for Manual Review" so that you can cull down the number of evaluation requests any single guest will receive which will increase the chances that your guests will take the time to complete the evaluation.