When you have a business that uses appointments with customers, you want to make sure customers keep their scheduled appointments. Should they forget to do so, you know that timeslot has essentially become a wasted opportunity for your business to make money. To avoid situations like these, many businesses are using appointment reminders that can be sent to customers through text messages and other means. If you want your appointment reminders to work, here are some tips to try.
When to Send the Reminder
One of the first things you will need to decide is when to send your appointment reminder to a client or customer. In many instances, businesses choose a multi-pronged strategy for reminders. For example, you can choose to send a reminder 24 hours prior to the appointment, then also set up your system so that another reminder is sent to the person one or two hours before their appointment time. Doing so decreases the chances your business will have a high number of unkept appointments while also giving your customer enough notice ahead of time for them to reschedule if needed.
Personalize the Reminder
Whenever you get a text message or email, you are probably like most other people and pay more attention to it when it uses your name. Because of this, a great tip to make your appointment reminders work is to personalize your reminders for all of your clients and customers. This makes the reminder much more friendly, which from a psychological standpoint makes it more likely the person on the receiving end of the reminder will feel a bit more obligated to keep their appointment.
Use an App
Unless you want to spend much of your time sending out appointment reminders manually to person after person, using an app for broadcast SMS is the smart way to send out a single text message to a large number of people simultaneously. Another advantage to this is that you won’t be limited to sending out a text-only message. Rather, you can also include videos and images with your reminder, making your message even more interesting and likely to be opened and read right away.
Minimize Using Capital Letters
If you send an appointment reminder containing nothing but capital letters, this will probably not be well-received by your client or customer. Remember, messages using mostly capital letters are often interpreted as a person shouting. Since you want your appointment reminder to strike a very friendly tone, refrain from using all-caps with your customers, even those who are well-known for being late or failing to show up now and then.
Two-Way Communication
When you send your appointment reminder via text, make it easy for your customer to respond to you if needed. Instead of directing them to your website or giving them a number for customer service, use a number with your reminder that they can use to get in touch with you immediately. By always making it easy for your customers to get in touch with you about their appointments, chances are you will have fewer missed appointments due to miscommunication or other problems.
Short and Sweet Messages
When you use SMS messaging, keep in mind that you only have 160 characters to get your point across to the person on the receiving end. Because of this, keep your reminder short and sweet yet still clear enough to make sure the recipient understands the point of the message. If you are considering adding emojis to your appointment reminder, it’s usually best not to do so. While emojis are cute in messages you send to your family and friends, they are not considered to be professional when sending messages relating to business. In addition, using emojis tends to limit the number of characters you will have to work with, so remember this as well.
Upon receiving a text reminder, fewer than five percent of people tend to cancel their appointments. This, coupled with the fact that over 98 percent of text messages are opened within a few minutes by recipients, helps to demonstrate that once you put the tips mentioned here into practice, you can look forward to very few forgotten or canceled appointments.
