Appointment Reminders for Massage Therapists

In this post we will address how appointment reminder apps can boost revenue and reduce missed appointments for massage therapists.

Causes of No Shows

There are so many reasons why a client no-shows for their appointment and nearly all of them revolve around forgetting about the appointment or forgetting to cancel or reschedule.

Regular clients may miss a standing appointment because they moved it to a different day and forgot. Maybe the client got sick and forgot to cancel. Maybe a client scheduled an urgent appointment for a pulled muscle, and forgot to cancel when the issue resolved itself.

A new client may forget because the appointment is not part of their weekly routine. Maybe they found an earlier appointment elsewhere. A new client may have found a better price with a different practitioner and forgot to cancel.

Cost of No Shows

Regardless of the reason, missed appointments really add up. The only way to avoid this revenue loss is to get clients in the door. A missed appointment not only costs the massage therapist, but also prevents that appointment from being filled.

Research shows that among massage therapists, one missed client per week can cost thousands of dollars per year or more. For a business with multiple practitioners that quickly adds up.  Across businesses, no-show rates are generally around 10%-20%.

How Appointment Reminders Reduce No Shows

Automated appointment reminders are the single greatest way to reduce no shows and boost revenue. Because forgetting is the main reason that clients no show or forget to cancel, using appointment reminders will jog their memory.

Reasons Appointment Reminders Help:

• If a client is sick and forgot to cancel, the appointment reminder jogs their memory.
• If a client moved the appointment to a different day but forgot, the appointment reminder will have the correct date.

How Reminderly Reduces No Shows

Reminderly's Appointment reminder software is specifically created for both big businesses and small businesses to get clients in the door. Whether you are an independent massage practitioner or own a massage studio, Reminderly is a perfect solution to have fewer no shows, gain business reviews, and automatically fill vacancies from the wait list.

The Wait List: When a client cancels their appointment at the last minute or no shows, the vacancy wastes time and money. Manually managing a wait list is time consuming and takes you away from your actual work. Reminderly offers automatic wait list filling. When a client cancels, Reminderly's Wait List feature will automatically fill any vacancies so that your schedule is consistently full.

Two-Way Communication: Reminderly offers two-way communication so that you can communicate with clients in real time. If a customer forgot about the appointment until they received the appointment reminder, they can respond directly to the message and communicate with you. Or perhaps they are stuck in traffic and want to let you know that they are running late, they can send a text message that you will receive through our app.

Promotes Reviews and Surveys: When turned on, Reminderly's survey feature automatically sends a follow-up 24 hours after an appointment to survey their experience. This survey is two questions:

1. How likely are you to recommend this business, on a scale of 0-10?
2. Why?

This gives you direct quantitative and qualitative feedback from your customers.

In addition or in lieu of this feature, you can schedule automatic review requests to clients, providing a link to your business's Google review page so that clients can easily leave a review that will, in turn, boost your business.

Send Multiple Reminders: You can automate upcoming appointment reminders so that a client receives more than one reminder, which can be especially helpful for a new client or someone who schedules only periodically.

Why Your Clients Will Love Reminderly

Communication is hard and breakdowns lead to no shows and lost revenue. Both of these harm clients as well, perhaps they're embarrassed or feel guilty that they missed the appointment. Maybe they really needed the appointment and now have to wait to be seen. Reminderly's appointment reminder app is beneficial to practitioners as well as clients. Here are a few reasons your clients will love Reminderly's appointment reminders.

• Communication is easy: The two-way communication features is an easy way to communicate with providers and clients love what's easy.
• Reminders Lead to Fewer No Shows: a client schedules their appointment for a reason and missing an appointment is harmful to the client as well.
• Getting Off the Wait List: Clients love when they are able to be seen earlier than originally scheduled. If a customer gets off of the wait list, they will be thrilled.

Communicate how they want:

Customers prefer different methods of communication. Voice reminders are great for some clients, while text reminders and email reminders are likely better for a totally different type of customer. At Reminderly, you can customize how customers receive their reminder messages based on their preference.

Voice Reminders: Are great for customers who are part of an older generation and may not prefer SMS reminders or email reminders.

SMS Reminders: These are fantastic for customers who are part of Gen-Z or Millennial generations.

Email Reminders: These are fantastic for a wide variety of customers, as email is fairly ubiquitous.

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