Ways to reach your staff
One conversation, wherever you happen to be
You never pick a channel. There is one thread with your staff, in the app, and each way in below is another door into it. Whatever is said anywhere is in the thread, so there is never a second history to disagree with the first.
Ask for something from the car on WhatsApp and the whole exchange is in the app when you get to your desk, with whatever is waiting on you.
The ways in
Web, phone, messages and calls
Each is marked as it stands today. Nothing here is described as working unless it works.
Message your staff
Working nowThe default, and needs no setup. Everything else is a way into this.
A thread you can add to your phone's home screen, with nothing to download from an app store. Ask for something the way you would ask a colleague, send a photograph or a document, and decide what is waiting on you without opening anything else. Your staff answer in the same place, and the phone reports its calls there too. Notifications arrive from an ordinary browser on Android, a Mac or a PC; on an iPhone, add the site to your home screen first and they arrive there too.
Reaching your staff from WhatsApp
Working nowFor owners who already live in WhatsApp.
Connect your phone once and message your staff from WhatsApp. They answer there, and the whole exchange also appears in Messages. Your number is proved by sending a code from the handset, because a number typed into a form proves nothing.
Reaching your staff from iMessage
Coming soonFor iPhone, iPad and Mac.
Message your staff from iMessage on an iPhone, iPad or Mac. They answer there, and the whole exchange also appears in Messages. The same one-time code proves the handset is yours, photographs and documents come through, and a voice note is used through the words it was heard as.
What is missing: It is built and waiting on a dedicated iMessage sender; until then it answers only our own test numbers, so it is not offered to customers yet.
Texting your staff
Working nowFor any phone, with nothing to install.
Text your staff on one number and they answer in the same thread. The same one-time code proves the handset is yours, and a call that leaves a message can be texted to you as well, if you turn that on for your handset — that one costs a credit a message, so it is off until you do.
Reaching your staff from Telegram
Working nowFor people who prefer Telegram.
Connect Telegram once and message your staff from it. They answer there, and the whole exchange also appears in Messages.
Reaching your staff from Slack
Working nowFor a team that works in Slack.
Add Operenda to your Slack once and message your staff by mentioning them or in a direct message. They answer in the thread.
Answering the phone
Working nowFor the customers who ring, and for you when your hands are full.
A number of your own that your staff answer. They know who is ringing before anybody speaks — a customer who called last week about a leak is greeted as that customer, not as a stranger — and they can send a booking link while the caller is still on the line, offering only times that are genuinely free. Every call appears on the Calls screen with what was said and the follow-up raised, or the reason there was none. Robocalls are ended before they eat your minutes. United States and Canada only for now. A separate add-on, priced separately. Elsewhere the phone network wants proof-of-address paperwork for each number, which cannot be done while you wait, so we would rather say so than take the money and explain afterwards.
Around the edges
Mail, voice, pictures, and your own customers
The same staff answer mail you forward, and your customers can reach them through your website and your booking page.
Talking to your staff instead of typing
Working nowSay it instead of typing it.
Press the microphone in the thread and say what you need — it is written into the box for you to check before it goes. Turn on reading aloud and your staff's answers are spoken as they arrive, on that device, for when your hands are full. It uses your browser’s own speech: Chrome, Edge and Safari, on a computer or a phone, not Firefox. There is no extra charge, and in some browsers the audio goes to the browser’s maker to be turned into text, which the screen says while you speak.
Sending your staff a photograph
Working nowSend a photograph or a document.
Attach a picture and whoever picks the message up can see it. Documents are kept and shown to you, and a specialist is told plainly that it cannot open one rather than discussing a contract it never read.
Chat on your website
Working nowFor your customers, on your own website.
A chat box on your own site, answered by your staff in the same voice as your phone line, working from what you have written down about your prices, hours and policies. It only runs on the addresses you allow, there is a limit on how much one visitor can send, and every conversation is kept on the Website chat page with the follow-up already raised when there is one. Where you take bookings from your own page it can check times and book inside the chat.
Taking bookings from your own page
Working nowFor your customers, on a page of your own.
A page people book on, checked against your real calendar so two people cannot take the same hour. Rate limited, with a daily ceiling you set, because a booking page with no ceiling is a diary anybody can fill.
How mail gets in, and how it goes out
Three plain facts, so no page can tell you something different. Mail comes in by forwarding or by connecting your mailbox. It goes out from your own verified domain, or as your business via Operenda if you have none. Sending through the mailbox itself is the one part still to come.
Mail in, by forwarding
Working nowIn, the simplest way: nothing to connect.
Forward mail to the private address your workspace is given. It arrives, is deduplicated, is marked with how far it should be trusted, and is kept against your workspace.
Connecting an account
Working nowIn, the fuller way: your staff read and file what is really there.
Gmail (with an app password), Outlook and Microsoft 365, Fastmail, Google and Microsoft calendars, iCloud and other calendars you can share, your task lists and contacts, Google Drive and Dropbox, and Stripe. You are shown what each will be able to do before you agree, permission to send or change anything is asked for separately from permission to read, and tokens and passwords are encrypted at rest.
Mail out, as your business
Working nowOut, today.
Mail goes out from a domain you have verified, refused unless its SPF and DKIM records are in place, so your domain is never used unauthenticated. If you have no domain yet, quotes, bookings, follow-ups, briefs and approved documents go out as “Your Business via Operenda” from an address of its own on our mail domain, and replies come back into your Messages. Outreach and newsletters need your own domain or a connected mailbox.
Mail out, from the address you already use
Coming soonOut, through your own mailbox.
Send through the Gmail, Outlook, iCloud or Fastmail account you have already connected, with no domain and no DNS — and replies land in that account's own Sent folder.
What is missing: It is built and it is not proven. Nothing has yet gone out of a real Gmail, Outlook or iCloud account through it — what has been checked is the message we build, the way each provider is asked, and every refusal. Until it is proven, a business with no domain of its own sends quotes, bookings, follow-ups and briefs as the business via Operenda, and outreach and newsletters wait for a verified domain or this route. We would rather you were the first to use it with us watching than find out from a customer who never got the email.
Staying in charge
Anything that leaves the building still waits for you
A message from any of these doors reaches the same staff, in the same conversation as the one in the app. A number is linked to you only after a one-time code sent from your own handset proves it is yours, because a number typed into a form proves nothing. Your approval rules are the same whichever door you came in by, and moving money or changing the account is only ever done in the app.