Approvals and the WhatsApp console

The assistant decides nothing that commits the house. It prepares, then the team approves. This chapter describes everything that waits for a human decision, where to find it, how to respond to it from the app or from WhatsApp, and how to run the concierge service simply by writing to the concierge service's number.

4.1 Three things can be waiting for the team#

The To approve counter on the home screen, the bell and the Bookings entry adds up the open questions and the booking requests that have no question in progress. Held replies have their own counter in the inbox.

Why everything goes through a human. A luxury concierge service lives on its reliability. A villa confirmed by mistake when it is occupied, a made-up price, a cancellation announced without the team knowing: each of these slip-ups costs a client. Vetexis prevents this at the root: a booking can only move to the “Confirmed” status with an identified person (a signed-in member, or the WhatsApp number of a member who pressed Approve). The assistant has no path to this status. And a stay cannot be confirmed on a villa that is already occupied (another confirmed booking, or dates taken on Airbnb, Booking.com or Vrbo): the confirmation is refused, and only a manager can override it (chapter 5, section 5.3).

4.2 Answering a question from the assistant in the app#

Where: Bookings, To approve tab. At the top, the Questions from the assistant section shows a table: Type (Availability, Missing information, Off catalogue, Urgent, Media received, Incident, Quote, with a coloured dot for high priority), Request, Client, Received. A request that has gone unanswered carries the Escalated label.

Click a row: a side panel opens with the full text, the linked booking and the reply area.

1. Optional: write details for the assistant (what it should tell the client).
2. Choose:
   • Yes: the linked booking is confirmed (with you as proof), and the assistant gives the client the good news in their language;
   • No: the linked booking is declined, and the assistant announces it tactfully, offering to look for something else;
   • Yes, but…: enter what changes (“fine but at 22:00”) and, if the question is about a booking, the New date, the New time or the number of People, then Offer the change to the client. The booking is not confirmed: it moves to “Awaiting client”, the change is applied to it (the assigned person and the supplier are notified), and the assistant tells the client “that's fine, but at 22:00 rather than 21:00, does that work for you?”. Without the fields, a time or a number of people written unambiguously in the text (“at 22:00 instead of 21:00”, “for 8 people”) is applied in the same way; if in doubt, nothing changes. When the client accepts, a new request arrives, which you approve;
   • Reply: for what cannot be decided (a media file received, an incident, an emergency, missing information with no booking), it is the only button offered: your reply is passed on to the client, rephrased, without touching any booking. A request that can be decided is settled with Yes, No or Yes, but…;
   • Dismiss: the request leaves the list without anything being sent.

A decision closes all the questions still open on the same booking: a second question does not stay pending only to be escalated.

Before you reply, the panel says what will become of the message to the client, like the decision window on the booking (sent, “reply from the team” template, waiting for the template, assistant paused, no conversation, no number). Afterwards, the notice says what has become of the booking (“Booking confirmed.”, “Request declined.”, “Booking awaiting the client’s approval.”) and then what happened to the message.

Who can reply: owner, managers and concierges. Accounting can read but not decide.

If the assistant is paused on the conversation, or if its general switch is turned off (Settings › Assistant), your decision is recorded (the booking is confirmed or declined) but no message is written or sent to the client: it is up to you to write to them, and both the screen and the console tell you so (“assistant paused: it is up to you to write to the client”).

A reply that could not be sent is not lost. A reply that decided nothing (Reply) and that the assistant could not deliver to the client (pause, incident) stays open in the list (“Nothing reached the client: the request stays open.”), just as from the WhatsApp console.

A decline also notifies the assigned person and the supplier, whether the decision comes from the app, the WhatsApp buttons or the booking: the job given to the supplier is cancelled, and a supplier who replied afterwards would learn that it is too late.

A reply without a decision remains information. If you reply without deciding (a detail: “the chef will use the service entrance”) on a booking that is already confirmed, the assistant passes on your detail, rephrased; it never replaces it with “it's confirmed”.

When the client accepts a proposal. A booking Awaiting client (you have offered them a time slot or a price): when they reply with a short agreement (“Yes perfect”, “ok go”, “vale”), the assistant does not take it for a simple acknowledgement. It creates a request linked to the booking (“Marc accepts proposal #12: … Confirm?”) and replies to the client with an honest message (“Perfect, noted. I'll get back to you very soon with the confirmation”), never “it's confirmed”. Approve (or Yes) then confirms the booking and the assistant gives the good news. A longer reply, or one that changes something (“yes but at 21:00”), goes through the assistant like an ordinary message. If the client accepts twice, only one request is created.

When a request is updated. If the client corrects a request that is still “Requested” (“there will be 10 of us after all”, other dates), the booking is updated, its quantity and price are recalculated as on creation (the price promised in a quote does not change), the notice period and unavailability are checked again, and the old question to the concierge is closed (“Replaced by the update to request #12”): only one question remains, the new one, which shows “Rate recalculated: €950 (before: €380)” when the price changes.

From the booking itself, it is the same. Confirm, Decline and Offer to the client in a booking's drawer have the same effect as an answer to the question: the questions still open on this booking are closed, and the assistant notifies the client by the same path (chapter 5, section 5.4). So you can decide from wherever you like.

4.3 Replying from WhatsApp#

Each recipient receives the request in their own chat with the concierge service's number. The buttons depend on the request:

• a request that can be decided (linked to a booking, an availability, a quote): Approve, Decline, Reply;
• a request that cannot be decided (media received, incident, access codes, emergency, missing information): Reply and Seen. “Approve” would mean nothing there.

Outside the 24-hour window, the request arrives through the message template “Request to approve for Sofia: private chef on Saturday 12th at 21:00 for 6 people. Choose a reply below.”, approved by Meta with its three buttons Approve, Decline, Reply, whatever the request. On a request that cannot be decided, Approve and Decline reply “Zoé's request does not need approving. Tell me what I should reply to her”: nothing changes.

• Approve: like “Yes” in the app.
• Decline: like “No”.
• Reply: your next message (within ten minutes) becomes the answer to this request. Write as you would to a colleague (“ok but 11pm”, “tell him I'll call him back tomorrow”): the assistant rephrases it for the client.
• Seen: the request is closed in your name, without writing anything to the client. The console reminds you: “Noted as seen. Nothing has been sent to Zoé: write to her if needed.”

In the app too, a yes or a no is refused on a request that cannot be decided (“This request calls for an answer, not an approval.”): you reply to it, or you dismiss it.

The first to reply wins. The other recipients learn that the request has already been dealt with, and by whom.

Who receives the requests is set in Settings › Team › Who receives requests to approve:

Then everyone chooses their channels in Settings › Notifications (WhatsApp, email, in the app) and can set quiet hours; an urgent request still gets through if they have allowed it (chapter 13).

To receive requests on WhatsApp, each member must have saved their WhatsApp number in Settings › Profile. A recipient with no number, or whom WhatsApp could not reach, always has the app (the bell, and a notification on their phone or computer if they have turned it on, even with the app closed: chapter 13, section 13.3) and, at most once an hour, a summary by email.

Escalation. A request with no reply for thirty minutes is escalated: an alert to the managers, a summary by email, and a reassuring holding message to the client (“just two more minutes, I'm finalising”). If several requests are overdue at the same time, a single alert lists them all (ten at most, then “and 3 more, to see in the app”). A “Media received” request is never escalated: it is information, and it expires after 24 hours. A question whose booking has already been decided is no longer escalated: booking cancelled, declined, completed or expired (its questions are closed at that point), or confirmed after the question was asked. Only an incident or an emergency stay open and are escalated: they concern the client, not the decision on the booking.

4.4 Approving a held reply#

When the assistant hesitates, its reply is not sent: the client receives an acknowledgement, and the reply waits.

Where: Inbox › To approve (all conversations), or in the thread, in a white “To approve” frame.

The reason, when a specific safeguard stopped it. Some replies are always held, however certain the assistant is, and the screen says why, at the top of the reply:

• “Announces a confirmation while #12 still needs approval.” (or “… the team has not given.”): the reply says “it's booked” while a request is waiting for your decision, including when the client already has another confirmed booking;
• “Announces a cancellation the team has not made.”;
• “Not in the client’s language (English).”: the automatic translation failed.

With no reason shown, the assistant simply hesitated.

• Send: the reply goes out as it is. A second click (or a colleague clicking at the same time) does not send it again: “This message is no longer awaiting approval.” The same applies to Edit and Reject.
• Edit (in the thread only): the text opens in place. Correct it, then Send edited version (Escape or Cancel close it without sending anything). The corrected version goes out as your message; the original proposal stays in the thread, with a dotted outline, with “Edited by Sofia before sending”. The assistant stays active on the conversation: correcting its reply is not taking over.
• Reject: it is not sent; it stays visible, crossed out, as a record. Then write to the client yourself.

No score or internal setting is shown: the reply is held, a human decides. Who: concierges and above.

Example. A client asks whether the villa accepts dogs. This is not in the property record: the assistant should not reply, but it attempted a cautious reply. It is held. Marco rejects it, checks with the villa's owner, and replies himself. The next day, another held reply is correct but says “21:00” instead of “21:30”: Marco clicks Edit, corrects the time and sends.

4.5 Booking requests#

Below the questions, the To approve tab lists the bookings with the Requested status (created by the assistant, by an accepted quote, or entered by the team as a request). Click a row to open its drawer and choose the next step: Confirm, Offer to the client, Decline, Cancel booking (chapter 5). Confirming, proposing and declining close the linked questions and notify the client; a window tells you in advance what will become of the message.

A request left without a decision until its start date leaves this list by itself: it moves to the Expired status.

4.6 The console: running things from WhatsApp#

The concierge service can also be run from WhatsApp, without opening the app. Each member writes to the concierge service's number from their own WhatsApp, as they would talk to a personal assistant. Vetexis recognises them by their number (the one in Settings › Profile) and replies with the rights of their role. The owner, from their personal number, therefore has the full console.

There are no commands to remember. Three gestures are enough: thumbs up (as a reaction to the message) to approve, thumbs down to drop it, a new message to correct.

What you can ask#

Actions that commit the house go through the thumbs up#

Creating a booking, cancelling, writing to a client, changing a price: these actions commit the house to someone. The console describes them first (“#47 Private chef, Saturday 12th at 20:00, Giulia, 6 people. Shall I cancel it?”), then waits for:

• a thumbs up as a reaction to the message: the action goes ahead;
• a thumbs down: it is abandoned;
• another message: it is a correction, and the console makes its proposal again.

A proposal only waits ten minutes. After that, you have to ask again: better that than a cancellation going out twenty minutes later on a thumbs up that is no longer linked to anything. Only the author of the proposal can approve it. During those ten minutes, the proposal is stored by Vetexis: an update of the service or a restart does not lose it. The same applies to a request taken in hand with the Reply button.

Voice notes#

With Pro and Network, a member can dictate a voice note to the console. A transcription can be wrong, and a misheard instruction could cancel the wrong booking: so the console first replies “I heard: …” and waits for a thumbs up (or a “yes”) before acting. With Essential, it replies that reading voice notes is included in Pro and asks for the message to be written.

Yes, no, or neither#

The thumbs up can be replaced by a word. The console recognises the usual phrases of agreement and refusal, in French, English and Spanish, written the way people type them (accents, capitals and punctuation do not matter), with or without polite words around them:

• agreement: “oui”, “ok”, “ok vas-y”, “d'accord”, “c'est bon”, “parfait”, “ça marche”, “pas de souci”, “dispo”, “yes”, “sure”, “sounds good”, “vale”, “dale”, “perfecto”…;
• refusal: “non”, “non merci”, “pas possible”, “pas dispo”, “complet”, “laisse tomber”, “on fait pas ça”, “no thanks”, “not available”, “no es posible”…

These rules apply both to confirming a console proposal and to answering a request to approve. A message made up only of these phrases decides. A message that adds something else (“ok but 11pm”) is read differently: for a request to approve, the console understands the change in it; for a console proposal, it is a correction. A message that mixes agreement and refusal (“yes… well no”) decides nothing: it is passed on as simple information, and the booking does not change. If in doubt, nothing changes.

What the console refuses#

• The console is reserved for the office. A field account receives a single sentence, whatever it writes: “The console is reserved for the office. Your assignments are in the app.” It cannot read any price or client record there.
• Accounting can neither create, nor cancel, nor write to a client, nor change a price.
• Figures are only given to those with access to finance.
• A number unknown to the team is treated as a client, never as a member.
• Account suspended or cancelled: the console replies “Account read-only (subscription suspended or ended): I cannot create or send anything.”

The console never makes up a figure itself: the lists and reports it sends are produced by Vetexis, word for word. If the model claimed to have done something without having done it, the reply would be refused.

4.7 The concierge in WhatsApp Business#

If your number is connected in coexistence (you keep the WhatsApp Business app on your phone):

• Writing to a client yourself from the app pauses the assistant on that conversation; your message appears in the Vetexis inbox, signed “member”.
• !stop in a client's chat pauses the assistant, !go restarts it, without sending anything else to the client.

4.8 Example of a request, from start to finish#

1. 22:10. An English client writes: “Can we get a private chef on Saturday for 6, around 8pm?”
2. The assistant replies in English that it is looking into it and will be back very soon, and creates request #52 “Private chef, Saturday 20:00, 6 people” with the Requested status.
3. Sofia and Marco (managers) receive on WhatsApp: “Request #52: Private chef, Saturday 12th at 20:00, 6 people, for James. Available?”, with Approve, Decline, Reply.
4. Marco taps Reply and writes “ok but 8.30pm, the chef is finishing another dinner”.
5. The booking moves to 20:30 and Awaiting client (it is not confirmed yet: it is up to the client to say yes to this change). James receives, in English: “All set for Saturday, just at 8:30 pm rather than 8. Does that work for you?”
6. Sofia, who opens WhatsApp a minute later, learns that the request has already been dealt with by Marco.
7. James replies “Perfect, thanks!”. A new request reaches the team; Marco taps Approve: the booking is Confirmed, with Marco as proof.