If you take bookings through ESC Hub, this one's for you. A handful of improvements just landed across Services, and together they mean more ways to reach your customers and less fiddling to get set up.

Let's walk through what's new.

WhatsApp notifications for your bookings

Up until now, your booking messages went out by Email or SMS. You can now add WhatsApp to that mix.

That means you can send a booking confirmation, a reminder, a follow-up, or any other appointment message through WhatsApp - whichever stage of the booking journey you want to cover. If your customers live in WhatsApp, you can now meet them there.

You set it up the same way you handle your other notifications, just with WhatsApp as an option alongside Email and SMS.

Pull booking details straight into your emails

When you're writing a booking email, you no longer have to remember or hunt down the right custom values.

Service and Rental custom values now show up right inside the Email Builder. Pick the one you need - the service name, the booking details, whatever's relevant - and drop it into your content. Your emails come out personalised, without the manual guesswork.

A cleaner way to show your Service Categories

You've got a new layout option for how categories appear on your booking widget: Top Tabs.

In the screenshot below, you'll see how your categories sit neatly across the top, giving customers an easy way to move between them while they book. It keeps the page tidy and the choices clear.

The layouts you already had are still there, so this is simply one more way to present things if it suits your setup better.

Smarter defaults, so you configure less

Some of the recent booking settings now come switched on by default, because they generally make for a better experience for the person booking with you.

Two in particular:

• Let customers explore other services - someone who starts on one service or category can browse and add services from other categories during the same booking.
• Let customers book multiple services - they can discover and book more than one service in a single booking journey.

In the screenshot below, you'll see these options ready to go. You can still change any of them to match how you want your booking flow to run - the starting point is just a bit smarter now.

None of this asks anything of you to get going. Open your Services setup, and the new options are waiting. Add WhatsApp if your customers prefer it, try the Top Tabs layout, and enjoy having a little less to configure.