Guests
Guest records, the ratings you give, the reviews you receive, and the loyalty programme.
Find a guest and read their history
#Before you call someone or prepare a table, it helps to know how often they have been, what they asked for last time, and whether they have no-shows.
- Open Guests.
- Search by name, phone or email, or pick a segment from the top row: All, VIP, Regulars, New, Lapsed or Risk. Each chip carries its own count, and the rule for the segment you picked is spelled out under the row.
- Click a guest to open their record.
Lite has no guest records. The reservation card shows the name, the phone and the special requests, and that is all. For history, open the dashboard.
- Open More and choose Customers.
- Search for the guest by name or phone.
- Open their record.
The guest never learns you read their record and receives nothing. Searching changes no reservation.
- Guests is a Pro plan section. On the Lite plan it does not appear in the dashboard at all.
- Records appear on their own after the first reservations. They are not created by hand.
- The list shows the 500 most recently seen guests. If you have more, use the search rather than scrolling.
- The segments have fixed rules: Regulars means at least 5 visits, New at most one, Lapsed at least 2 visits but nothing in the last 90 days, and Risk at least 2 no-shows. VIP is the only one you set yourself.
Write notes and mark a guest VIP
#The favourite table, the anniversary, the allergy. Notes land on the reservation row, so the team sees them without looking anything up.
- Open Guests and pick the guest.
- Write under Internal notes.
- Fill in Allergies and Dietary needs, comma separated.
- Click Mark VIP if it applies, then Save.
Lite has no guest records, so there is nowhere to write. Anything tied to one reservation goes in its special requests instead.
- Open the guest record from Customers.
- Write the team notes.
- Save.
The guest sees nothing you write and gets no notification. The note shows only to your team, on their reservation row.
- Notes belong to your venue. No other restaurant on HaiLa sees them.
- VIP is set by hand and is the only segment you control. The rest are worked out from visits and no-shows.
- A note stops at 1000 characters. Anything past that is cut off when you save, without telling you.
- The record also shows a Total spent field. Do not read anything into it: nobody maintains that field and it stays at zero however many visits the guest has. The visits and no-shows beside it are counted properly.
Rate a guest after a visit
#A short rating after a difficult visit helps the team next time, and the score feeds a reputation other restaurants can see too.
The dashboard does not give ratings, it only shows them. In the guest record, under Ratings from your team, you read what your team recorded. To rate, you need the Pro app, on any phone.
Lite does not rate guests. It only sees the average score, as a short badge on the reservation. Rating needs the Pro app.
- Most of the time you look for nothing: close the visit from the Floor tab and, if the guest has a HaiLa account, the rating sheet opens by itself, right there.
- If you closed it earlier, open the completed reservation and tap Rate guest, or Review Guest on Android.
- Choose between 1 and 5 stars.
- Tick the behaviour tags that apply and, if you want, write private notes.
- Save it: the button reads Save Review on Android and Submit Review on iPhone or iPad.
The guest receives nothing and never learns they were rated. Their score does, however, feed an average that your team sees and that other restaurants on HaiLa see too, as a plain number.
- Only guests with a HaiLa account can be rated. A walk-in, or a reservation you took over the phone with no account behind it, cannot be rated at all. On Android, in the Floor tab, the button still appears for a guest who exists only in your customer list: you tap it and nothing opens. That is not your phone, it is the limit above.
- The Pro app rates the same from any phone, iPhone and iPad as well as Android. Only Lite and the dashboard cannot.
- A rating always hangs off a reservation, never off the guest record directly. If you want to rate someone, start from their visit, not from the customer list.
- The button is not named the same everywhere. On iPhone and iPad it reads Rate guest; on Android it reads Review Guest, in the reservation and in the Floor tab panel alike. It is the same thing.
- The behaviour tags change with the stars, in both apps. From 3 stars up you get the positive list; below 3 you get the attention list, the one with Difficult and the no-show. If you cannot find the tag you are after, set the stars first.
- On iPhone and iPad those tags are in English, Great Guest, Punctual, Difficult and so on, whatever language the app is in. On Android they are translated.
- A rating you have given cannot be changed anywhere. No app ships an edit button, and deletion stays with the HaiLa team. So do not give one in anger: rate once service has calmed down, not in the middle of it.
- And do not try to fix a wrong rating by giving another. On Android the second attempt is silently thrown away: the sheet closes with no message at all, so it looks like it saved. On iPhone and iPad it is the other way round and worse, because reopening and re-closing the reservation writes a second rating and leaves the first one stranded. If you got a rating wrong, write to us.
Who can see the ratings you give
#What you write stays with you. The comment, the private notes and the behaviour tags are read only by your own team. No other restaurant reaches them, even if the same guest books there.
The number, though, travels
Two averages are worked out from the stars you give: one at your venue and one across all of HaiLa. The overall average is shown to other restaurants the guest books with, as a small badge reading something like 4.5 stars, with no words and no detail. So the score matters beyond your venue, even though everything you wrote never leaves it.
The guest sees none of this: not the stars, not the averages, not the notes. They get no notification when you rate them and have nowhere to dispute it.
Venues on the Lite plan see only the number, not what is behind it. The full record, with tags and notes, belongs to the Pro plan.
Write as though someone is reading it
Notes never reach the guest, but they stay in their record for your whole team and for us, and their score follows them to other restaurants. Write facts that help service, not opinions you would not want to explain.
Read your reviews
#Reviews are public and show on your venue page. What they say decides whether someone who does not know you books or moves on.
Reading changes nothing for the guest. The review stays public, exactly as they wrote it.
- Reviews are visible to anyone, including someone with no account.
- You cannot delete and you cannot hide a review. Not even an unfair one. If a review breaks the rules, write to us; deleting and hiding stay with the HaiLa team or with its author.
- You cannot edit a guest text. The only thing you write is the response.
Reply publicly to a review
#The reply shows under the review, for everyone. A calm reply to a bad review convinces more than ten good ones.
- Open Reviews, or stay on Today, where unanswered reviews show up anyway.
- Under the review, click Reply. Only then does the writing box open.
- Write the response and click Send reply. If you change your mind, click Cancel.
- Open the Reviews tab.
- Tap Reply on the review you want.
- Write the response and tap Submit.
- Open More and choose Reviews.
- Tap Reply.
- Write the response and send it.
The response appears publicly under the review, signed by the venue, and anyone opening your page sees it. The guest is not notified about your reply.
- An empty response is not sent.
- The 1000 character limit is the dashboard only. In the apps nobody counts your characters, but shorter still reads better.
- A response you have sent can only be changed from the Pro app, with Edit Response; the field opens already filled with what you wrote. In the dashboard and in Lite it cannot: there the reply shows as plain text under the label Your reply, and the reply button disappears altogether. Read it back before you send.
- There is no public history. If you change the response from the Pro app, everyone sees only the latest version.
- Replying works on any plan. Pro is not what lets you reply, it is what lets you change your mind.
Find the reviews still waiting for you
#A review with no reply looks worse than a bad one with a reply. The filter tells you exactly where you have fallen behind.
- Open Today. It tells you how many reviews are unanswered, and you can reply to them right there without leaving the screen.
- For the full list, open Reviews and click the Unanswered filter.
- Click Critical if you want the ones below 4 stars first.
- Open the Home tab: it tells you how many reviews need replies.
- Tap it and go straight to them.
- Open More and choose Reviews.
- Tap the Needs Response filter.
Nothing changes for the guest until you reply. The filter is only how you organise your own work.
- The count drops only once you send the response, not when you open the review.
- In the dashboard that count lives on Today, not under the Reviews title. What Reviews gives you instead is Response rate, which says roughly the same thing another way.
Why only some guests can review you
#A review is tied to one specific reservation, not to a person who passed through. To write one, the guest needs a HaiLa account and a reservation made on that account, at your venue.
The reservation has to have gone somewhere: completed, or with the party seated at the table right then, or confirmed and more than a day old. A reservation for tomorrow cannot be reviewed.
One reservation, one review
Each reservation can carry a single review. A guest who comes often can write to you every time, but once for each booked visit.
Two cases follow from this and they surprise people most often. Walk-ins cannot leave a review, because they have no visit in HaiLa under their name. Likewise a reservation you took over the phone is not linked to the guest account, so it does not open the right to review either, however happy they left.
Your own team cannot review your venue from their accounts either.
The review invitation goes out when the reservation closes, whether you closed it or HaiLa closed it on its own later. But it does not wait for the closing: if the reservation is left open, the invitation goes out anyway, about two hours after the visit would have ended. That is why a reservation the guest never showed up for should be marked as a no-show early: otherwise they are invited to write about a visit that did not happen.
How the loyalty programme actually works
#At your venue, the programme runs itself. Your team stamps nothing, scans nothing and presses no reward button. You get on with service and HaiLa counts.
The guest joins on their own, with their first reservation at your venue. There is nothing for them to sign up to and nothing for you to approve. But automatic enrolment needs two things: your programme published and running, and the reservation coming from a HaiLa account. That is why walk-ins and the reservations you write down over the phone enrol nobody.
A visit counts when you mark the party seated, when you close the reservation, or when HaiLa closes it on its own after your team had confirmed it. A reservation marked as a no-show never counts.
Three rules that explain almost every question at the pass
A guest collects at most one stamp per service day, however many reservations they hold. While they have an earned and unused reward, they collect no new stamps until they use it. And if a visit was taken back out of the count earlier, their next good visit covers that gap first and only then does counting resume.
That last rule is the one that reaches the phone most often: the team watches a guest finish a visit and their count does not move. It is not a fault, it is the visit covering the gap.
The reward side is automatic too. When a guest has earned something and chooses to use it on a reservation, HaiLa applies it by itself when that visit is closed. On the reservation you see the reward and your own instructions for the team; there is nothing to confirm and nothing to press.
Turn on the loyalty programme
#The programme does nothing until you publish it. Published, it enrols guests on its own, from their first reservation.
- Open Loyalty.
- Click Start the programme.
- Fill in the programme name and the description for guests.
- Choose how many stamps are required and how long the reward stays valid.
- Choose the reward type and write what the guest gets.
- Write the instructions for staff: what exactly is given and from which menu.
- Write the terms. They are the last field in the form, not the one next to the name.
- Click Publish programme.
- Open Settings and go to Loyalty.
- Tap Loyalty program.
- Work through the steps: the number of visits, the member perk, the instructions for staff.
- Publish the programme at the end.
- Open More, then Settings.
- Under Loyalty, tap Loyalty program.
- Work through the same steps and publish.
Once published, guests see on your venue page the reward, how many visits are required, and their own progress, in the form 3 of 6 verified visits. Anyone booking from now on joins by themselves; nobody receives an enrolment notification.
- Every field is required, the staff instructions included. Without them the reward cannot be honoured at the pass.
- The staff instructions stay between you. The guest never sees them.
- The dashboard is the only place you can make this mistake. It says you pick between 2 and 20 stamps, but the system accepts only 3 to 12: pick 2 or 15 and the save fails with a general message that does not tell you why. Choose between 3 and 12. All four apps hold you to 3 to 12 anyway, so from those you cannot get it wrong.
- A running programme only enrols reservations that came from a HaiLa account. Phone reservations and walk-ins stay outside it.
Change the reward without breaking guests in progress
#The reward that worked in summer does not work in winter, and the target you set at the start turns out too high. Both can change, but you need to know who the change catches and who it does not.
- Open Loyalty.
- Click Edit.
- Change what you need and publish again.
- To stop the programme for a while, click Pause; you start it again with Resume.
- Open Settings, then Loyalty and Loyalty program.
- Change the steps and publish again.
- Here you also have Pause, Resume and Retire.
- Open More, then Settings.
- Under Loyalty, open Loyalty program.
- Change it and publish again.
Guests already on their way to a reward finish on the rules they started with: the target and the reward as they stood at their first stamp of the current run. The new rules catch them from the next run. Anyone who has not started a run yet sees the new reward and the new target on your venue page.
- An already earned reward stays earned. Neither changing the reward nor pausing the programme takes it away.
- After a change of target, the progress dots in the member list lie. They are drawn from the programme as it stands now, not the one the guest started on, so anyone halfway through an old run shows too many dots or too few. How many they have collected is right; how many they still need is not. Their run still closes on the old rules, as above.
- If you pause the programme, guests read on your page that it is paused and that their progress and issued rewards stay valid. Nothing is lost.
- Retiring the programme for good is done only from the apps, with Retire. The dashboard can only pause and resume. A retired programme collects no new visits, but already issued rewards can still be used.
- If someone else on your team edits the programme at the same time, your save is stopped and you are asked to reload the page. Nothing is overwritten silently.
Add a stamp after a visit
#It is the question everyone asks in the first week: where do I press to give them the stamp. The short answer is that you do not press anywhere.
There is no stamp button, not here and not anywhere else. The stamp is added by itself when the reservation reaches seated or closed. If a guest says a stamp is missing, check what state their reservation was left in: one left merely confirmed, never marked seated or completed by the team, brings nothing.
Lite does not stamp either. All your team has to do is take the reservation to the end, meaning not leave it hanging. The rest happens by itself.
The Pro app does not have this button either. Mark the party seated and close the reservation when they leave; the stamp follows on its own. The reward too: it applies itself when the visit closes, nothing is scanned and nothing is confirmed.
The guest watches their own progress rise by itself in the app, moments after your team marked the visit. They are never asked to show a code, a card or a phone.
- If a visit brought no stamp, the cause is almost always one of three: the guest still had an unused reward, they had already taken a stamp the same day, or the reservation was never taken to the end by the team.
- A reservation with no HaiLa account behind it brings a stamp to nobody, however real the visit was.
Why there is no join button for guests
#Because there is nothing to join. Membership comes with the reservation, so a join button would be one extra step that changes nothing. On your venue page the guest reads instead how the programme works, that stamps collect automatically when they book and visit, and sees where they have got to.
That does not mean the guest does nothing. One thing stays theirs: they choose when to spend an earned reward. At booking there is a tick box, unticked, and on a reservation already made they tap Use on this booking. Until they do, the reward waits for them, and they collect no new stamps.
What to tell guests who ask how to sign up
That they already are. If they have ever booked with you from their HaiLa account, their progress exists and they can see it on your venue page.
There is no leaving the programme you can promise them either. No app ships that button today, and if an account somehow ended up out, their next reservation with you would enrol them again.