Table of Contents
Introduction
An appointment cancellation or a no-show is a service business’ biggest nightmare. Do you know why?
That’s because every time a customer doesn’t show up, the time slot dedicated for them goes vacant, and that vacant slot leads to a loss of revenue.
Interesting fact – According to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), missed appointments in the healthcare sector cost the U.S. healthcare system an estimated $150 billion annually
While there are many solutions available, the one that works the best and can be fully automated as well is appointment confirmation texts. You can send a message to the customer, asking them to confirm the appointment.
Appointment confirmation texts can not only help you reduce no-shows but also help drive enhanced customer engagement.
In this article, we’ll cover everything that you need to know about appointment confirmation texts. We’ll also give you a plethora of downloadable SMS templates that you can utilize depending on your use case.
What Is An appointment Confirmation Text?
An appointment confirmation text message is sent to a customer who has an appointment coming up for a booked service. Such a text message is widely used by service-based businesses, such as healthcare practices, HVAC, plumbing companies, salons and spas, restaurants, and more. An appointment confirmation text message typically contains:
- A greeting
- Time, day, and date of the appointment
- An option to confirm, reschedule, or cancel the appointment
- Contact information of the business (phone, email)
- An option to opt out from receiving text communications from the concerned business.
Thank you for choosing <Business Name>. Your appointment has been booked for <Date, day> at <Time>. To confirm, please respond with ‘C’. If you do not wish to receive further text communications, please respond with ‘STOP’. Your appointment will remain scheduled and we will contact you using an alternate channel.”
In the healthcare industry, approximately 42% of appointments are missed and result in no-shows. Salons experience a slightly higher percentage of 44%, while restaurants encounter a lower rate of 20%. Have you ever wondered why? The primary reason is that individuals often forget about their scheduled appointments and are not reminded by the service provider.
A missed appointment not only leads to missed opportunities and revenue for the business but also makes it hard for the customers, who must then reschedule their appointment for a later date to receive the desired service.
To avoid missed appointments and no-shows, appointment confirmation texts serve as an excellent medium.
Fun fact: As per a survey, around 79% of respondents preferred texts for receiving appointment reminders and confirmations whereas only 9% of respondents preferred phone calls.
Appointment Confirmation Text Templates
Dental
General Appointment:
“Hey, Matt! You have an upcoming appointment with Dr. Rob on <Day, date> at <Time>. Please type C to confirm.”
Dental procedure:
“Hey, Sarah! You have an upcoming appointment for <name of the procedure> with <Name of the dentist> on <Day, date> at <Time>. Please click on the link to confirm your appointment.”
Dental checkup:
“Hey, Harry! This is to remind you about your dental checkup that is due on <Day, date> at <Time>. Please arrive 15 minutes before the appointment for paperwork. Kindly type C to confirm. If you wish to reschedule, please click on this link.”
Healthcare
General appointment:
“Hey, Anna! This is a reminder for your upcoming appointment on <Day, date> at <time>. Please type C to confirm or R to reschedule.”
Annual checkup:
“Hey, Chris! You have an appointment scheduled for an annual checkup on <Day, date> at <Time>. Please maintain fasting for 8 hours before the appointment. If you need to make any changes to your appointment, please call on 345678.”
Pre-operative appointment:
“Hey, Tina! This message is to confirm your pre-operative appointment with <Name of the doctor> on <Day, date> at <Time>. Please bring your insurance documents and arrive 15 minutes before the appointment. If you need to make any changes to your appointment, click on this link.”
Wellness
Fitness training session:
“Hey, Grace! This is a reminder for your fitness training session at <Name of the training center> on <Day, date> at <Time>. Remember to wear comfortable attire for the workout. Please type C to confirm your appointment or R to reschedule.”
Nutritionist consultation:
“Hey, Joe! This message is to remind you about your upcoming nutrition consultation at <Name of the wellness center> on <Day, date> at <time> with <Name of the nutritionist>. Please bring your dietary information and medical records. If you wish to make any changes to your appointment, please call us at 234567.”
Massage Therapy:
“Hey, Amy! You have a massage therapy scheduled for <Day, date> at <Time>. Please arrive 15 minutes before the appointment. Type C to confirm or R to reschedule the appointment.”
Hospitality
Spa appointment:
“Dear Shae, this message is to remind you of your upcoming spa appointment on <Day, date> at <Time>. Our skilled therapists will help you rejuvenate and unwind with a memorable spa experience. Please type C to confirm. We look forward to seeing you.”
Hotel reservation:
“Dear Guest, thank you for choosing <Name of the hotel> for your upcoming stay on <Day, date>. Your check-in will be at 14:00 hrs. Please confirm your appointment by clicking on this link. Please call us at 345678 if you wish to cancel or reschedule.”
Restaurant reservation:
“Dear Alice, thank you for choosing <Name of the restaurant> for your upcoming dinner reservation. Please confirm your reservation scheduled for <day, date> by clicking on this link.”
Veterinary/Pet Care
General appointment:
“Dear Andy, this is a reminder for your pet’s upcoming appointment on <Day, date> at <time>. Please confirm the appointment by responding to this message with ‘C’. If you need to reschedule, please call us at 2345678.”
Vaccination:
“Hey, Melissa! This is a reminder for your pet’s vaccination appointment on <Day, date> at <Time>. Please bring previous vaccination records as well. We look forward to seeing you both. Please feel free to contact us if you need to make any changes to your appointment.”
Surgical procedure:
“Hey, Jock! This is a reminder for the <Name of the procedure> scheduled for your pet on <Day, date> at <Time>. Please bring your pet’s medical records on the day of the procedure. If you wish to reschedule your appointment then please call us at 2345678.”
HVAC and Plumbing
HVAC:
“Dear Ted, you have an HVAC appointment scheduled on <Day, date> at <Time>. Our technician will be arriving at your location to take care of your HVAC needs. Please confirm C to confirm your appointment. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us at 324567.”
Plumbing:
“Hey, Shelly! This is a reminder for your cleaning appointment that is due on <Day, date> at <Time>. Our plumber will reach your location to address your plumbing needs. Please type C to confirm or R to reschedule your appointment.”
Cleaning
General/home/office cleaning:
“Dear Anita, this message is to confirm your cleaning appointment scheduled on <Day, date> at <time>. Our team will be arriving at your location to assist you with your cleaning needs. If you need to make any changes to your appointment, please call on 345678. Thank you for choosing <Name of your company>.”
Scenarios Pertaining To Appointment Confirmation Text
All you need to do is send a message to the client reminding them about their upcoming appointment and ask them to confirm the same. Here are three scenarios that can arise:
- They confirm the appointment: In this case, just relax and send them an appointment reminder on the day of the appointment as well.
- They don’t confirm the appointment: In this case, send more appointment confirmation texts. If they still don’t respond, keep their appointment on hold and be ready to accommodate another patient if they do not show up on the day of the appointment.
- They cancel/reschedule the appointment: In this case, reschedule the appointment for this patient and allocate the vacant slot to another patient. If the patient reschedules, then set up an automated confirmation text to be sent out.
Appointment confirmation works both ways, it helps the business be on top of all appointments and helps the customer secure a confirmed slot with the business.
Types Of Appointment Confirmation Texts You Can Send (With Examples)
Irrespective of the industry you belong to, there are three ways you can send appointment confirmation texts to your customers. Here’s how:
Based On The Type Of Visit
You cannot send one common message asking people to confirm appointments. It is always better to tailor the message to the nature of the visit. Is the person visiting you for the first time? Is it a follow-up appointment? Is it for a meeting or a consultation?
To help you understand better, here are some use cases:
General Appointment:
“Hey, Ben! Greetings from <Business Name>! This is to remind you that you have an appointment scheduled for <Service Name> for <Date> at <Time>. Please reply with ‘C’ to confirm the appointment. If you need to reschedule, then please click on this link”
Laboratory test:
“Hey, Cathy! We look forward to seeing you at our clinic tomorrow for the Lab test. Please maintain 8-10 hours of fasting before the appointment. Please type ‘C’ to confirm and R to reschedule your appointment.”
Specialist consultation:
“Hey, Matt! You have an upcoming appointment with <Specialist> on <Day and Date> at <Time>. Please type ‘C’ to confirm your appointment. If you wish to reschedule, please click on the link.”
Vaccination:
“Dear Linda, your vaccination is due tomorrow, 4th June at 10 am. Please type ‘C’ to confirm your appointment. If you wish to reschedule, please click on this link.”
Dental Visit:
“Hey, Darren! You have a dental appointment scheduled for <Day and date> at <Time>. Please arrive at the clinic 15 minutes prior and carry your insurance documents. If you wish to make any changes to the appointment, click on this link.”
Based On The Customer
New Customer:
“Hey, Brent! We are excited to serve you at our clinic. You have an appointment scheduled for <Day, date> at <Time> with <Provider>. Please confirm your appointment by clicking on this link. If you wish to reschedule, please contact us at 65789087”
Existing customer:
“Dear Jess, we are excited to have you back at <business> for your upcoming appointment on <day, date> at <time>. Please type ‘C’ to confirm. If you wish to reschedule your appointment, please click on this link.”
A customer who has reached out 6 months after their first appointment:
“Dear Paula, we are delighted to have you back! It’s been six months since your last appointment and we appreciate your continued trust in our services. Please confirm your appointment that is scheduled for <day, date> at <time> by responding to this message with a ‘C’. If you need to reschedule, please call us at 456785678.”
Based On The Status Of The Appointment
Confirmed appointment
“Dear Sarah, your appointment has been confirmed for <day, date> at <time>. Please bring your lab results and insurance documents along. We look forward to seeing you.”
Unconfirmed appointment:
“Hey Justin, you have an upcoming appointment for <service name> on <day, date> at <time>. We have not yet received a confirmation from your end. To ensure that we can accommodate your appointment, please type ‘C’ to confirm.”
Rescheduled appointment :
‘Hey, Lisa! We have received your request to reschedule the appointment for <day, date> at <time>. Please confirm your appointment with a ‘C’. If you need to make any further changes to your appointment, please click on this link.”
Canceled appointment
- If the customer has canceled their appointment
“Hey Luke, we have received your cancelation request for your appointment that was scheduled for <day, date> at <time>. If you need to reschedule, please click on this link.”
- If the provider has canceled the appointment
“Dear Luke, we regret to inform you that your appointment scheduled for tomorrow has been canceled. Please click on this link to reschedule. We apologize for the inconvenience caused.”
Pre-saving these templates can help you send messages quickly to your customers. Here’s how you can use templates on Emitrr.
Why Should You Send Appointment Confirmation Texts?
To Reduce No-Shows
As discussed above, increased no-show rates can adversely affect a business. To mitigate no-shows you first need to know what the no-show rate currently is at your business. When you send appointment confirmation text reminders to customers it helps reduce the number of no-shows as it ensures that the customer does not forget about their appointment. Even if they are unable to make it to the appointment, you will be informed about it before the appointment. This will help you book the appointment slot for someone else.
How to calculate no-show rates?
You can calculate no-show rates by following this formula:
No-show rate = (number of missed appointments/ total number of appointments scheduled) * 100
For example, if you have 200 appointments in total for months and have 50 missed appointments from those 200 appointments, then your no-show rate would be:
(50/200) X 100 = 25%
Though it varies with the industry, the average no-show rate of 5-10% is considered to be normal. However, it is best that you keep it under 5%.
To Help With Cancellations And Rescheduling
Appointment confirmation reminders help in more ways than one. They can be drafted such that they include a CTA in the message body. The CTA can prompt the customer to confirm their presence. For example,
“You have an appointment with {{Business Name}} at {{Time}} on {{Date}}.Please reply to this email with C to confirm, R to reschedule, or X to cancel.”
If the customer responds with the intent of cancelling or scheduling the appointment again, you can immediately follow up that text with a new appointment booking link. This will allow you to use the freed-up slot to assign the appointment to a new customer whilst still retaining the previous customer.
To Save Time
Appointment confirmation text messages help in efficient communication between the service provider and the customer. If automated, these messages can be sent out at different intervals to the customer, with minimal intervention. This means that you need not manually follow up with your customers. Also, since messages have a better response rate than email and phones, they are better for getting timely responses. Hence appointment confirmation text messages help save a lot of time.
To Make Customers Feel At ease
Appointment confirmations have now become synonymous with appointment scheduling and bookings. It is expected of businesses that pre-book appointments with customers to keep them in the loop about upcoming appointments. These ascertain a feeling of relief to the customers that have pre-paid money for the booking.
To Enhance Customer Experience
An appointment confirmation displays your business’s professionalism. It shows to the customer that you are serious about providing a good experience for them. A prior confirmation about the appointment helps the customer schedule their day accordingly.
It also allows you to structure your day according to the scheduled appointments and make operations smoother at your business.
What starts with an appointment confirmation can translate to an entirely smooth experience for the customer.
What Happens When You Don’t Send Out Appointment Confirmation Texts?
Well, not sending appointment confirmations means that you’re the one in trouble. Here’s why:
Your customers will be frustrated
When there is a missed appointment, it is mostly because the customer forgot about it. If you don’t send out confirmation texts to your customers, you are showing them that you don’t care whether they show up for the appointment or not. If your customers forget about their appointment, they’ll probably never avail service from you and they’ll think that the least you could have done was send a reminder.
You lose revenue
When you have no-shows, your appointment slots go empty. This means that you don’t have the time to accommodate other appointments in those empty slots. Did you know that the US healthcare industry as a whole has suffered a loss of $150 billion in revenue due to appointment no-shows? When you don’t send reminders and confirmation texts, you’re potentially losing out on a lot of revenue because you’re assuming that the customer remembers about their appointment and they will show up. Sending appointment confirmation texts is a basic hygiene practice that you must undertake to ensure that your no-show rate is as low as possible.
You have a negative brand image
Sending appointment confirmation texts is a way to show your customers that you are determined to provide them with great service and are waiting for them. If you send them a text with their appointment details, they’ll be impressed that you care about them. Not following that practice will not only disrupt your operations big time but will also demonstrate that you aren’t customer-focused. This will portray your business in a negative light, will bring in negative reviews, and hence adversely affect your online reputation.
There will be gaps in communication
Appointment confirmation texts not only help you communicate effectively with your clients but also facilitate internal communication. You and your staff will be on the same page concerning the appointment and will make all the necessary arrangements for the customers. If there aren’t any confirmed appointments, you will end up getting confused and your staff also won’t know how to proceed with things.
Due to the aforementioned reasons, you must have a strong strategy in place to send out appointment confirmation texts. However, you cannot do that manually as it would end up taking a lot of time. Hence, automation is the answer to facilitate smooth communication and avoid no-shows.
Best Practices For Sending Appointment Confirmation Texts
Send out reminders and follow-ups actively
After booking appointments, make sure to send out appointment reminders to your customers. Also, sending just one reminder isn’t enough. Send enough reminders to ensure that the customer doesn’t miss out on the appointment. You can send one reminder 5 days before the appointment, one reminder two days before the appointment, and one reminder on the day of the appointment. You can send follow-up appointments using software like Emitrr to automate this process.
Ensure a smooth confirmation process
Asking customers to confirm their appointments should not be cumbersome. For example, instead of asking them to go to your website and confirm their appointment status, you can simply ask them over text to confirm. For example, ‘Please type C to confirm’ is a great way to ask customers to confirm their appointments.
Use a text messaging software
To automate your appointment confirmation process, you must sign up for texting software that will ease your operations and will engage and communicate with your customers in a better way. Software like Emitrr can help you send out personalized, concise, and automated appointment confirmation texts.
Have a confirmation policy in place
When you send appointment confirmation texts and the customers aren’t responding to those, then have a confirmation policy that allows you to book that particular slot for another customer. For example, you can send out a message saying, “Hey, you have an upcoming appointment on (day, date) at time. Please type C to confirm latest by 5 pm today.”
Introduce pre-payments
When you book appointments, have your customers make payments in advance. When customers pay in advance, they will most likely remember that they have an appointment coming up and will show up. However, irrespective of the same, make sure to confirm the appointments via text.
How To Send An Appointment Confirmation Text Using Emitrr?
Did you know that you can automate the entire process of sending appointment confirmation texts and save up to 2 hours of your daily time?
If you wish to streamline your workflows, then you need a business texting software like Emitrr.
With Emitrr’s reminder and confirmation capability, you can easily set up automated and customized text messages for your patients or clients.
You can even use editable templates to save time and can define the frequency of sending your messages. This five-minute job of setting automated messages can further:
- Save hours worth of time sending appointment confirmations on the spot
- Help you reduce no-shows
- Help you reschedule appointments in case of last-minute cancellations
- Keep your schedules packed
- Ensure good customer communication and engagement
Sending an appointment confirmation text using Emitrr is quite simple. Follow these steps:
- Login to the Emitrr dashboard
- On the left navigation panel, select Text Campaigns>Manual
- Select Send Campaign
- Add the below given details
- Select Next>Add list
- Click Send
Checkout this video to understand the process in detail:
With Emitrr, you can set up customized and automated text appointment reminders and confirmations, schedule text messages to be sent out at later dates, and track the status of the confirmation. For the unconfirmed customers, you can send out personalized and automated follow-ups, to ensure that no slot goes empty.
Conclusion
Appointment confirmations are an excellent method to ensure that a slot at your business does not go to waste. It helps you maintain a full schedule and stay one step ahead at all times. With the knowledge of a customer’s appointment status, you can effectively structure your day or week.
If you desire to reduce no-shows and minimize revenue loss, it is high time to invest in appointment confirmation software like Emitrr. Book a demo today to automate the entire process and make it three times easier to keep track of your customers.
Leave a Reply