Appointment ‘no shows’ can be a real cost to any business. But here’s a proven way to significantly reduce missed appointments.
Send an Appointment Reminder by SMS the day before
Many systems still rely on email reminders but with the amount of spam we get nowadays, the open rates are terrible. Send a text message instead and 99% of recipients will read your appointment reminder.
We recommend sending the reminder the day before, in the morning. This gives people the chance to call and change or cancel the appointment if they’re not going to make it. Or perhaps if they’ve simply forgotten, they have enough time to make personal arrangements so they can attend.
How to send an Appointment Reminder by SMS
You can create a simple Excel sheet with the details of each appointment and then send a merged text message to each person with just a few clicks.
Each morning you can create a simple Excel sheet with the name, mobile number and time of the appointment (you can have more data fields here as required).
Once you’ve done this, you can upload it to the groups area of your Text Marketer Messagebox account (it’s free to get one if you don’t already have one).
Then you can simply create a merged text message that will pull in the name and time and send to everyone on the list, e.g. “Hi Paul, don’t forget your appointment tomorrow at 11.00am. Please call if you have any problems on 0117 999 8800. The Surgery.”
The merged reminder message is quick to create. You can also add in other fields if you need to send more information such as location, who they are booked with, etc.
The text message will be delivered in seconds to everyone on the list. You can even use the free reply number in your account to allow them to reply by text if you wish, which will come back to you as an email.
Does sending Appointment Reminders by SMS really work?
In short, yes. It is staggeringly effective. Customers of ours who use SMS to send appointment reminders have told us they have virtually got rid of ‘no shows’ altogether.
For the few pence it costs to send each person a reminder – is it worth it for your business?
Can I automate SMS Appointment Reminders from our office systems?
Yes. This depends on what systems you use and the technical support available to you but the 2 most popular ways are;
Email-to-SMS – most systems can send email reminders and it’s easy to tailor them to go out as a text message
SMS API integration – for more advanced users with technical support available, our SMS API is the best option
There you have it. 3 different ways to send reminders by SMS. Create an SMS account today and see if you can get rid of those nasty ‘no shows’.