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Do you ever find yourself dealing with clients that didn’t show up to an appointment, especially where they didn’t let you know they weren’t coming?
You’re left asking yourself questions like, “Is this prospect going to show up?” or “Where is my client?” It’s time-consuming — and you still have to reach out to reschedule the appointment.
In any appointment-based business, no-shows cost you both time and money. In addition to losing money on one appointment, consider how much a missed appointment might cost you in the form of:
The best way to solve this problem is by sending appointment reminders to your customers. But if you’re sending these reminders manually or scheduling a phone call, you are still losing time. Plus, manually sending reminders to each customer is a huge labor cost. So, how do you send clients appointment reminders that will get them to show up or let you know about their absence in advance?
Get back to doing the work you love and spending more time with your customers by automating your appointment reminders. Whether you have one employee or hundreds, you can benefit from automatic appointment reminder services like GoReminders. Automatic appointment reminders not only remind customers to show up but also allow them to book future appointments and leave reviews afterward. These features can reduce no-shows by 80% and boost your revenue by 12%-28%.
Let’s take a step-by-step look at how to set up automatic appointment reminders with GoReminders. We’ll also cover some additional automation features to help you streamline communication with your customers and grow your business.
Automatic appointment reminders are great for small businesses and growing businesses alike. Here are some of the main benefits of setting up automatic appointment reminders:
Setting up automatic reminders is easy with GoReminders. Once you sign up for a free trial or create a paid account, you can start sending reminders in these three simple steps:
Creating a message template is the first order of business. You’ll do this before you enter any appointments (or you can use our default message template to get started quickly). You can insert template tags for such information as the customer name, service type, and appointment time. GoReminders will automatically insert the correct information for each appointment, so your clients receive personalized messages without having to retype the message each time.
You can create as many templates as you need for the various services you offer, including custom message sequences featuring multiple reminders and follow-up messages.
NOTE: The above example is a demo reminder you’ll be able to create when you first sign up for an account. To make the process faster, we include “GoReminders” in place of a business name, but you can change it to whatever you like.
Enter the new appointment into your calendar by creating a new customer or selecting from a list of saved customers. Set the time, date, and length of the appointment, and whether or not you want the appointment to repeat. Include the customer’s phone number and/or email address where you want to send your automatic reminder(s). Then, select “Text,” “Email,” or “Both” in the “Reminder Type” menu.
Once you select a message template or sequence, simply save the appointment. Your appointment will be slotted into your GoReminders calendar and your personalized reminders will be sent automatically according to whatever sequence you set.
For more tips on how to send appointment reminders to your customers and clients, check out this video explanation of a simple workflow you can start using today:
With this process, you can fill those empty slots and save yourself time — without adding more to your workflow. But the automation doesn’t end there. There are several other ways GoReminders automates your appointment reminder workflow.
GoReminders offers several features to automate your booking and appointment reminder process. The easy-to-use interface allows you to quickly communicate with customers via text and/or email and makes the booking process easy for everyone. Pricing tiers are built to support growing businesses of all sizes. Here’s how each feature works:
Email provides the opportunity to send longer messages, such as newsletters or updates on new services. It is also the perfect place to begin the sales funnel. If you’re looking for an appointment reminder system with plenty of room for customization, email reminders are your best bet. GoReminders allows you to create a custom signature and upload an email logo that will appear on each email reminder. This allows your customers to know it’s a legitimate message coming from a trustworthy source.
At the same time, you don’t have to write out every email you send to clients. Instead, you can choose between templates to help your clients feel recognized when they open their email. In fact, GoReminders gives you the option of customizing reminder sequences from one customer to the next, so you can tailor your messaging even more.
Besides feeling more personally invested in your business, customers can also confirm, reschedule, or cancel their appointments with buttons at the bottom of each reminder email. Once they click their desired response, it is automatically recorded to your calendar. You can also choose which appointment response options to include (or not) in the reminder settings.
While email is great for long-form messages and multimedia, 90% of texts are opened and read within three minutes after being received. Plus, a recent study at the University of Kentucky about text message appointment reminders and reducing no-shows found that “Cost-benefit analysis yielded a potential 1:6 return.” SMS reminders are a great way to prevent no-shows by quickly engaging with your customers while they’re on the go.
With text reminders, customers can easily confirm appointments with (optional) reply commands. Your clients can respond with a “C” to confirm, “R” to reschedule, or “X” to cancel. You can also choose which of these responses you want to include, if any. In addition, you can change settings so that additional reminders are off once the client has confirmed their attendance.
Any time you send a text reminder, it will be logged into GoReminders’ two-way messaging interface. Here, you can prevent confusion by messaging back and forth with customers directly in the same thread as your reminders.
With GoReminders’ Business plan, you can send up to five text messages and five email reminders per appointment. This includes 3 reminders before the appointment and 2 follow-up messages afterward, with the same or different message contents per customer. You can send appointment reminders anywhere from 30 days to one hour before the appointment begins. You can even set up automatic appointment reminders for yourself and your staff.
Message sequences allow you to send several different types of custom messages at specific stages of your customer’s journey. You may send a combination of appointment reminders and follow-up messages depending on your needs.
For example, you may send three appointment reminders (using a combination of emails and text messages) leading up to the appointment. Then, you can send two follow-up messages (one to request reviews, one with a link to your optional booking form) after the appointment. With message sequences, it’s possible to create templates for each of these scenarios and combine them into a single sequence at certain intervals. When you create an appointment, you can select which message sequence you want to use. All messages in your sequence will be sent automatically at the cadence you choose.
Recurring appointment reminders are also quick and easy to set up within GoReminders. When you enter the first appointment, simply choose “Yes” in the Repeat dropdown menu. GoReminders will automatically set up future appointments (and automatic reminders for each of those appointments) based on the interval you select (weekly, monthly, etc.).
The message blast feature allows you to send promotional materials to your existing clients. Whether you choose to market a one-time event/promotion or use this blast as an installment in a campaign, message blasts can help you gain new customers and inform existing customers of updates with your services.
Customization
Personalization is key to effective appointment reminders. With GoReminders, you can also include template tags within your message templates to automatically include customers’ personalized information where relevant. But this isn’t just a courteous gesture — 97% of marketers agree that personalization can create significant improvements in multiple areas of your business.
If you need some inspiration for how to word your automatic reminders, check out our list of 12 text appointment reminder templates you can reference. GoReminders also offers a Premium package (best for enterprise customers) complete with a white glove onboarding process featuring support from a dedicated account manager. We’ll help you integrate GoReminders within your existing workflow so you can automate your appointment reminders and spend time on what matters most in your business.
GoReminders makes booking and appointment management easy. Once you book a new appointment, that customer’s information is automatically saved. The information will fill in automatically when you start typing their name and select it from the dropdown menu on their next appointment.
Depending on your preferred format, it might be easier to allow customers to sign up for their own appointments rather than you doing it for them. GoReminders gives you the option to let your clients self-book through a link you share directly with them if you choose. This way, clients can book appointments without requiring your attention.
If this doesn’t work for you, GoReminders offers the option for you to manually approve the appointment. Rather than choosing “Instant Booking” for the link you share, simply adjust the settings to “Appointment Request.” Once you approve the appointment, it’s automatically added to your calendar, triggering your appointment reminders as well. If the requested times don’t look good to you, you can reject it or modify it right on the spot.
When customers respond directly to your appointment reminders (according to your settings), this updates your appointments automatically. You can filter appointments by response (confirmed, canceled, or requested reschedule) so you can better identify what customers need. This can also help you retain business, especially if you want to reach out and find out why a customer may have canceled their appointment.
Much more than an automatic appointment reminder service, GoReminders syncs to your third-party calendars (Google Calendar, iCal, or Outlook) in real time so you can see all of your events and appointments in one place if you use another calendar service.
You can also import existing contacts into GoReminders to add to your client base. If your staff schedules appointments for you, these appointments are immediately and automatically added to your synced calendar(s).
GoReminders integrates with Zapier as well. This application allows you to integrate your GoReminders calendar and automate certain features with several other applications (including MailChimp).
With the Premium subscription, you’ll also gain access to GoReminders’ extensive API. This allows you to do most things that can be done in GoReminders. For instance, you can create, edit, and delete appointments, customers, locations, staff, services, and labels. Webhooks allow you to post data to urls you specify when triggered by an action in GoReminders (e.g. when creating an appointment or editing a staff member).
GoReminders operates via mobile and desktop platforms, with little to no training required to get started. Your GoReminders schedule displays by the day, week, or month. The agenda view allows you to see both past and future appointments in an ordered list. There are options to filter your appointments by customer, service, staff member, or any custom feature of your choosing.
We know you want to spend more time with their clients and less time on tedious tasks. If you ever need help making GoReminders work for your business, we’re here for you. You can contact us via chat or email to discuss your needs. Our customer service team is dedicated to helping our clients make the best use of all GoReminders features.
Sometimes the best way to gain new customers and grow your business is by word of mouth. Reviews are a great way to show potential customers the value of your business. GoReminders works with your clients to request feedback and reviews that benefit your business.
At the same time, that doesn’t mean every review gets posted directly to Google. Google review requests are only initiated and submitted when a client reports a good experience. If customers have a negative experience with your business, their feedback is sent directly to you (rather than spread all over the internet). You can then use this feedback to repair the relationship with your client and establish ways you can improve your business for a better experience down the road.
By setting up review automation with GoReminders, you can streamline the review process in your favor. This can be extremely useful for sending follow-up messages after appointments, allowing you to choose what reviews you publish.
Setting up automatic appointment reminders with GoReminders takes just a few minutes, yet it can save you hours of scheduling work. The software is easy to use and offers powerful communication features as well as the ability to integrate with Zapier to connect to over 3,000 apps. You’ll also have access to additional API integration, depending on which GoReminders plan you choose.
Here are just a few examples how we’ve helped our clients automate their reminders to boost sales and increase efficiency:
Whether you’re a small business with one or two employees or a large company with multiple locations (such as Guitar Center, Aflac, or Lowes), you can benefit from automating your appointment reminders as one strategy to scale and improve your business.
Setting up automatic appointment reminders can greatly benefit your business and impact your bottom line no matter your industry. If you’re looking for a solution to automate your scheduling and messaging workflow, GoReminders can revolutionize your business. Our platform offers many features to help spend more time doing great work and building relationships with your clients.
Stop wasting time sending reminders manually — you’ve got better things to do for your business! See how GoReminders can help you easily automate your appointment reminders and more by signing up for a free trial today.
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I really enjoy GoReminders! It’s definitely a great asset to our company and saves us loads of time by both reducing the amount of “confirmation calls” we need to do manually, and the amount of missed service calls due to locked gates or forgotten appointments. GoReminders is efficient and simple to use.
We always send our brides a reminder text two days before their scheduled fitting so they remember their appointment with us. They can respond to the reminder if they need to cancel or reschedule. It works exactly as we need it to!
It’s easy to schedule a second or third fitting because we store our client info in the app. The brides find it very useful to have a quick reminder sent directly to their cell phones or email address.
I’ve been using Go Reminders for my massage business. Nothing is more annoying than remembering to send reminders to clients so they don’t miss their appointments. Go Reminders is easy to use and has a clean feel and look. A couple things that I like are the appointmentsgointomyGooglecalendar, I also like that you can edit your reminder message template. Lots of other services do not let you edit. They always seem to be working on things to makeyourlifeeasier.
One challenge for our tattoo shop was last-minute cancellations from clients who made an appointment but didn’t quite know what they wanted. This left valuable appointment slots empty for my in-demand studio and was causing us to lose money. Since implementing the GoReminders online scheduler tool as my tattoo shop app, we have been able to schedule text messages to remind clients about their appointments several days in advance, prompting them to make any final decisions about their tattoos. If a client needs to cancel, the empty slot then has time to be filled by another eager client.