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Using automated reminders to reduce missed appointments

A common complaint we hear from Shopify merchants taking appointments is the frustration when a client doesn’t show up for an appointment. It’s lost revenue for the merchant when the appointment slot gets missed and lost time in managing the re-booking process. Today I’m going to talk about some of the native features of BookThatApp to help reduce no shows and maximise your service revenue.

The best way to ensure a customer shows up is to remind them! And luckily there are a quite a few ways to do this.

First, ensure that your Shopify order confirmation includes the date and time of the booking. This means the customer is getting an immediate order confirmation that includes the booking information. To enhance the order confirmation, BookThatApp supports sending a specific booking notification to customers along with an .ICS calendar file that they can add to their personal calendar with just one click. This notification can also be customised to add information that is specific to the booking. This is ideal if you sell regular products as well as renting products or booking appointments on your Shopify store.

Next, you’ll want to be sure you send out a booking notification reminder prior to the event. BookThatApp offers both manual and automated reminders, depending on your plan. All reminders include the .ICS file so that customers can easily pop the booking into their personal calendar.

For manual reminders, first, decide on a suitable timeframe before the booking when you want to send out the reminder. Next, use the BookThatApp runsheet to create your customer list and send out the reminder to all attendees at once.

For merchants using Automated reminders, the options are endless! You can choose to send a single or multiple reminder notifications using both email and SMS. Reminders can be scheduled to be sent before or after the booking. Sending out a notification after the booking is great way to get feedback about the rental experience or the service provided at the appointment. You can include a link to a follow up survey for more detailed feedback, or include an offer to re-book their next product rental or service appointment. You are only limited by your own creativity. Just be careful that you aren’t sending out too many!

Another great way to minimise no-shows is to offer the customers the ability to cancel and reschedule their bookings online. If you have Shopify customer accounts enabled, you can allow customers to log in to view and cancel their bookings online. They can then navigate directly to your booking page to re-book. Merchants who have added the ability to cancel bookings online have reported a significant decrease in missed bookings.

I hope some of these tips have been helpful to demonstrate some of the tools available to minimise missed appointments. If you have any other tips, please be sure to leave them in the comments section to share with fellow Shopify merchants!

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