Most no-shows are not people changing their mind. They are people who forgot, and who would have come if something had reminded them the evening before.
Twenty messages are written already, for email and for text, for the customer and for your staff. They are switches rather than homework.
01 What is written already
Booked, reminders at 24 hours, 6 hours and 1 hour, rescheduled, cancelled, paid, and a follow-up after the visit — each in both email and text, addressed either to the customer or to the staff member who is doing the work.
A new business starts with the booking confirmation and the 24-hour reminder switched on, because those two do most of the work. Everything else waits until you ask for it.
02 Every text is one segment
A text message costs by the segment, and a message that runs to 161 characters costs twice as much as one that runs to 160. Every ready-made text is written to fit a single segment, so a reminder costs one message rather than three.
The wording improves for everyone when we improve it, because the message body comes from the catalogue rather than being copied into your account at signup.
03 When you want something of your own
Underneath the switches there is a builder: pick the event, add conditions, order the actions. Send a different message for a first visit than for a regular. Notify a particular staff member only when a specific service is booked.
Twenty-eight shortcodes fill in the details — the customer’s name, the service, the time in their zone, the balance owing, the booking number, a link to manage the appointment.
04 Sent once, even when things go wrong
Jobs carry deterministic identifiers and every send is claimed against a unique log entry, so a retry after a network failure cannot produce a second message. This matters more than it sounds: nothing erodes trust like a customer getting the same reminder four times at two in the morning.
A reconciler sweeps behind the scheduler and catches reminders whose moment passed while something was down, rather than silently skipping them.
05 Your own address, or ours
Email can go through our sender or through your own SMTP, so replies land in the inbox you already read. Gmail can be connected directly.
Text messages can run on our pooled numbers with credits, or on your own Twilio account with no credits at all. WhatsApp uses the same driver.
Questions
- Do reminders cost extra?
- Email is included. Text messages cost credits when they run on our numbers, and nothing from us when you bring your own Twilio account — you just pay Twilio.
- Can a customer reply to a reminder?
- To an email, yes, if it is sent from your own address. Texts are sent from a pooled number by default, so replies are not guaranteed to reach you unless you use your own.
- What language does the customer get?
- Theirs, where you offer it. Notifications follow the language the customer used when booking.
- Can I stop reminders for one appointment?
- Yes. Notifications can be suppressed per appointment when you create or edit it.
