Appointment Reminders for Advice Sessions

Introduction

The main goal of the text messaging system was to reduce missed appointments by 6%. It could also be used to remind clients about any important information or documents they need to bring to their appointment which would save time and reduce the need to book followups. No shows were a particularly key issue with debt advice appointments. People who are already struggling to keep on top of finances were in need of an easy reminder system so they didn't have to manage this themselves.

I worked with the team to test and improve the user journeys and the design. My work ensured that advisers have a simple and cohesive journey. Launched to early adopters in March the text message reminder system has already been shown to reduce no shows by 3%.

Overview and aims

Benefits for our local offices By using Gov Notify under the hood we aim to provide our local offices with one of the most competitive prices for SMS systems on the market (only 1.6 pence + VAT for each message). Local offices should spend less time importing client data into third-party providers and manually sending messages from office phones. We also addressed GDPR and security concerns by fully integrating the functionality.

Process

Advisers who weren’t familiar with the Casebook calendars system struggled to set up automatic reminders in the original design. They found it difficult to make the mental connection between creating the text message template and then navigating to the calendar setup section, turning the reminders on and linking the template. Only 2/7 users managed to complete this task successfully.

On the second iteration, I introduced an information alert that shows for any templates that aren’t attached to a calendar. When we retested the journey 7/7 users were successful and 6/7 used the link in the alert.

Outcomes

Initial data showed a reduction of 3% for no shows.