• Choosing an SMS Appointment Reminder Service
• How Effective are SMS appointment Reminders?
• When to send SMS Reminders

How Effective are SMS Appointment Reminder Services?

You are probably asking yourself whether SMS appointment reminders are really going to work for you and your clients.

Ultimately, there is only one way to find out - try it and see what the results are. You and your clients are unique individuals, but you should take heart from the how others have found SMS reminders have worked for them.

SMS patient reminders have been used since at least 2004, probably earlier. The earliest documented studies have been from publicly funded healthcare systems in Australia and the United Kingdom.

In Australia in 2004, SMS reminders were shown to reduce hospital outpatient nonattendance by approximately 50%. That is, out of 22,658 patients 2,210 people failed to attend and 2209 people attended who probably would not have if they had not received an SMS reminder.

In the UK in 2006, a 30% reduction in nonattendance was observed, with a small trial group. Also in the UK in 2006 a 38% reduction in nonattendance was seen in a hospital ophthalmology department in London.

A 2009 study in Brazil showed a 25% reduction in non-attendance from sending SMS reminders.

Now you might be wondering if SMS reminders are as effective as an automated telephone call to the client. It's a really good question to ask.

Fortunately, a hospital in China has asked the question and found the answer.

A Chinese study in 2007 saw a 35% drop in nonattendance for SMS reminder recipients and a 40% drop for telephone call recipients. The researchers concluded that with the small number of participants (1,848) the difference between SMS and telephone reminder results was not significant and could have happened by chance. They did compare the cost-effectiveness of SMS and telephone, and found SMS to be cheaper for the results obtained, but the prices quoted of 0.31 yuan for SMS and 0.48 yuan for telephone indicates that the labour cost of the person making the telephone call was not factored in. This is because an automated telephone call system was used. If you are making your own voice calls, the labour cost is more significant.

It is no surprise that the effectiveness of SMS reminders is higher in young people. Preliminary results from a 2008 Australian study show that nonattendance dropped by more than 50% when Reminder SMS messages were sent to young people for appointments at an urban youth health service.

The above studies show that SMS messages are definitely effective for healthcare appointment reminders, but what about other sorts of clients? Do SMS reminders boost client attendance for non-medical professionals? Yes. Real estate agents, photographers, even accountants...almost everyone who makes appointments to see clients at a specific time will see an improvement.

If your clients are under 35, more than 80% of them will prefer SMS as a means of receiving timely information from the companies they deal with. Note that it is 80% who prefer SMS; so the number who find SMS acceptable will be even greater.