Reminders
A short call, with exactly one question.
The appointment reminder is the best-defined automated call there is: one purpose, one useful answer, one clear ending. That is also why it is the first thing worth automating, whatever the trade. This page is about the mechanism rather than about any one industry.
The assistant dials tomorrow appointments, asks whether the person is coming, and writes the answer as a state on the booking: confirmed, moved or cancelled. Whatever frees up early can be offered to somebody else, and whoever does not answer goes to retry under the rules you set.
Where this exact call fits
The reminder works identically across trades that look nothing alike, because the question is the same. What differs is what happens to the hour that frees up.
Practices and clinics
Confirming tomorrow consultation, with the preparation instruction repeated at the end.
Salons and gyms
Confirming the booked hour, where a cancellation twenty-four hours out can still be sold.
Car service
Confirming attendance for a service, and checking the car really is coming on the day the ramp is held.
Deliveries and call-outs
Confirming somebody will be home in the announced window, before the van leaves.
Interviews and assessments
Confirming the candidate will attend, where a no-show costs an hour of somebody diary.
How a wave of reminders is dialled
Reminders are dialled as an outbound campaign rather than as individual calls, because the hard part is not the call — it is the rules about who must not be dialled.
- 01 Upload tomorrow list A file with name, number and appointment time. Columns we do not recognise become per-contact variables, usable directly in the prompt.
- 02 Set the window and the rules The days and hours dialling is allowed, the suppression list, the retry count. Anything outside the rules is not dialled, and the reason is written down.
- 03 The assistant asks the question One question, put briefly. A reminder call that runs longer than forty seconds is a badly written reminder call.
- 04 Write the state Confirmed, moved or cancelled, as structured output, plus the new time if the person asked for one and the assistant found it in the calendar.
- 05 Read the report At the end you have how many confirmed, moved and did not answer, and for every contact not dialled, which of the fixed reasons applied.
What is written against each booking
A wave of reminders is only useful if the next morning you can look in one place and see who is coming.
| The booking state | Confirmed, moved or cancelled, as structured output on the call, with the same values every time. |
|---|---|
| In the calendar | A cancellation frees the hour and a move creates the new event, if you connected a calendar. |
| In the campaign report | The outcome per contact, and the fixed reason for every contact that was skipped. |
| On the call record | The transcript and the ended reason, including voicemail detection when an answering machine picked up. |
What a wave of reminders does not do
The automated reminder is also the easiest place to end up with a complaint, so the limits matter more than the mechanism.
- It guarantees you no drop in no-shows It is a mechanism with a generally understood effect, but we have not measured it at volume, so there is no percentage on this page.
- It does not choose who to call The list comes from you. The product builds no segments and decides nobody worth dialling.
- It does not override the calling rules The hours, the days and the suppression list can be overridden with a switch, but the liability stays yours, and the campaigns page says so just as plainly.
- It does not refill the freed slot by itself It can dial a waiting list you supply, but it does not pick who to ring when an hour opens up.
- It has not been run at large volume The dispatcher overlap safety is proven with concurrency tests, not with a real campaign at scale.
What people ask about reminders
How far ahead should the call go out?
Early enough that the freed hour can still be sold. For a salon that means the day before; for an imaging clinic it might mean two, because preparation starts earlier. You choose the window on the campaign.
What happens if an answering machine picks up?
The call closes with the voicemail-detected reason, and the contact goes to retry if your policy allows it. Detection is switched on per campaign.
Can it move the appointment during the call?
Yes, if a calendar is connected: it searches for free slots and creates the new event. With no calendar connected it can only record the move request as a structured result, which a person then resolves.
Is it legal to call customers with a machine?
That depends on the basis you have for the call and the hour you dial, and both of those are yours rather than ours. The product gives you the calling window, the suppression list, opt-out marking, and a written reason for every contact not dialled. The rest is a legal decision we cannot make for you.
Where to go next
Outbound campaign
Contacts, pacing, window, compliance, start, report.
Integrations
25 business connectors, 18 selectable providers, eight storage destinations.
Telephony
Numbers, trunks, dial plan, queues, operators and campaigns, in one system.
Pricing
Components at their published price, the platform on top, and what we cannot price yet.
Notes
-
1
The tools named on this page are the ones in
App\Services\Integrations\ConnectorRegistrycarryingimplemented. Anything that is only in the catalogue, without that flag, is not named here as though it worked. -
2
For every contact not dialled, the campaign writes one of the fixed reasons from
App\Enums\CampaignSkipReason, and calls answered by a machine close with the voicemail-detected reason.