Missed appointments are mostly a silence problem. The customer agreed on Tuesday, life happened, and nobody said the window out loud again before the truck left. Three texts fix the ordinary version of that. Booking. Day before. Morning of. The other status messages, on the way and job complete among them, are in the six SMS updates. This page is only the confirmation cadence. The fee you charge when the cadence still fails is the no-show policy.
Where the text actually goes out. The costing log can store an optional phone number on a job. It does not send a text. It has no schedule, so it cannot send a booking confirmation, a day-before reminder, an on-my-way note, or a review ask. Send those from the phone in your pocket, or from the field-service tool that already holds the appointment. When the visit happens, log what they paid, the time, the miles, and the parts. That is the part this product does today.
1. The booking text
Send it within a few minutes of putting the job on the board. It repeats the date, the window, and the fee rule if you have one. It is not a second sales pitch. They already said yes.
Hi Maria, Hart Electric is set for Thursday, May 7, between 10 and 12, for the bedroom outlet. The trip is $99 and comes off the repair if we do the work then. Reply YES to confirm, or call 555-0142 to move it. Reply STOP to opt out.
YES is useful if someone reads it. A reply that sits in a shared inbox until Friday is not a system. Decide who looks. If they reply NO or "can you do Friday," the job moves the same day. A confirmation you do not read is how you arrive on Thursday to an empty house that tried to tell you.
2. The day-before text
Send it the afternoon before, for jobs that are not today. Same-day bookings skip this one. There is no "day before" left, and a text about tomorrow for a job that is in four hours is how people lose trust in the messages.
Reminder: Hart Electric is coming tomorrow, Thursday, between 10 and 12. Please have someone there who can let us into the bedroom. Need a different day? Call 555-0142 today. A missed visit is the $99 trip we noted when you booked.
The fee sentence belongs here only if it was in the booking text. Introducing it the day before is a new policy. Repeating it is a reminder. Include the access note. "Someone 18 or older" and "the side gate" prevent a class of no-shows that are really locked doors.
3. The morning-of text
This is the one that saves the roll. Send it early enough that they can stop you, and late enough that it is about today. For a 10 a.m. window, 7:30 is enough. For a 1 to 3 window, mid-morning is enough. You are not trying to be first in their notifications. You are trying to reach them before the tech is on that street.
Hart Electric today between 10 and 12 for the outlet. Reply if nobody can be there and we will move it before the truck heads over. Questions, call 555-0142.
If they reply that they forgot, you still have time to pull the job and fill the slot, or to keep the slot and skip the drive to a locked door. That is cheaper than the no-show ticket. On a 15-minute wait, a half hour and 16 miles of driving, and nothing collected, the roll is $53.15 before you count the job you did not run. The policy page runs that table. The morning text is how you avoid earning the right to charge it.
What not to add to these three
- A review link. They have not had the visit. Reviews wait until after the work, on their own clock.
- A financing offer or a maintenance plan. The confirmation is a time and a place.
- A new arrival window that is tighter than the one you booked. If the board says 10 to 12, the text says 10 to 12. Surprise precision is how "you told me 10" starts.
- A fourth reminder the hour before, unless the job is genuinely easy to miss, like a gate code you still do not have. Piling texts is how they mute the thread and miss the one that mattered.
On the way is the next message, and it goes out when the truck leaves, not the night before. Keep it out of this sequence so "on the way" still means the van is moving. That message is in the six-update article and in the ETA piece.
Same-day, after hours, and members
Same-day: booking text immediately, then one reminder about two hours before the window. Skip day-before. After hours bookings get the booking text now, even if the office is done, so they see a human took it. The day-before and morning-of still happen on the normal clock.
Maintenance-plan customers get the same three texts. A plan is not a memory. The visit is still a window. If the plan includes a waived trip, the booking text should say the trip is waived, so the morning-of text does not threaten a fee you are not going to collect.
Where the sequence can live
It lives where the appointment lives. If the office moves Thursday to Friday, Friday's texts have to be the ones that send. A spreadsheet of phone numbers and a blast at 7 a.m. will remind people of jobs you rescheduled. The field-service tool that has the board is the right sender if it can do these three. Your own phone is the right sender if the book is small enough to do by hand and actually gets done.
The costing log is the wrong sender. There is no appointment in it to confirm. After the visit, log the hours, the miles, and what they paid, including a no-show fee if you collected one and zero if the driveway was empty and you waived it. The sequence cuts the misses. The log tells you what the misses you still had were worth.
Frequently asked questions
What texts confirm a service appointment?
Three. One when they book, with the date and the window. One the day before, unless the job is same-day. One the morning of, with the window again and a way to reschedule before the truck leaves.
What if they booked this morning for this afternoon?
Skip the day-before text. Send the booking confirmation immediately, and send the morning-of style reminder a couple of hours before the window, not at 7 a.m. for a 4 p.m. call if that feels early. They still need one reminder after the booking text.
Should a customer have to reply YES?
Ask for a reply on the booking text if you want a record. A human still has to move the job when they say no. A YES that nobody reads is not a confirmation.
Can a costing app send this sequence?
No. The sequence needs an appointment. The costing log has no schedule. Send these from the tool that holds the board, or from the office phone. Log the visit after it happens.
See what a missed visit costs
The sequence is the prevention. The no-show page is the fee when the truck still rolls to nobody.