Appointment reminders: what you can do today

What 4appointments does and does not do today

When a client books through the public page, the booking stays pending and holds the slot until your team confirms or rejects it. Neither action sends the client a message, and the same goes for cancellations and changes made by the team. So do not assume the client receives anything automatically. If you want them to remember the appointment, you need to contact them yourself.

• Every public booking stays pending until your team confirms or rejects it
• Confirming, rejecting, cancelling or changing a booking sends the client nothing
• The SMS and WhatsApp quotas on some plans belong to 4notify and are not used by bookings
• The manage link appears on the client’s confirmation screen only, and is not emailed

Give the client the essentials at the moment of booking

The best time to prevent a forgotten appointment is the booking itself. Tell the client, in person or on your website, when and how you will be in touch. A few details are worth knowing:

• Suggest the client saves the link to cancel or reschedule, which they see on their confirmation screen
• For bookings your team creates, the client never sees that screen: copy the manage link and send it yourself
• The phone number typed into the public form is not stored, so ask for the preferred contact when you confirm
• Recurring sessions created by your team also need their link copied and sent by hand

A manual routine for the day before, and a note on messages

A short routine done at the same time every day works better than an occasional effort. Open tomorrow’s bookings in the panel, or export the list to PDF and print it. Contact each client on the channel they gave you, by phone, a personal message or an email from your own account, and ask for a short reply confirming attendance. If someone cancels, cancel the booking in the panel so the slot is free again, and repeat the service, date, time and place in your message. Each provider can also subscribe to their own ICS link from a phone calendar, which reminds the team, not the client. Keep client messages to the service, the date, the time and how to cancel. In Hong Kong, the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Ordinance (Cap. 593) and the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance (Cap. 486) set rules for marketing messages and personal data, so check them before using your client list for news or offers. General information, not legal advice.

Common questions