Text messaging is a great way for appointment-based businesses to cut down on lost revenue. When people schedule appointments with you and don’t show up, you simply lose money. In most cases, there’s just not enough time to fill those spots where other customers could’ve been serviced.
People forget, people get busy, or they simply just don’t show up. Regardless of the reason, your business should implement a strategy that allows you to recoup some of these losses. Thankfully, this is something that can be rectified with text messaging.
Consumers today keep their mobile devices with them at all times, so reaching out via a quick text message to remind them of an appointment can actually help them keep it.
Whenever you take an appointment from a client, you can take their cell phone number and add it to your text message system along with their booking time. If you have a good system, the text message will be sent out ‘automatically’.
Some systems will require you to send out the text messages manually, which is OK if you don’t actually have that many bookings to deal with. But if you do have a lot of appointments, an automated system works best.
About a week before the appointment, you can send out a text message to your client reminding them on what day and time their appointment is. You can then urge them to get in touch with you should they wish to make any changes to it.
If they decide to change the appointment at this time (i.e. cancel it or move it to a different time), you will have an ample amount of time to find somebody to fill the gap. If they don’t respond then send another text message the day before their appointment reminding them of the date and time and that you look forward to seeing them. If they don’t respond then, they will most likely show up.
Some businesses actually send text reminders early in the day of an appointment and ask that the client lets them know if they will not be able to make it. This still allows time for them to try to fill the spot with another client.
Although many businesses actually call to remind people of their appointments, it takes up a lot of time that could be spent elsewhere. Text messaging can give you a more “automated” way to achieve your goals of cutting down on missed appointments.
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