June 2, 2021 // Product
Appointment Reminder text messages (SMS) can be sent to customers to remind them of upcoming appointments or events. Mind-blowing, right? It seems so simple, but this small upgrade to the way your business or application handles appointments can make a huge difference in revenue. A medical practice study found that missed appointments result in $156,340.80 lost per physician, per year.
Did you know that 90% of text messages are read within three minutes? Not encouraging information if you’re still waiting for a reply from your date who stood you up last night, but it could be game-changing if you’re a dentist trying to decrease your no-show rate.
Many organizations use email reminders for appointments and other important events, but emails only have a 20% open rate. Text messages, on the other hand, have an estimated 98% open rate. Furthermore, the vast majority of people who participate in today’s markets prefer to receive text reminders over phone calls and emails.
Need more proof that appointment reminder text messages are better for business than emails? On average, it takes a person 90 minutes to respond to an email whereas a response to the average text message is only 90 seconds, once it’s been read. In efficiency terms, that’s an increase of 6,000%. To take it one step further, people are 800% more likely to respond to text messages than to an email.
Whether you’re building a B2B application, or you’re an enterprise business looking for ways to improve your communication platform, text message appointment reminders, built on the right CPaaS, are an easy win that can recapture a massive amount of lost annual revenue. SMS appointment reminders are simply the best way to remind your customer base of important events.
A few industries that can benefit greatly from appointment reminder text messages are:
Dental Practices // Just one no-show or cancellation per day can result in $30,000 in lost revenue a year for small dental practices.
Restaurants and Hospitality // 20% of reservations across the restaurant industry result in a no-show. For a restaurant with 100 seats and a $30 per person average, those no-shows result in over $100k of lost revenue a year.
Health and Fitness // Post-COVID, health and fitness professionals have seen a 29% increase in no-shows.
Personal Care and Wellness // Around 30% of appointments in the beauty industry are cancelled or missed each year, resulting in an average loss of $67k revenue per salon.
Implementing appointment reminder text messages is easily accomplished when you build your communications application on a CPaaS like Voxology. Our easy-to-use getting started guides and tutorials, coupled with our industry-leading technical customer service, ensure that you will not only be able to add appointment reminder functionality but that you’ll reduce the overall complexity involved in your telecom-related services.
curl --X POST \
https://api.voxolo.gy/v1/Messages \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-H 'X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY' \
-H 'Cache-Control: no-cache' \
-d '{
"api_no": "+19495551212",
"caller_no": "+17145551212",
"text_message": "Hi Rhonda, please confirm your appointment with Vista dental on 6/29 at 8:30am PDT. \\n Confirm: https://sho.rt/5sNZMwL \\n Reschedule or Cancel: https://sho.rt/6sNZNwL"
}
}'See our Getting Started Guide to begin your integration.
Voxology is the telecommunications backbone of industry leaders in a wide range of markets. In addition to providing your developers with the building blocks and easy-to-use SMS API for important features like Appointment Reminders, Voxology also provides the phone numbers, minutes, and call control functionality you need to modernize and maximize your entire communications infrastructure.
We supply the customized support, documentation, and starter guides your team needs to build the features you and your customers are looking for, including:
Local Phone Number Coverage // Search and provision phone numbers from our massive inventory of local numbers based on prefix (NPA-NXX), city/region, LATA, Rate Center, or postal code.
Programmable SMS/MMS // Send and receive SMS and MMS on toll-free and local phone numbers via an API.
Logging // View message and call logs to see when automated interactions took place in the application.
Answering Machine Detection // Optionally provide appointment reminders via voice, and create a customized experience for your end users — understanding whether you are leaving a message for a live person or a voicemail inbox.
Call Control // Provide seemingly endless optionality on your appointment reminder call flows via the Voice API.
SMS appointment reminders are a vital feature in your application that can not only help capture lost revenue, but also generate new revenue. SMS is the lowest common denominator for the majority of people that may interact with your application or business, and an easy win for your developers.
The importance of reducing no-shows cannot be overstated. Take it from the healthcare industry, which loses $150 billion due to no-shows every year.
Stats & Data Research Sources