How to Confirm Appointments
If your business relies heavily on appointments as it's main source of revenue, you need a proper scheduling strategy in place to make sure that missed appointments don't end of up in the no-show graveyard.
The best strategy for making sure that your customers show up for their appointments is by confirming their appointments on a regular schedule.
Step 1: Send Reminders
By sending email, sms, and phone call reminders, you give your customers an opportunity to include you in their busy schedules even if they booked the appointment in the first place. And by providing regular reminders, your customers feel like they're getting what they will be paying for - a service that puts them at the forefront of the interaction. It also gives your business a professional appearance.
A simple reminder could take the form of an email a few days before that includes their name, appointment date and time, location, service, and signature.
In addition, you could send another reminder in the form of a SMS text reminder one day in advance. And with tools like Rezque that integrates with google calendars for text message reminders, you can send an additional SMS text reminder a few hours before if your customer has yet to confirm.
Step 2: Confirming Appointments
Sending a regular schedule of reminders is splendid but if you really want your customers to show up, you need them to take some sort of action to cement their commitment psychologically to the appointment. Often times, this comes in the form of confirmations.
By having your customers click a link to confirm or respond via sms for confirmation over the course of a week prior to their scheduled appointment, you gradually condition their brains to store the appointment in their memory. Confirmed appointments typically see over a 90% commitment rate.
Step 3: Re-schedule Unconfirmed Appointments
If you're business is so busy that wait times are weeks or months into the future, your time is valualbe and you need to let your customers know that. By sending a reminder with language that reflects that with the possibility of cancellation if there is no confirmation, you can see higher rates of confirmations and subsequently show-up rates.
You could also add people to a waitlist to fill in slots where customers haven't confirmed so your business runs as efficiently as possible and you don't lose out on any potential revenue.
