Hotplate

Hotplate help

Hotplate chat makes it easy for you to communicate with customers about their order directly through your portal. Chefs love that it’s easy to pull up order details alongside a customer’s chat so solving problems or issuing refunds is quick and easy. You'll see a record of all your customer chats in the 

 If you do not want customers to be able to initiate chats with you

Customers will be able to send you a message only after they’ve placed an order. They’ll see an option to “Message {your business name}” under their pickup time on the order confirmation screen. Once they click, a chat will open on the right side of the screen like this:

You can also start chatting with any customer right from their profile or by looking them up in the inbox. 

Click the customer’s name at the top of their order ticket to open their profile

Every time you get a new chat from a customer, you will see a notification pop up in your Hotplate portal. If you’re not active in your portal, you will also get a text letting you know you have unread messages.

When you send a message to one of your customers, they’ll receive an email letting them know. If they are subscribed to your drop notifications, they will also receive a text.

What customers see when they chat with you

When you send a customer a message, they get a direct link to the chat by text or email, branded according to your storefront settings. Your about section, social links, and any additional links you add to your storefront are also easily accessible to them as they are chat with you.

Being able to easily communicate with your customers in the same place where you can see their order will save you a lot of time. As an example, let's look at how much better handling a refund is with and without Chat:

Customer emails you: "I would like a refund"

You read the email and search for their order, but it turns out they emailed you from a different address than the one they used to place the order

After a couple hours, they respond with the correct email

You then switch back to Hotplate, search for their order, find it, and initiate a refund

Finally, you switch back to your email and let them know you initiated their refund

Customer sends a message: "I would like a refund"

Their profile is automatically pulled up next to the chat for you, so you just click on their active order and initiate a refund, without leaving the inbox page at all

You let them know the refund is on the way!

That's it! If you have any questions about Chats on Hotplate, or feedback on how it can improve, reach out to support! We would love to hear your thoughts.

Chatting with customers through Hotplate 

By far our most loved feature is the automatic text marketing that Hotplate sends to your customers. No more manually texting individual customers or managing DMs: we handle all notifications to customers from the moment you drop a new Event to the moment they pick up their order.

The following texts are automatically sent by default:

To turn any of these off or edit the message templates, just go to 

 if customers subscribe to your storefront, we send an automated text to let them know your sale is live. This text includes a link to your new Event.

 - these are sent immediately after a customer places their order and include a link to their receipt

 - these remind your customers when their pickup is, so they don't forget! By default, these happen:

 a text whenever an order is placed! These are sent to the main admin phone number associated with your Hotplate account.

Here’s an example of what a Drop Notification text looks like to your customers: 

Looking for how to send a manual text blast to your customers? That’s covered in 

Getting customers to subscribe to your SMS list

The bigger your customer SMS list, the more likely you’ll see immediate sales when you publish a new Event. Customers can easily subscribe to your SMS list at the top of your Hotplate storefront by clicking 

You can also share a link that directly prompts customers to enter their phone number. Many chefs add this SMS signup link to their social media bios, or link it using a QR code on things like business cards or product labels. The most successful Hotplate businesses regularly re-share their SMS sign up link ahead of upcoming drops.

Need some inspo? Check out how baker Sam Bakes Now incorporates her SMS sign up QR code on her cookie labels:

Customer SMS lists & notification guide 

Reviews are an amazing way for you to get feedback from your customers and built trust with new ones when they visit your storefront for the first time. Lets run down the basics of how reviews work!

Reviews are tied to orders, so only customers who have placed an order with you will be able to leave a review. There can only be one review left per order.

The only thing customers have to provide to submit a review is a rating, from 1-5 stars, but we let them provide a lot more info if they choose to!

Here is everything a customer can additionally provide when they leave you a review:

Likes and dislikes of items are visible to you, but are not shown publicly on your storefront.

When do reviews appear publicly on my storefront?

After a customer leave a review, you will see a notification appear in your Customers page. You get to choose which reviews you publish, and which you hide. Reviews are never visible on your storefront until you publish them.

After you publish reviews, you can also choose to "Feature" a review. Featured reviews will always be displayed before other reviews on your storefront. You can have up to 3 featured reviews at a time.

What do reviews look like on my storefront?

Reviews appear right below your current drops on your storefront. If you have featured reviews, they will be displayed first.

Head over to your Customers page and click on the "Reviews" tab

Go to Settings --> General and toggle on "Customer reviews."

Customer Reviews | Hotplate

Customer Reviews

Chefs love that Hotplate automatically texts your customers when Events go live, but did you know that you can also send out one-off text messages to your customers anytime?

We most often see chefs texting their entire customer list to let them know about upcoming events, updates about their busienss, or to remind them to order from an ongoing Event.

To send a custom message to all your SMS subscribers:

Here’s a super quick video to walk you through it:

You can also choose to text just the customers with open orders (you can tell whats open by the tickets on your Packing tab). Chefs often do this to let customers know about any changes in pickup times or location. To do this:

Compose your message, preview it, then click 

Here’s a super quick gif that shows you where to click:

Anytime you compose a one-off text message, you’ll get a preview if what your customers will see like this:

How to text your customers

If your customers aren’t receiving texts from your Hotplate storefront, there are a few things to check on your own before you reach out to our team.

Verify they haven't unsubscribed from messages

Customers can unsubscribe themselves from a list anytime by texting back “UNSUB [business name]”. Sometimes people do this because they forgot they subscribed in the first place. If a customer isn’t sure, invite them to try re-subscribing their number through your storefront.

Make sure their number was entered correctly

You can double check their phone number from the 

 tab in your Hotplate portal. If it’s wrong, please ask them to re-subscribe with their correct number. You won’t be able to update their customer details from your end at this time.

Make sure the customer is receiving other texts

Sometimes, a bigger problem with the customer’s network carrier can mean they’re not getting texts from anyone, including Hotplate.

If automated drop Event notifications didn't send:

 when you create the event. If you duplicated an old event that was set to Private, you may have forgotten to switch it off.

Confirm that you didn’t disable event reminders to customers

You can find this setting at the bottom of the 

 tab when you create an event. Make sure this isn’t turned on.

Texts are only sent when you publish a new event. If you simply adjusted an existing event or added new pick up windows, we won’t send a new drop text. You can still 

send a one off text message to your customers

Lots of factors like the carriers, mobile devices, and network outages can affect whether or not text messages deliver. Email our team at 

 and we’ll be happy to look into it for you!

My customers aren’t getting texts: troubleshooting 

You can view your list of customers anytime in the 

Anyone who has ever ordered from you will be in this list, and those subscribed to your SMS notifications will have a green checkmark under 

. If a customer is only subscribed to your SMS list and hasn’t placed an order yet, then you won’t see any other customer details besides their phone number.

At the moment, you won’t be able to manually subscribe customers to your SMS notifications. If you’re migrating over to Hotplate from another system and wan’t to import your entire customer list, please reach out to support (

To help with the import, we’ll need a spreadsheet with customer details. This 

 include phone numbers, but you can also include their names and emails.

Every text that Hotplate sends includes instructions on how to unsubscribe from your list and customers can do so at any time. Here is an example of what they’ll see:

If you’d like to manually remove a customer from your SMS notifications:

Customer Communication

Chatting with customers through Hotplate

Customer SMS lists & notification guide

Customer Reviews

How to text your customers

My customers aren’t getting texts: troubleshooting

Managing your customer SMS list