Appointments, reminders and no-shows

Appointments

Every appointment the assistant books lands on your Calendar grid and under Booked appointments on the Leads page. The chip on the grid shows the time, the lead's name, the status, and a dot for where it lives: Google, Outlook, or in-app only.

How a booking happens

During a call or a Night Window conversation the assistant offers slots from your working hours and books the one the lead picks. It reads the time back to the lead in plain words ("Thursday, September 4th at 10:00 AM"). If the same lead books again, the earlier booking is retired and the new one takes its place: a reschedule, not a duplicate. The event copied to your connected calendar carries the lead's name, phone, email, address and what the appointment is about.

Reminders

Both sides get reminders before the appointment: the lead by text and the agent by text, on a schedule ahead of the slot. Reminders to the lead only go out when texting is approved for your account and inside lawful hours; they count on your texts meter like any other message.

When they do not reply

Every reminder we send carries a link the person can tap to confirm. If two reminders go out and nobody taps it, we stop sending and tell you instead — one text, once, naming the person and the time, and saying what the options are: call them, or free the slot up. We only say it once per appointment, however many reminders are still to come, and it arrives inside your own working hours rather than theirs.

Freeing the slot is your own action on the Calendar page. We do not do it for you: until there is a waiting list to hand the time to, releasing a slot is just cancelling someone's appointment on their behalf.

If the person did tap Confirm, you hear nothing. That is the point.

When someone texts you back

People do not reply with keywords. They write "cant make it tomorrow", "can we move it", "running 10 min late", "yes see you then" — and all of that used to reach nothing at all. Now we read it and act on it:

• cancel — the appointment is cancelled, you are told, and the person gets a short acknowledgement.
• move — nothing is cancelled. They get their own manage link and pick a new time from your real availability.
• confirm — the appointment is marked confirmed, which also stops the two-silence alert above.
• running late — nothing about the appointment changes. You get a text, because you are the one who needs to know.

If they have two appointments with you and write "cancel it", we cancel neither. There is no way to tell which one they mean, and cancelling the wrong one is worse than waiting — so you get a message instead.

The waiting list

When a booked appointment is cancelled — by you, by the person, or by a reschedule — the slot used to just reappear in your grid and wait for someone to happen to look at it. Now it goes looking for someone.

Anyone who is offered times that do not suit them can ask to be told when something opens. When a slot then frees up, we text one person: the first one waiting whose days and times fit. They get the time in words and one link that books it. If they do not answer within half an hour, the offer moves to the next person, and the one who missed it keeps their place.

One at a time is deliberate. Sending the same slot to everybody books it fastest and leaves everyone else having been told it was theirs.

Two things worth knowing. An offer is an invitation, not a hold — if an ordinary booking takes the slot first, the person is told plainly and stays on the list. And someone who has opted out of texts comes off the list, because a waiting list we can only reach by text cannot do anything for them.

Waiting for a time on your Calendar page shows who is waiting and what they asked for, and counts how many appointments came back this way in the last month.

On a call

The assistant can do the same things on the phone, in this order: move it, then cancel it, then the waiting list. It will try to find you another time before it gives the slot up, because a moved appointment is better for everyone than a cancelled one.

It will not cancel anything on the strength of the word "cancel". It says the appointment back — the day and the time — and only cancels once the person has agreed that is the one. If they have two appointments it reads both out and asks which; it never picks. And if someone rings to say they are running late, nothing about the appointment changes and you get a text.

Arrival time: an exact time, or a window

Arrival time on your Calendar page decides what the person is told. An exact time is what an office can keep. A two- or four-hour window is what a trade can keep, because traffic and the job before this one decide the rest.

Nothing changes until you change it: every account starts on an exact time, and that is what your customers read today.

If you choose a window, it is used everywhere the person hears the time — when the assistant offers times, in the confirmation, in the reminders, on the page they manage the booking from. We will not offer someone "8:00" and then tell them "8 to 12".

The first appointment of the day stays exact unless you say otherwise. It is the one you can promise to the minute, because nothing runs late before it.

"On my way"

Next to each booked appointment on the Leads page there is an On my way button. Press it when you actually set off and the person gets a text saying so, with the name you chose. That is the other half of the deal a window makes: people will accept a four-hour window if they get a real heads-up on the day.

It changes nothing about the appointment, and if that person has opted out of messages we tell you rather than texting them anyway.

Texting STOP is not the same as cancelling. If someone opts out of messages, we honour that completely and immediately, and we leave their appointment alone — but we tell you, so you can phone them about it. If the word they used was a cancellation ("CANCEL", "I need to cancel"), then we do both: they are opted out *and* the appointment is released.

Telling people what to bring

If you keep a list of what someone needs to have ready — forms, ID, paperwork — under What people need to bring in Settings, we can hand it over in the reminder itself. It only rides the early reminders, several days ahead, where the person can still act on it; the reminder a couple of hours before stays short. The wording of each item is yours, exactly as you typed it, and only the items you marked as applying to every appointment are used.

After the appointment

On the Leads page each booked lead has two buttons:

• Completed: the appointment happened.
• No-show: the lead did not turn up.

Use them. They feed your Analytics show rate, and a no-show can trigger a re-engagement text so the lead is offered a new time.

Cancelling and moving

A lead can cancel or move an appointment from the link in their confirmation text. When they do, the booking is retired here and the event is removed from your connected calendar. To move one yourself, ask the lead to pick a new time through their link, or book the new time and cancel the old.

Common problems

• The appointment is at the wrong hour in Google: Google displays in your Google account's time zone; the lead record shows the booking's own zone.
• Two chips for one lead: the older one is retired and marked as such; only the newest is confirmed.
• No reminder reached the lead: check the Phone numbers page for the texting registration state and the lead record's timeline for the reason.

When you have to cancel

Sometimes it is you who cannot make it — you are ill, the weather turned, the day double-booked. On the leads list, a confirmed appointment now carries Cancel and tell them beside the Completed and No-show buttons.

It asks first, because unlike those two it sends a message. What it does:

• cancels the appointment and removes it from your calendar;
• texts the person to say so, and offers the next times that are genuinely free on your calendar;
• if you charge a late-cancellation or no-show fee, it says plainly that there is no charge this time — the change was yours. If you charge no fee, nothing about fees is mentioned at all.

If that person has replied STOP at some point, we do not text them — but the appointment is still cancelled, and you are told to reach them yourself. An opt-out means we may not message someone; it never means their appointment quietly stays on your calendar.