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Comment by dpcan | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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?

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.

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