User role required: Office staff and above
đ New to writing templates? The Schedule and dispatch: Composing templates walkthrough covers what to say in each message, with example email and SMS wording for job reminders, plus how tagging and character counts work across all your templates.
Job address reminders send an automatic email or SMS to your contact before a booked appointment. A customer who knows you are coming is a customer who is in when you arrive, so you lose fewer visits to no access and field fewer calls asking whether the appointment is still happening. You choose when the reminder goes out, write the message once, and Commusoft sends it for every job from then on.
Setting up the reminder
âĄď¸ Click your Profile icon > Settings > Schedule and dispatch > Job address reminder > View
The email and the SMS are saved separately. Saving takes you back to your settings list, so you will open this setting twice to build both messages.
Choose when your reminder sends
Under Automatically send, choose when the reminder should go out:
24 hours before the appointment
48 hours before the appointment
Night before the job
Morning of the job
Tick Send repeated reminders if you want every appointment on a job to trigger its own reminder. Leave it unticked to send one reminder per job per day.
Tip: Think about your rebooking policy before adding a rebooking portal link. On Night before the job and Morning of the job there's little time left to refill a cancelled slot. Put that link in your Customer job confirmation template or Work address job confirmation template instead, where it arrives with days to spare.
Compose the email reminder
Click Email.
Under Add job reminder email, enter your subject line in the first field, then write your message in the box below it.
Click Use tagging to add details that change with each job, such as the contact's name, the address and the appointment time.
Click Save.
Tip: Always add tags with the Use tagging button rather than typing them or copying them from elsewhere. The button lists only the tags that work on this template, and a tag that finds no data sends to your contact as plain text, square brackets included. Learn more in How to use tags in communication templates.
Saving returns you to your settings list. Your timing choice and your email are both stored.
Compose the SMS reminder
Add-on required: SMS+
See Purchasing add-ons to see how to add this to your account.
Click SMS.
Write your message under Add job reminder SMS. Click Use tagging to add job details, and keep it short, as one SMS credit covers 160 characters and your tag content counts towards that total.
Click Save.
Your reminder is now live. Commusoft sends it for every job with a booked appointment, with no further action needed.
Understanding how reminders are sent
Reminders go to the contact at the job address. That covers a job at a work address, where the contact is the tenant or site contact, and a job at a customer's own address, where it is the customer themselves.
The timing you choose behaves like this, using your account's time zone:
Setting | When the reminder sends |
24 hours | 24 hours before the appointment start time, within 15 minutes |
48 hours | 48 hours before the appointment start time, within 15 minutes |
Night before the job | 7:00 pm the day before the appointment |
Morning of the job | 8:00 am on the day of the appointment |
Send repeated reminders controls what happens when a job has more than one appointment. Unticked, Commusoft sends one reminder per job per day, however many appointments are booked. Ticked, every appointment gets its own reminder, including recurring jobs and days where more than one technician is attending.
To stop reminders sending automatically, return to the setting and choose -- Please choose -- from the Automatically send dropdown, then click Save. Your message content is kept, so you can switch reminders back on later without rewriting them.
Common questions
Who receives the job address reminder?
Who receives the job address reminder?
The job address reminder goes to the contact at the job address. On a job at a work address that is the tenant or site contact. On a job at a customer's own address it is the customer.
Do recurring jobs each trigger a reminder?
Do recurring jobs each trigger a reminder?
Recurring jobs trigger a reminder for every appointment only when Send repeated reminders is ticked. With it unticked, a recurring booking sends one reminder per day rather than one per appointment.
Can I turn automatic reminders off without deleting my message?
Can I turn automatic reminders off without deleting my message?
Yes, you can turn automatic reminders off without losing your message. Select -- Please choose -- from the Automatically send dropdown and click Save. Your email and SMS content stays saved for whenever you want to switch reminders back on.
Do job address reminders use SMS credits?
Do job address reminders use SMS credits?
Yes, job address reminders sent by SMS use your SMS credits. One credit covers 160 characters, and the content pulled in by your tags counts towards that limit, so a message that looks short in the editor can run to two credits once a long address is inserted.
Should I include a rebooking link in the reminder?
Should I include a rebooking link in the reminder?
Whether to include a rebooking link in the reminder depends on your own cancellation and rebooking policy. On the 24 hour and 48 hour timings there's usually enough notice for a customer to move the appointment and for you to refill the slot. On Night before the job and Morning of the job there's very little time left, so some businesses leave the link out at those timings and rely on their confirmation templates instead. A good rule of thumb is to work back from how much notice you need to fill a cancelled slot.
Instead, consider placing the rebooking portal link in the Customer job confirmation template and Work address job confirmation template, where it lands with more notice.