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Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

Clickable link: http://www.appointmentreminder.org

A funny HN story here: back in my last month or so at the company, when the seeds of this idea were germinating, I was going to call this NotiPhone, but had some minor worries about Apple going after be for selling something that was not iPhones. I had mentally gotten over that and was going to register the domains as soon as I got back a three day stint at the office... and on the last day, Notifo (YC10) launched. Going with NotiPhone struck me as professionally discourteous so I went back to my old trusty generic.

(I did end up buying the domains eventually because, hey, you never know.)

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I don't like this Patrick, sorry. No "congrats" and "pat on the back" here.

You know, I do get a personal call from my dentist, carpet cleaner, and my kids' doctor before an appointment. I call my customers before meeting with them too.

But what a waste of time for all of us right? Why not send out this automated voice mail message instead:

"Don't be late! I don't have time to call you, but you better have time to meet and PAY me."

Nice.

I think you'll be able to sell it, but it seems like a DIS-service to me.

Also, NOTHING pisses my wife off more than a voice mail from an automated system.

Just yesterday she got one from a local service we donate clothes to (pretty sure it was them again), and she let out a throaty roar in the kitchen because she hates them so much, she wants a different service now.

I upmodded you from zero, because negative feedback is even more valuable than positive feedback, and it probably does Patrick a disservice to try to filter out the negative stuff.

That said: we get automated calls from a couple of different things in our life, and while I can't say that I love the calls, they are effective --- they actually change behavior.

I agree actually. Sears automatically called us about a service call. And it wasn't a big deal.

That being said, when we bought a stove at Home Depot, we received a personal call from the truck driver delivering the product to see if we were ready and where would be the most convenient place for him to carry it into the house.

So, automation probably does work sometimes, but if it's not all the time, then it's just an administration problem (as noted in the thread above)

Ya.. I wonder if you could crowdsource something like this? Pay folks a smallish commission to place the calls for you through a Twilio interface. I know of some answering services that work more or less that way, and they seem to do well. I'd imagine you can get a $2-$4 (somewhere in that range) per call, so pay a $1 commission per call. Use Twilio to record the calls to audit quality.

"Crowdsourcing" works well when workers can vote on a best solution. But you only get one crack at a customer contact.

How many customers are we talking?

If you get 10 customers a day, you treat each one like they're a duke; if 100 a day, each one is made to feel like a person. 1000 customers per day are a vague blur, an avalanche of humanity of whom only occasional glimpses are clear, 10,000 customers a day is statistics, and 10 Million per day is an abstraction.

Different businesses deal with different customers and different customer volumes change the shape and functionality of the organizations that serve them.

The question for you is, at what scale does a business built on somewhat random customer service experiences work?

You're welcome to your opinion. The market is big enough to accommodate folks of your persuasion as well as folks of mine. (If some day you are getting customers because of an outspoken dogged resistance to using Appointment Reminder, trust me, we'll both be thrilled.)

How did you estimate the market for this product by the way?

I didn't bother, since estimating market size is witchcraft.

The American Massage Therapy association has 57,000 members. Massage therapists are a small portion of the overall personal/professional services industry. 57k / small number = big number. Does it matter if it is 400k or 4 million or 40 million? Not to me. (If I was going for VC, yeah, there are 40 million -- you can see it right here on this chart in the up and to the right portion.)

This is a good attitude. It's worthwhile to be aware of the sensitivities involved in this, but the key is to execute and iterate.

Just to share a related experience:

We recently set up a free diet program that also involved behavioral change. The conversion rate on the site in terms of signups were great (about 70% actually). We were also tracking a couple of products that were integral with the diet that we referred our customers to and the sales weren't quite close to matching the numbers we were seeing.

Long story short, we tried asking for phone numbers, and those who provided were given calls a couple of days after signing up, and the response rate has shot up exponentially, including sales of the products. The people didn't mind the calls either, even after we asked if we could call them once a week to follow up on progress.

Of course, these were personal calls, not automated ones.

Email reminders are also automated, yet you are more likely to miss it because we're not glued to our monitors 24/7. A phonecall however is more likely to get your attention. There's been many times I've missed or forgotten something that could have been prevented with a short call or text message.

There needs to be a nice balance between the needs of the business, and the needs of the customer. As a customer, you need to recognize that businesses aren't doing this to annoy you, and that missed appointments are something that they cannot afford. As a business, they need to recognize that services like this can be off-putting to their customers.

That said, perhaps a good balance would be for the business to integrate their policies with a system like this: allow customers to exempt themselves from the reminder system either in part or in whole, and then make sure those customers get charged extra if they miss an appointment.

If someone had this service of Patrick's, and then they had "some" customers on it, and other not, then it becomes an administration nightmare. Your staff would still have to take the time to look-up everyone and see who's getting called and who's not, and it's one more thing to keep track of. This burns a hole right through the benefits of automation.

Or just ask the people when they make the appointment if they would like a reminder SMS.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but, as a customer, I don't "need to recognize" anything.

If you don't realize that not showing up for an appointment is extremely discourteous and more importantly costing someone money, then yes you do have something you need to recognize.

Does someone seriously disagree that not showing up for an appointment is discourteous and costs someone money?

Yes

Why?

Because thats what appointment means. How would a customer feel if the service provider books say 5 customers at the same time and provide services to only one.

When you book an appointment with a service provider, service provider cannot book anyone else, EVEN if some other customer is interested to obtain their services at the same time.

You lost me there. You said that it is not discourteous and doesn’t cost someone money when the customer doesn’t show up to the appointment, right? What does this answer have to do with that?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but that's exactly the attitude that keeps companies and customers pissed off at each-other.

I like reminders. I forget stuff.

But I hate interruptions. Make the interruption as quick as possible. To me the advantage of getting a recording is the minimal interaction. I don't have to exchange greetings with a robot. So make it fast.

I may not be representative.

Actually, overall I love the idea! I think there is tremendous value in this service.

I would just want one additional feature: allowing people to opt-out. A lot of appointments are recurring, take hair-cut for an example. This will work effectively for the first time, however some customers (who actually remember appointment) may started fearing that they would get a useless call even though they perfectly remember where and when they need to go.

So, a simple Press 7 if you don't wish to have automated reminders next time will be a great addition.

”You know, I do get a personal call from my dentist, carpet cleaner, and my kids' doctor before an appointment. I call my customers before meeting with them too.”

You do? Must be a American thing. I never ever heard of that.

I think the SMS notifications could be better received. I was extremely happy myself when the company installing my ADSL sent two SMSes prior to that day -- I probably would have forgotten otherwise.

There certainly are some people that are put off by automated voice systems. Its hard to say if that will have a large negative impact on Patrick as he's an extra step upstream from the annoyed person.

An idea to counter this would be soothing and pleasant voice templates that may disarm those easily set off by automated voice systems.

Perhaps the service could build in some kind of opt-out option? It could either be at the point of making the appointment, or after receiving the first reminder.

There is an existing company that does exactly this - my dentist just started using them. Some time before each dental appointment I now receive an email and an sms reminding me and asking me if I'm still going. I can either click "yes" or "no" links in the email, or respond to the sms with "yes" or "no".

Everything is white-labeled, but if you like I can ask my dentist who they're using.

I receive sms messages from both a taxi service(on way/arrived) I use and a physiotherapy clinic(reminder that you have an appointment tomorrow at ...) that I use. I find these useful and am grateful to receive them. On the other hand if they were automated voice calls I would hate them with a passion, I just can't describe how much I hate being called by an automatic service. SMS seems like the right way to go. Given that you do that I think you have a valuable service that I would be happy to use.

It is possibly a company local to me (SLC, UT) called Smile Reminder, or at least one of their competitors (http://www.smilereminder.com/)

I built the same thing 8 years ago but it did the opposite of what patio is doing... it called/texted/emailed the dentist (or dentist's secretary) and told them to call their customer.

As someone else mentioned, his monthly enterprise account seems priced too high. You can buy full practice management software for this much.

His blog post points out that the price is on purpose to dissuade healthcare customers. Not sure if that's the best idea, but it explains his pricing.

My parish does the same thing with something called "Callpost", but it's outbound-only; there's no schedule component.

You're obviously going for maximal SEO with a name like that. Good luck getting ranked highly. I know you're a whiz at that, but that keyword looks pretty darn competitive: http://www.google.com/search?q=appointment+reminder

I'm guessing you'll have to rely a lot on your AdWords kung-fu that you talk about so much, because I think customer acquisition is going to be your toughest challenge.

Edit: Actually, I partially take that back. The ads look competitive, but the results look penetrable. Your blog post announcing the site is already #21 for that term, so you appear to be in good shape.

Edit 2: Although you may do well for SEO, I can't help but wonder if you're taking a hit on word of mouth sales with such a generic name that doesn't use a .com. "Have you tried Appointment Reminder Dot Org? My sales increased 10%!" It make work, but I think you're putting all your eggs in the SEO /SEM basket.

One last thought on this: In DropBox's lessons learned slides they said they had a lot of trouble getting customers via search because that was just a way to harvest demand, not create it. This product feels like it may fall in the same trap. DropBox at least had a 2-syllable name to fall back on for word of mouth marketing, but this has an 8 syllable name and could have more trouble.

I will second the parent comment. I feel that there's a large number of people who have needs for this kind of product, but haven't recognized it: the need is latent. Unlike active needs (the bingo card creator program, for example), people don't just go searching the internet for latent needs. The number of people who are actively searching for "appointment reminders" are probably less than 1% of the total number of people who have the need. That's why latent needs are very hard to harvest in online marketing. How are you going to tackle this problem?

[bingo cards] is also surprisingly competitive. The trick is, he's not going to go for [appointment reminder]. He's going to go for hundreds of variants of the term.

I'm really interested in hearing what the content marketing angle is for appointments though. Bingo cards had a natural content fit.

I'm really interested in hearing what the content marketing angle is for appointments though.

If I figure one out, I'll tell you. This is one of the things I'm less than sanguine about.

Good for you man. I liked your bingo card deal and this looks like it has even more potential. Nice job of identifying a market need that can be made easier through your app.

I wish you the best of luck.

I assume you've noticed this already but just in case it is a quirk of my browser or something, the two panes of your main marquee are of different heights, leading to a little bit of a bounce when you scroll between them.

Also, for what it is worth, in this user's opinion:

1) I'd prefer you disable or hide (probably disable) the green scroll arrows when you are already at the edge of the ribbon. (Ie., when you are on "Apppoinment Reminders" the arrow on the left is gray and disabled while the one on the right is green; when you are on "Who is it for?" the arrow on the left is green while the one the right is gray.) The infinite loop aspect confuses and annoys my reptile brain. I expect to see new content when I click "next". (The fact that your image is a placeholder may be making this worse for me. If I saw the same image crop up again it may be more obvious that this is cycling.)

2) I'd make more of each column on the pricing page clickable. Maybe it just that I'm using a short screen, but scrolling down to the "Sign Up" link seems a pain, especially when it looks as is if "Small Business" is already selected due to the highlight.

3) Personally, I really dislike the green of the Small Business column heading on the pricing page.

Since you're keen on testing, have you user tested the pricing page yet, or is this just a first cut?

so I went back to my old trusty generic

I'd love to hear more about your struggles with this, Patrick. I suspect this is an undertreated topic.

bingocardcreator. appointmentreminder. These names leave little doubt about what it's about. I've also noticed a lot of TV shows do this very well too: Undercover Boss, Pawn Stars, Desperate Housewives.

So what should the rest of us do? Go with a "trusty generic" so we don't have to lose attention trying to explain what it is? Or come up with something short and slick, with far fewer SEO synonyms?

The one movie that tried this tactic (Snakes on a Plane) didn't do that well.

Counterexample: classic kung fu movies. You rent "Snake and Crane Styles of Shaolin" because you want to see people beating each other up using the snake and crane styles of Shaolin. (insert "Snakes on a Crane" joke)

Don't let the naysayer get to you. I think the idea definitely has merit for lot of small businesses like hair salons, etc. that are often one-man (or one-woman) bands. IMHO that seems like a very long tail.

Otherfolks have pointed out that there are competing services. I think the secret here might be to be friendly, non-technical, and drop dead simple.

"Prior to the appointment, we’ll automatically remind your customer of the date and time of their appointment."

"we"? Aren't you alone in this venture?... Or it's just a "professionalness" thing? I'm kind of torn between "I" and "we" for projects completely made by just one guy...

I've always done business communications in the plural, because it sounds better to my ear and I think three seconds worrying about this issue is two seconds too many. (It was a frequent, frequent bone of contention on the Business of Software forums a few years ago.)

Note that I already had three freelancers working on this, so it is literally accurate, if you're feeling dissatisfied by that explanation.

Where did you get those freelancers from, if you care to divulge?

Pre-existing relationships plus http://www.fiverr.com . I think almost everybody could get an idea for something business-related they could do with $5 on that site. Sure, why not have your own rap jingle.

Do you really expect businesses to buy software from "just one guy"? I's would make it feel a little too personal in my opinion. And to some extent, there is more than just Patrick involved in this: Twilio makes the calls, not Patrick.

Patrick, ever A/B tested the I/we thing?

Well, if you are indeed 100% alone in providing a service, I feel it's a bit of a misrepresentation to say "we" just because you want businesses as customers. But that's just a feeling.

He responded to you to explain this. He certainly isn't alone and even if he were, there's nothing wrong with this. People expect "we" from businesses. This is a business.

Saying "I'll remind your customer" sounds like it's one guy in a basement calling out manually. Whenever you're talking about an automatic service I think it's fine to say "we", because if you think about the system as a person you're always at least two people :-)

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