Avoid no-show meetings with SMS text message reminders

In meeting-heavy businesses (such as banking, real estate, government and many types of sales), no-show meetings can have big consequences in terms of lost efficiency and high costs! These no-show meetings waste employees’ time, especially because they often spend more time trying to rebook new meetings. To combat this problem, organizations are sending automatic meeting confirmations and meeting reminders. These messages minimize the number of no-show meetings that occur due to forgetfulness or uncertainty about time and/or place.

90% of SMS text messages are read within 3 minutes

When someone doesn’t show up for a planned meeting, the meeting organizer usually follows up with a phone call. Calling someone who doesn’t show up to a meeting can take several minutes. Multiply that by a few no-shows a week, for several employees, and minutes quickly add up to hours. All organizations want employees to use their time as effectively as possible. To achieve this, you can integrate an automated solution for sending meeting confirmations and scheduled meeting reminders into your Outlook calendar.

SMS text messaging is a reliable communication channel that reaches anyone with a cell phone. It is also very pervasive – 90% of SMS text messages are read within three minutes! No other channel has open rates that compare to that! SMS is also less susceptible to things like spam than other channels, such as email. This makes it less likely that your message will be lost in a flood of unread messages. In addition, people check their SMS text messages more often than they check their email. All this makes SMS a clear and useful channel that cuts through the noise that people face today.

Simple integration with your existing systems

To provide uncomplicated implementation, LEKAB’s SMS text message functions integrate easily with your existing systems. Today, many organizations use Microsoft Exchange to book meetings. Exchange, however, lacks its own system for sending SMS text messages. That’s why we’ve made it easy as possible to integrate our systems into Exchange.

For simple implementation, LEKAB provides an Exchange plugin. When you send calendar invitations, you can also chose to send meeting confirmations and meeting reminders via SMS text message. When you choose to send a meeting confirmation, the system automatically generates an SMS text message. That message lets recipients know what the meeting is about, where and when it will happen, and who will attend. If you choose to also send a meeting reminder, the system will send an SMS text message 24 hours before the meeting (or at a custom time you’ve chosen), reminding attendees of the meeting details.

The value of SMS text message reminders

SMS meeting confirmations and meeting reminders are a simple service – both when it comes to their implementation and their use. They quickly reduce the number of no show meetings, and the meeting invitees experience improved service! It also proactively lets meeting participants rebook, in case they can’t make it, or when something unexpected comes up. Thus, SMS text message reminders make not only your time, but all meeting participants’ time more effective.

Many organizations use SMS messages to avoid no show meetings, and customers have become used to getting these meeting reminders. Offering these confirmations and reminders is helpful for meeting attendees, and can reinforce trust in your organization and its professionalism.

A lot of LEKAB’s customers have seen clear positive results from using SMS text message reminders. Järfälla Municipality, for example, reduced the number of no show meetings they experienced by 80%.

Would you like to learn more about how we can help you cut costs and reduce no show meetings? Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us here!