While sending appointment reminders can dramatically decrease no-shows, sometimes clients just don’t show up. It happens.
But instead of letting that revenue slip out the door, you need a strategy to retarget your customers. If you drop the ball on getting that customer back into your shop, you may lose them forever (especially if they missed their first-ever appointment with you).
To make the best opportunity out of an unfortunate no-show, just send your customer a message that encourages them to reschedule their appointment. Let’s look at how to handle missed appointments and how to message your customers effectively in this delicate situation.
How to Write a Missed Appointment Message
Writing a message after a customer misses an appointment can be awkward. In professional relationships, it’s hard to talk about a negative situation while still making the customer feel valued and delighted — especially if it’s really the customer’s fault. It’s important to send a well-worded message in this instance to be clear about the situation and preserve the relationship.
Be Polite
When customers miss appointments, it’s incredibly frustrating. However, it’s important to remember that your customer’s absence almost certainly wasn’t intentional or meant to hurt your business. It was likely an accident. People have busy schedules, and it can be easy to forget an appointment if it’s scheduled a month or even a week in advance.
You don’t want to respond angrily or disrespectfully to a no–show customer for any reason. That could totally ruin the relationship with that customer (and other customers if reports of rudeness spread by word of mouth).
Instead, be polite and show understanding toward the customer so they feel comfortable and valued. You want to encourage customers to reschedule their appointment for a future date so you can secure that revenue.
Be Clear About What Happened
While you don’t want to be rude in your missed appointment message, it’s important not to beat around the bush. Be sure to explain the reason for your message in plain language (i.e. “You missed your appointment”). Your customers will appreciate the clarity and honesty.
If there are any consequences for missing appointments, you’ll want to be clear about those as well. For instance, if you have a cancellation or no-show fee, you’ll want to be explicit about how much the client was charged and why.
Provide an Easy Way to Re-Book
You’ll want to be clear about what you want them to do as well. The call to action in a missed appointment message should direct customers to re-book or reschedule their appointment. With GoReminders, you can easily send a link to your customized booking form in your missed appointment message.
Open Up the Conversation
Even if a no-show customer isn’t ready to book another appointment yet, you still want them to talk to you. This can help you open the conversation to figure out the reason the customer didn’t show up (whether it be poor timing, a busy day of the week, lack of reminders, etc.) and offer a solution if you can. Your goal is to preserve your relationship with the customer so you can keep their business.
To do this, encourage customers to reply to your message or contact you via other means (such as phone or email). With GoReminders, your customers can reply directly to your appointment reminders with a custom message at any time. You can view these responses and send a custom reply in the two-way messaging interface.
How to Handle Missed Appointments With GoReminders
You can easily manage your missed appointments with GoReminders’ native features.
Since there’s no way for a software platform to know whether or not a customer physically showed up for their appointment, you’ll need to set up a method for tracking your no-shows. GoReminders has a convenient labeling feature which allows you to filter and sort appointments by certain criteria. You can use this feature to create a custom label for each no-show appointment (name it “no-show” or something similar). When a customer misses an appointment, simply go back and apply that label to their appointment. You can then use the agenda view on your calendar and filter to show only appointments with that label. This will give you a full list of customers who didn’t show up.
You’ll then need to decide how you want to send a message to these customers. While you can always hand-write a direct message using the two-way messaging feature in GoReminders, you won’t be able to use templates to speed up the process. However, there are two methods you can use to do this in GoReminders using automatically personalized message templates. How you do it depends on your preferences and the needs of your business.
Method 1: Send Messages the Same Day
If you have a smaller customer base, you’ll likely have fewer no-shows to keep track of. But this also means each no-show carries a significant portion of your revenue. If this is the case, you may want to message those customers right away when they don’t show up (or soon after the missed appointment slot).
To do this with GoReminders, follow these steps:
- Create a Message Template: First, you’ll want to create a missed appointment message template (like the ones included below). You can name this “no-show template” or something similar.
- Create a Placeholder Appointment: Next, go to the “New” tab to create a new appointment for that customer. This isn’t a real appointment. It only functions to send an automatic reminder using your template from step 1. Set the time for a few hours or days in the future, so you can automate a personalized follow-up message with a message template right away. GoReminders will automatically fill in the saved customer information as you create the appointment.
- Select Your No-Show Template and Save: You can then select the “no-show” message template from the message dropdown menu and save the placeholder appointment. GoReminders will send them a follow-up missed appointment message (email or text) using the template of your choice.
Method 2: Send Message Blasts Monthly
If you have a large customer base, this means you’ll likely have a higher percentage of no-shows. In this case, messaging each one individually right after the missed appointment may not be practical or efficient. Instead, you can use one of the templates below to create a message blast that retargets every customer who missed an appointment that month.
To do this, you can again use the labeling feature to mark no-show appointments on your GoReminders calendar. Here are the steps to send a missed appointment message blast:
- Create a New Customer Group: Click “More” at the top of the GoReminders main interface. A menu will appear. Under “Customers” click “Groups.” This will take you to the customer group page. Click the Orange “+Create” button to create a new customer group. You can select a group of customers comprised of only customers who had an appointment labeled “no-show” in the past month.
- Create a Message Blast Template: Click “More” again, and select “Message Blasts.” When you arrive at the message blast screen, create a template using the template tags available. You can customize this however you like or use one of the message blast templates below. Customers will receive the Message Blast by email or text message, depending on the reminder type set up on their customer profile. If your customer has their reminder type set to “Both,” they will receive the Message Blast by email and text message).
- Select Your Customer Group and Save: When you send a message blast, simply select that customer group and send your message blast. This allows you to reach several customers at once with a personalized message asking them to book another appointment.
7 Best Message Templates for Missed Appointments
Using one of the methods described above, you can easily send a personalized message to recapture missed revenue from no-shows. When using {{template tags}} in any message template, GoReminders automatically fills in relevant customer information where tags are present. Here are some examples you might use for each method:
Immediate Message Templates
Use these templates for the first method (immediately messaging after a missed appointment):
1. Basic Missed Appointment Message Template
This first template is one you can use for just about any situation. It’s simple, straight to the point, and professional.
Hello {{First Name}}.
Our records show you missed your recent appointment with (Your Business Name). We hope everything is okay! You can book another appointment here: {{Booking Link}}. Please reply to this message with any questions.
2. Message Template With Personality
In some cases, you might want to put a bit more personality into your message using an informal tone. This can help customers feel more comfortable with the situation.
Hey, {{First Name}}. We missed you the other day at your appointment! Hope everything’s alright. If you want to book another appointment, you can do that here: {{Booking Link}}. Otherwise, please feel free to give us a call at (Your Business Phone).
Best,
(Your Business Name)
3. Template for No-Show Fees
If you have a no-show fee or some other consequence of missing an appointment, you’ll want to explain that to your customer as well. Especially if someone’s card is charged, you’ll want to inform them of this as soon as possible—and not in a message blast at the end of the month. Here’s an example of a template you can use for this occasion:
Hello, {{First Name}}. It looks like you missed your recent appointment with (Your Business Name). Per our no-show policy, your card has been charged a fee of (Standard No-Show Fee Amount). Sorry for any inconvenience. We would like to see you again. You can book your next appointment with us here: {{Booking Link}}.
4. Open-Ended Response Template
To help you leave the conversation open for questions or more complex responses, try using this template:
Hello, {{First Name}}. (Your Business Name) here. Sorry you couldn’t make it to your recent appointment. We hope everything is okay. If you have any questions or need help booking another appointment, please reply to this message or give us a call at (Your Business Phone Number). We’d love to see you again.
Message Blast Templates
Use these templates with the second method listed at the top of this article (sending a monthly message blast to groups of no-show customers).
5. Basic No-Show Template for Message Blasts
Here is a template you can use for any message blast that targets your no-show customers. It’s broad enough to work for several instances, but will still be personalized. With a message blast, the {{First Name}} template tag will automatically fill in with the first name for each person that receives the message.
Hello {{First Name}}. This is a message from (Your Business Name). Our records show that you missed an appointment with us this month. You can schedule a new appointment here: {{Booking Link}}. Please reach out to us if you have any questions.
6. Message Blast with Personality
If you want to send a message blast with a bit more personality or pizazz, try using this as a starting template:
Hey {{First Name}}! It looks like you missed your appointment with us this past month. Hope you’re doing well. We’d love to see you soon. You can book another appointment here when you’re ready: {{Booking Link}}.
7. Message Blast With Contact Info
Customers can reply to message blasts the same way they reply to regular appointment reminders. Use this template to request a response from a no-show customer.
Hi {{First Name}}. This is (Your Business Name). Our records show you missed an appointment with us this past month. Let us know if you need help booking your next appointment. Please reply to this message or email us at (Your Business Email) if you have any questions.
Decrease No-Shows with GoReminders
Handling a no-show customer can be a delicate situation. You don’t want to shame them or make them feel bullied just for missing an appointment. But as long as you carefully tailor your message to bring them back into your customer base, you can effectively recapture that lost revenue.
Missed appointments are unfortunate, but imagine a software that could make them almost nonexistent. GoReminders provides automated appointment reminder software that helps you decrease no-shows dramatically. Many customers have seen no-shows decrease by 80% just from sending automatic appointment reminders ahead of time with GoReminders.
https://www.goreminders.com/calendar-reminders-app”>easy to use. You’ll be ready to automate your personalized reminders and follow-up messages in less than a minute. Beyond that, there are several other native features designed to help appointment based businesses, such as:
- Two-Way Messaging
- Customizable Booking Form
- Message Blasts
- Customizable Reply Options
- Unlimited Staff, Locations, and Calendars
- Third-Party Calendar Syncing
- Zapier and API Integrations
All of these features plus the intuitive, easy-to-use design make GoReminders the perfect tool for keeping in contact with customers and managing your schedule. Try GoReminders for free!
