How to Send Automated Appointment Reminders with SMS

Congratulations! Your business is going well and you have leads who are interested in what you are offering. The next step is setting an appointment to get the ball rolling, find out more about their needs and customize your product to fit what they are looking for.

When dealing with several customers, you have to be precise. It’s your job to find a time that suits everyone’s schedule, and be sure you have enough time in your own schedule. You also need to make sure that you set aside enough time to give your undivided attention to each customer.

If you don’t have a solid system locked down you run the risk of forgetting important details, forgetting the appointments you have set, or even worse, letting the customer forget about the appointment you have set. 

Why Automate Appointment Reminders?

If you've ever had to schedule appointments, you know how tedious and time-consuming it can be. Whether you work in a doctor's office, a law firm, or are an independent sales agent, you likely spend hours each week coordinating schedules and trying to accommodate everyone's needs. Appointments are a crucial factor in the success of a business. 

The traditional methods for scheduling appointment reminders are time-consuming and often inaccurate. This can lead to frustrated patients and decreased appointment compliance.

We've all been there. You go into your doctor's office for a routine visit and the receptionist schedules your next appointment six months from now. You leave, and as the date approaches, you realize you can't remember when your appointment is.

You search through your calendar and find that it's for next week! You're relieved but also frustrated that you almost forgot about such an important appointment. Well, this is the same case for your customers. They're not exempt. We're all human and when life gets going and busy, it's easy to forget an appointment that was scheduled weeks or even months ago.

If this has happened to you before, don't worry - you're not alone. In fact, forgetting appointments is so common that there's a name for it: no-show appointments.

According to a study by the Journal of General Internal Medicine, missed appointments cost the U.S. healthcare system $150 billion each year. This is a shocking statistic that is not exclusive to the healthcare industry. In fact, missed appointments cost businesses in all industries billions of dollars each year.

By sending automatic appointment reminders, you can help decrease the number of no-show appointments and increase customer satisfaction.

One of the main reasons why clients forget their appointments is because they don't receive timely and accurate reminders. Relying on phone calls or postcards to remind customers about their upcoming appointments is no longer sufficient.

Research has shown that appointment reminders can increase customer compliance by up to 30% so having an effective strategy in place to remind clients of upcoming appointments is critical. This is where appointment scheduling software comes in.

How to Automate Appointment Reminders?

Appointment scheduling software is a tool that helps businesses automatically send reminders to customers about their upcoming appointments or meetings. These reminders can be sent via SMS (text), email, or even push notification.

And because they're automated, they're always accurate and timely. The most effective of the three is SMS, since it has a high open rate and is less likely to be forgotten. SMS has grown in popularity in recent years due to its high open rate and ability to reach clients where they are.

These SMS appointment reminders are sent out to customers before their scheduled appointment time as a courtesy to remind them about their upcoming appointments. Automated appointment reminders are convenient for both businesses and their customers.

Not only does appointment scheduling software help reduce the number of missed appointments, but it also saves healthcare providers a significant amount of time and money. According to a study by the American Medical Association, using appointment reminder systems can save healthcare practices up to $8 per patient each year.

Why is appointment scheduling software important?

For businesses, large and small, time is money. Appointment scheduling software helps businesses optimize their time by automating the process of sending reminders to clients about their upcoming appointments. This way, businesses can be sure that their clients won't forget about their appointments, and they can focus on other aspects of their business. In addition, automated reminders are always accurate and timely, which further increases the efficiency of businesses.

What are the benefits of appointment scheduling software?

There are many benefits of using appointment scheduling software for businesses. As mentioned before, one of the primary benefits is that it saves businesses time by automating the process of sending reminders. With Textdrip, you are able to easily schedule appointment reminders from the moment you confirm an appointment with your customer.

Whether it be a week from now, a few months from now or even a year from now, you can easily schedule a specific day and a specific time for the reminder message to go out to your customer. You can even set 2 or 3 messages to go out periodically before the appointment to help keep the customer excited about their upcoming service with your business.

Another great thing about using appointment scheduling software is that businesses are able to track all of their appointments in one place. This can be helpful for a number of reasons. First, if you need to cancel or reschedule an appointment, you will be able to easily do so without having to search through a bunch of different files or folders.

Second, if you have a no-show rate for your appointments, you will be able to track this information and work on reducing the rate. What’s more, if you want to see how well your business is doing overall, you will be able to look at your appointment data and see how many appointments are being made, how many are being kept, and what the average length of time is between appointments.

If you are looking for an appointment scheduling software, we recommend that you check out Textdrip. We offer a free trial so that you can try our software before you commit to anything. Click here to learn more about Textdrip.

With Textdrip, you'll be able to:

• Schedule appointments in minutes
• Schedule appointment reminders as far in advance as you like 
• View real-time availability for your team
• Automatically send reminders to reduce no-shows
• Use the same software to send out communication to your customers 
• Use the same software to send bulk SMS messages to customers… even text hundreds of customers at a time 
• Keep track of appointments, conversations, and messages all in one place.

Book a demo today to see how automatically scheduling appointment reminders can help your business!