How to use the Smart Writing Helper

ServiceM8's Smart Writing Helper is a powerful assistant to save time and increase the speed, quality and professionalism of your customer-facing messaging, every day. 

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Your writing helper can help in the following ways:

  • Auto-Write: automatically draft a piece of writing, with no guidance at all, or brief guidance of what you want to say e.g. dot points.
  • Improve Writing: improve the flow, language, spelling & grammar of an existing piece of writing.
  • Shorten: make a piece of writing shorter.
  • Lengthen: make a piece of writing longer.

Work Completed

Whether you're preparing a quote for the client's consideration, or finalising the invoice, your writing helper can make the task of describing the work done (or to be done), faster and easier.

If you've already drafted a description of Work Completed, click the assist button, then Improve Writing:

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If the Work Completed is blank, click Auto-Write, and the Smart Assistant will review information such as the job's description, notes, video transcripts, and materials to draft a description of the Work Completed, for your review:

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Email & SMS

If you need to draft an email or text to a client, your writing helper can help.

Always give your email a subject line first.

Then, you can draft your message, and click Improve Writing to have your writing helper revise it for clarity, spelling and grammar:

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Or, you can simply give some guidance on what you want to say, much like you'd instruct a team member, or writing a brief version of the message you're after, then click Auto-Write:

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Email & SMS Reply Suggestions

If a customer replies to an email or SMS, ServiceM8 will analyse the customer's message, and suggest options for drafting a reply.

Simply click the assist button, select a suggestion, and your writing helper will draft a message for your review:

Reply suggestions are only available in the online dashboard.

Email & SMS Templates

Your writing helper can also draft or revise your standard message templates.

Message templates are a great way to systemise your client communication, and save the time of writing the same types of emails or texts every day.

Using your smart writing helper is a great option to quickly generate a set of professional templates that you might have always meant to do, but never got around to.

First, go to Settings > Email Templates (or SMS Templates) and add or open a template.

To create a new template from scratch, click Generate:

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Provide some dot-point guidance on the purpose of the message and any specific job or client details it needs to reference:

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If you want to try improving a draft, or an existing template, click Improve Writing:

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Automation Templates

Similar to Email & SMS Templates, the setup process when activating an automated reminder or follow-up message with the Automation Add-on includes the option to use your Smart Assistant to Generate or Improve Writing for your automated messages:

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Proposals

Proposals are like next-level quotes, letting you provide an elevated quote experience, with richer formatting, imagery, and multiple choice options, to give clients more detail, choice and control in the buying process.

The proposal builder includes the option to add Text sections, and your writing helper is available here to help draft your text:

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TIP: when using Auto-Write in Proposals, give the Text section a title first, and provide some dot-point guidance on what you want to say (i.e. give it some instruction on what you want it to say, or write a brief version) so your writing helper has some idea of what the purpose of the text section is before drafting.

Specific lines or paragraphs

If you've drafted a message or body of text, or ServiceM8's drafted it for you, and you only want to tweak a specific sentence or paragraph (rather than re-do the whole thing), you can select it with your mouse cursor, then use the Smart Writing Helper. This is possible in the Online Dashboard, in the following areas:

  • Emails
  • SMS
  • Quote Description
  • Invoice Description (also known as 'Work Completed')
  • Proposals

To select and improve a specific sentence or paragraph in an email, highlight it with your cursor, then use the appropriate Smart Writing Helper action i.e. Auto-write, Improve Writing, Shorten, Lengthen.

For example, in an email you may want to shorten a sentence — just select the line with your cursor, click the dropdown, then 'Shorten':

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If you want to change the messaging, delete the line/paragraph and type in some guidance of what you're after:

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Then select 'Auto-write':

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In a quote or invoice description, you may wish to add something like a summary, without revising everything you've already added. Just type in some guidance for what you're after, then select it:

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Then click the Smart Writing Helper icon, and 'Auto-write':

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TIP: it's normal for the highlight to be removed from your selected text when you click the Smart Writing Helper icon — it will still only make changes to the line/paragraph of text you selected. 

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