Imagine you're choosing between two housekeeping services. Both employ respectful employees, use pet and eco-friendly cleaning solutions, offer competitive pricing, and boast spotless 5-star reviews. The only major difference is Housekeeping A offers to send an appointment reminder directly to your phone while Housekeeping B lets you fend for yourself, forcing you to rely on your already over-scheduled brain to do the remembering for you.

Which would you choose? Probably Housekeeping A, right? While this example is oversimplified, the logic stands: businesses who actively meet customer needs are more likely to gain and retain customers.

Not only do automated appointment reminders help meet customer needs and increase satisfaction, but they also save businesses time, can decrease no-shows, cancellations, and late arrivals, and increase return visits. Smart software from Salesmsg offers an easy way to create, schedule, and send all the appointment reminders you need for your business.

Benefits of Automation

What is an appointment reminder text message?

Appointment reminder text messages, sometimes referred to as SMS appointment reminders, are automated texts sent to a customer that provide the location, time, date, and any other specialized instructions for an upcoming appointment. Businesses can send reminders using specialized SMS reminder software.

Why should I use text appointment reminders?

There are many benefits to automated appointment reminders. Appointment confirmation saves you time, decreases no-shows, increases rescheduling, and strengthens business-customer relations.

Saves Time

Sending text message reminders saves you time through scheduled sending and appointment reminder templates. With the right software, you can delay sending for a specific time and date after you create your reminder text. Appointment reminder templates are great time savers, offering an easy way to plug in personalized information without having to type out a text for every appointment.

Reduces No-Shows

A study conducted at the Imperial College of London showed no-show rates were 38% lower in hospital patients who received SMS reminders than those who did not. Reducing non-attendance rates isn't limited to the medical field--text message reminders can benefit your company, no matter the industry, by decreasing missed appointments, cancellations, and late arrivals.

Increases Rescheduling

Trust is a crucial component when someone is considering whether to be a repeat customer. Automated communication makes it easy to be a customer, because they can trust their provider has their back and will remind them of everything they need to know for their upcoming appointments. They will feel more confident in you and your business operations.

Boosts Customer Engagement

Customer engagement, or customer satisfaction, can be defined as a customer's emotional relationship with a brand. Just as a worthy personal relationship is built on a foundation of communication, so are producer/consumer relationships. Text reminders strengthen communication between customer and company, boosting satisfaction. Customers are more likely to revisit a service provider if they feel they've established a relationship.

To summarize, here are the top 4 reasons you need text reminders for your business.

1. Saves time
2. Reduces no-shows
3. Increases return visits
4. Boosts customer engagement

How-Tos of Automation

Before you grab your client list and start sending text message reminders to each customer, you need to understand what components go into appointment reminder messages and the best way to create them.

How do I write a text reminder?

Consider the following:

Voice matters

Is this reminder coming from a doctor’s office, beauty salon, or doggy daycare? An appointment reminder from Dr. Johnson would use a formal voice while Cute Pups Daycare's tone would be as playful as their 4-legged customers. Whatever your business, make sure your word and voice choice reflect the atmosphere and purpose of your business.

Customer Details

Make the appointment reminder personal by using the customer’s name and confirming what the appointment is for. If Anne has an upcoming hair appointment, the appointment reminder might look something like this:

"Hi, Anne! This is Jane with Best Hair Salon reminding you of your upcoming appointment for a cut and color on Thursday, July 28th at 1:00 pm. Please reply '1' to confirm your appointment or "2" to reschedule or cancel."

This way, Anne knows her stylist knows who she is and what she is expecting from her appointment. This solidifies Anne's confidence in her stylist and their business.

Additional information

Basics that should always be included in appointment reminder texts:

• Customer name
• Appointment time
• Appointment date
• Appointment location
• Appointment type

In addition to the who, where, what, and when, sometimes it is a good idea to include additional information in reminder texts such as:

• Paperwork to be filled out before the appointment
• IDs and documents to bring
• Specialized instructions

Specialized instructions from a doctor’s office may ask the customer to fast 24 hours before receiving blood work. Beauty salons may ask customers to wear loose clothing to their spray tan appointment. And a doggy daycare may ask customers to bring their dog’s favorite toy.

How does Salesmsg improve text message appointment reminders?

Salesmsg offers clients simple, secure, and scalable business texting. Smart software allows businesses to create, send, and automate appointment reminders.

Enhance the way you send appointment reminders by using features such as:

• Customizable scheduling: Businesses can choose to delay sending text message reminders or send texts right away. Simply set the date and time you want your message to send and Salesmsg software will take care of the rest.
• Calendar integrations: You no longer have to schedule appointments over the phone or in person. This smart feature allows customers to book appointments directly from your text chat.
• Emoji additions: Easily add expression and personality to your text messages. 😁👍🏻❤️💇‍♀️🐶
• Canned responses: Businesses can save time by choosing from Salesmsg's response templates.

Automated text reminders are the perfect way to touch base with customers and make sure everyone is on the same page about the upcoming appointment. Text message appointment reminders benefit your business by saving you time, decreasing no-shows, cancellations, and late arrivals, all while increasing return visits, and boosting customer engagement. Salesmsg provides all the tools businesses need to create, schedule, and send text message appointment reminders to help your company thrive.

Discover additional ways to automate all your business texting needs with a free trial or visit Salesmsg.com for more details.