In the age of digital distraction, it is essential that busy people have a proven way to remind them about appointments. The advantages of automated appointment reminders to inform clients or patients about upcoming visits are clear when you consider the disruptions caused by a missed appointment.
The average wait time for a medical appointment is currently 26 days. When someone misses an appointment, it sets everyone involved back by a month. The patient has to wait for care, and the provider loses out on business. Even public services, like the DMV, require citizens to schedule an appointment up to a week in advance. If someone forgets an appointment time, the driver faces an expired license and additional fines.
A missed deadline can lead to lost revenue and costly downtime for businesses. Companies that operate on an appointment basis rely on clients’ timeliness and attention spans to show up on time for each appointment. That’s why having an appointment reminder system in place is vital.
How Appointment Reminders Work
There are several ways to send appointment reminders to your clients.
- Manually: You save your client’s information and appointment details in your phone or address book and manually contact them ahead of their appointment. While there is little cost involved, this method is time-intensive and relies on you not to forget.
- Calendar Additions: Calendars and scheduling systems offer an automated booking message that records the time the person makes the appointment. Then, users must add those appointments to their personal calendars. They might receive one reminder via a calendar alert. The add-to-calendar method involves very little setup for you (the businesses), but your client could easily get distracted the day of and forget. Likewise, often one reminder is not enough to prevent no-shows.
- Fully Automated Appointment Reminder System: Fully automated appointment reminder software enables the user to set it and forget it. The event is set on the provider’s calendar, and reminders are set up in their automated solution. The provider can tailor messages’ content, frequency, and timing to their participants for maximum effect.
While each method of setting appointment reminders has its pros and cons, automated appointment reminders are the most reliable and customizable.
The Advantages of Using Appointment Reminders
Apptoto integrates with your existing workflows and calendars. It sends messages automatically to clients and patients, collects payments, reduces no-shows, and enables clients to schedule and reschedule their appointments.
Saves Time
Businesses spend countless hours manually sending appointment reminders to reduce no-shows. Automated reminders save time and have a higher response rate than manual phone call reminders. When you make your calendar available to clients, they can book appointments online at their convenience.
- Two-Way Communication: This allows all committed parties to quickly and easily adjust meeting dates and times and minimize disruptions.
- Reminders: Providers or supervisors can set the frequency and time intervals needed to keep busy people informed and on track.
- Alerts: Send a shoutout to ensure your participants are aware of last-minute changes that might impact their scheduled meeting.
- Enhanced Marketing: Providers can coordinate messaging campaigns and set up sales announcements and new product intros to go out at set times. There’s no need for the dreaded semi-cold call to the quiet clients.
Communicates with People and Calendars
Once you implement Apptoto, the system will automatically extract appointment details such as client name, date and time of appointment, and appointment type from the calendar(s) you sync. You’ll be guided to create customized messaging sequences. Once auto-messaging is enabled, Apptoto will automatically remind clients about upcoming appointments. When clients respond to reminders, the calendar updates itself to keep everything organized.
Allows Automation
Apptoto sets up automatic appointment reminders for you, your team, your partners, and most importantly, your customers. You can send clients text messages, emails, or call alerts. Likewise, multiple numbers can simultaneously receive reminders. When clients show real-time intent to attend an appointment or meeting by confirming they’ll attend, Apptoto will automatically update the businesses’ calendars. Apptoto’s fully automated appointment reminder software also includes automatic translation for certain message types into different languages.
How to Send Appointment Reminders
Appointment-based businesses must stay top-of-mind for their clients leading up to scheduled appointments. One of the best ways to achieve this is to use the Apptoto appointment reminders.
- Connect your current calendar to the Apptoto. The system will extract pertinent details concerning clients and appointments.
- Create reminder messages using Apptoto templates or start from scratch.
- Turn on the system to begin automatically reminding clients about appointments. Send the reminders at the best time of day to receive confirmation from clients.
Appointment reminders help eliminate no-shows, saving you and your staff hours each week.
Get Started with Apptoto
Apptoto lets you remain in complete control of your calendar and your appointments. Integrating seamlessly with most existing calendars, it provides online scheduling and automatic appointment reminders for a variety of industries, including tax services, legal services, sales teams, salons and spas, educational services, and financial services.
Enjoy robust features and advanced settings with the fully customizable Apptoto Appointment Relationship Management System:
- Multilingual messaging to satisfy your customers’ preferred language for doing business.
- Rule-based messaging to configure message activity dependent upon certain criteria.
- Multiple reserved numbers to fit needs.
- Auto replies for when clients take action.
- Two-way messaging that easily responds to clients from the Apptoto website or from real-time email notifications.
- Contact preferences for clients.
Get a free trial or visit our support center to learn more about our products. We help you improve your relationships with clients by freeing up time spent on clerical duties.
