As we listened to her story, we thought she had done everything right because she worked with a reputable company. We thought they really did want to provide great service, but the sales staff left out a critical part of the installation process – the installer wouldn’t haul away stained carpet. The customer service staff wanted to help, but our colleague couldn’t reach them on installation day because she got caught in endless voicemail loops. When she finally reached them, customer service couldn’t get in touch with the installer quickly enough to resolve the issue. Our colleague faced a huge expense to find and hire someone else to dispose of the old carpet.

The End of the Story & Critical Solutions

The installers eventually gave in and finished the job, but they trashed the old carpet in a dumpster the homeowners’ association had supplied for a different project. Our colleague faced fines from the HOA for improper use of the dumpster. It’s easy to see why she won’t use this supplier again. But it all could have been avoided.

How? By using text messaging to standardize scheduling, deliver consistent installation tips, and connect customers with customer service and installers quickly. We think text messaging can help you turn a disgruntled customer into a delighted customer. Remember: you can’t help a customer that you can’t reach.

How Can Text Messaging Help You Schedule Installation?

If you sell products or services that need installation, text messages can help you reach your customer wherever they are. Your customers actually prefer texts to emails or phone calls. Consider this:

• Nathan Eddy writes in eWeek, “Over half of [survey] respondents (52 percent) said they would be likely to text with a customer support agent. Similarly, 52 percent would prefer texting customer support more than their current preferred method of communication.”
• Globally, we send more than five billion texts a day – not counting other types of messages – and we open 98 percent of them. Conversely, we only open emails 22 percent of the time, according to Gigaom. Research from Asurion shows that we look at our phones 96 times a day or once every 10 minutes.

Clearly, we like to text and find it helpful in personal interactions. We think the next big business opportunity is to make messaging a regular part of customer support.

Text messages, either SMS or MMS, are versatile. They are immediate because your message goes directly to your customer’s phone. Text messages are brief but they can link to much more information like calendars, web pages, PDFs, videos or podcasts. You can deliver the same critical information about the installation to every customer, every time.

And during the sale, your customer can opt into receiving text messages. You can include it as part of the sales process.

When you set up a new messaging campaign, we recommend that you plan the flow of text messages using both templates and automated delivery. You decide what information your customer needs and in what order – the next text message in the sequence is triggered by the customer’s response to the last text. If you don’t receive a response within a certain time, your system sends a reminder text. If you don’t receive a response or your customer indicates a problem, the issue can be referred to a live customer service rep automatically.

If our colleague’s carpet company had used this type of system, they could have given her options for carpet removal and disposal long before the day of installation. They might have been able to keep a customer.

Let SMS-Magic Help You

We think SMS-Magic can help you eliminate nightmares when you’re scheduling installation for your products. SMS-Magic can help provide a great experience for your customers, too. We offer conversational messaging so that your customers can respond to your texts. If you want to tie into your CRM, we work particularly well with Salesforce and Zoho, but we can help you with many others, and we work with all the messaging apps like Messenger and WhatsApp, so you don’t sacrifice anything to reach your best customers wherever they are!

Contact us to set up a demo or to start your free trial. Let us show you how SMS-Magic can help you end the nightmare of scheduling installations!

Defining Scheduling via SMS Messages

Scheduling via SMS messages is when a series of messages are sent to schedule, confirm, and then remind people of their commitments. Messages are scheduled via an automation system to deliver at the frequency you desire. Each message that’s sent can result in other messages, depending on how your recipient responds.

SMS messages can be used for a variety of business use cases around scheduling. Anytime you need to schedule an event, appointment, series of meetings or personal appointments, intelligent messaging is your answer.

Your options are many, but include:

• Appointments: The most basic type of scheduling is used for scheduling appointments for services, including healthcare, wellness, beauty, and maintenance.
• Meetings. Is your CEO or other executive visiting a city to meet with prospects and customers? You can reach out to offer them a personal meeting, confirm it and then remind them. Or you can schedule the meetings individually and then use messaging to confirm and remind them.
• Interviews. The Converse Scheduling App can be used to schedule interviews for jobs, education, enrollment and more.
• Webinars and online events. You can promote your event, enroll your attendees, confirm their enrollment and remind them of the upcoming event through an automated conversation flow.
• Live events. Promote your live events with customers, prospects, students, and more through messaging. Compel people to register with Calls to Action (CTA) and discounts, confirm their registration and remind them of the event, automatically. You can also send additional promotional offers around the event through messaging after someone registers. Or offer different CTAs for those who don’t register.

Why Become a Textpert at Scheduling?

Reduce Costs: In our example above, a missed healthcare appointment costs $200, on average. Even if you only had one no show per day, at the end of the week, that’s 5 missed appointments at a cost of $1,000. Over the period of one year, the cost spirals to $52,000.00. Text messaging puts reminders—literally—in the palm of your customers’ hands. It’s simple and intuitive for people to either confirm or reschedule within seconds of receiving the reminder message.

Lower Effort: Today’s consumers want control over their options. They want to use whatever channel is most convenient and lowest effort to take care of their scheduling needs at their leisure. Text messaging for scheduling provides them with the autonomy and immediacy they desire. Automating the process also reduces effort and time for your staff in relation to scheduling—time they can spend focused on your customers and running your business.

Increase Revenues: See the reduction in costs for missed appointments above. By using text messaging to confirm or know you can reschedule a newly released time, you’ll see that money you thought lost now flow into your business. Time, once lost, cannot be resold.

The Converse App for Scheduling Puts Automation to Work

Using conversational text messaging to schedule events and meetings is simple. It also results in far fewer missed meetings or last-minute cancellations.

Scheduling message campaigns generally follow these steps. We’ll use an event as the example, but the process for a meeting is very similar.

Offer your meeting via text message. Simply send a message to an individual or a list that includes the link to your online scheduling application.

Capture their appointment. Be sure to have your calendar integrate with your CRM to add the appointment to the individual’s record. When an individual schedules a time in your calendar, their record updates and will trigger your message campaign for confirmation and reminders.

Create your message content, using best practice templates included in your Converse App to create your confirmation and reminder messages, as well as your offer to reschedule online.

Define the timing for your messages. How often do you want to remind your attendees of the meeting? What offers do you want to send along with the reminders?

Define your response flow. Do you want to offer the option to reschedule their meeting time? If so, you’ll want to define the Keywords for them to respond, and the conversation flow for cancellation or rescheduling.

It’s really that simple. People will love the ease of scheduling a meeting or registering for an event online, with immediate confirmation on their mobile device. Since more than 90% of messages are read, your appointment reminder has a much better chance of being seen, thereby reducing no shows. The ease of replying with a keyword to reschedule, should the need arise means you’ll have less empty slots in your schedule, increasing your revenue and the people you can serve.

Find out more about Converse Apps and transform your campaigns and communications—into relevant experiences that your potential and existing customers will thank you for sharing. It’s easier than ever to reach and engage your audiences with relevant content that drives business growth.

You know the drill: You schedule appointments with patients or clients, then you have to call to remind them. Your phone call goes to voicemail, so you send an email to make sure they get the reminder, only to have that email sit unread in their inbox. Or the patient does respond, but to reschedule their appointment at the last minute, leaving that time open that another patient could have used.

Using SMS messages to schedule appointments is more convenient for patients and more readily to be seen and responded to than voice mail or email. The result for your practice is far fewer missed appointments or last-minute cancellations.

• Communicate the way they prefer: Patients love the ease of scheduling an appointment or series of appointments with immediate confirmation texted back to their mobile device.
• Break through the noise: Since their phone is always with them, you’re more likely to reach them as they’re 6X more likely to read text messages than respond to any other communication channel.
• Make responding convenient: The ability to reschedule right from their smartphone means they can do so at their convenience, no matter where they are.

Your patients have busy lives. Your practice must optimize the time available for appointments to help your patients stay healthy and well. Text messaging offers a simple way to provide value to both your patients and your practice.

How to Schedule Appointments with Text Messaging

Scheduling appointments with messaging generally follows these steps.

Please note: In the conversations below, green represents an automated conversation, yellow represents a 1:1 conversation.

Offer your patient an appointment calendar via SMS messages. Simply send a message to an individual (or a list of patients) that includes the link to your online scheduling application.

 

Automatically update the patient’s record. Your calendar application integrates with your CRM to update the patient’s record with the new appointment. This update triggers an automated message campaign for confirmation and reminders, taking the load off your front office staff.

 

Automate rescheduling when a patient has a conflict. When a patient replies #CHANGE, the rescheduling message flow is automatically triggered.

 

Automatically confirm the new appointment. When the patient reschedules, an updated confirmation message is sent, and the reminder process is restarted. Reminders can be set to automatically send at intervals you specify.

 

Use SMS Messages to Remind Patients of Other Needs

There are times when patients must bring documents to their appointments or take actions prior to their appointments. You may need to make a copy of their updated insurance card or have them fast before a lab test, for example. These reminders can also be automated via text messaging based on the type of appointment that’s scheduled.

 

The Bottom Line

Scheduling and confirming patient appointments has never been easier. Conversational text messaging will save your front office staff time and your patients will sense a higher level of care and attention. They’ll feel empowered to ask questions, reschedule appointments easily and remember what they need to do before—or bring with them—to their appointments.

You’ll have happier patients and a more efficient practice.