SMS notification upon booking

Hello! I would like to know if it is possible for the user to receive an SMS notification when scheduling a session as confirmation.

https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/360040093611-Sending-appointment-reminders-via-text 

Does that link have your answer?

No...
Customers when scheduling a session, still have doubts about whether it was confirmed (they don't check their e-mail boxes) and end up contacting them via message to confirm the time.

I need that as soon as the client confirms the session, he receives an SMS on his phone confirming that the session is reserved.

I also need this feature. Clients do not check their email, I need booking confirmations sent via text. Is there a workaround for this?

I need this as well.  Clients need a text confirmation immediately upon appointment scheduling.  People just dont check their email anymore.  I dont understand why this is not a feature.

Chiming in on this and I completely agree. Acuity/Squarespace please add text confirmations as a feature. I used to be with Square appointments, their system sends text confirmations upon booking, my clients find it so helpful as they do not check their email often. I did not realize that this wasn't a standard feature until after I set everything up with Acuity. Please fix this. 

Hello,

There is NO Ability to send an appointment confirmation texts. Square Bookings does have this ability, as does Simply, and other reputable booking software companies.

is there a workaround for this, or any plans to change this? I see people have been discussing this for years.

Furthermore, we don’t even have the ability to add MULTIPLE templates so we can at least put some notification weeks out closer to booking, and another the day before. 
 

Until this is an option, I’ll be keeping clients on Bookings. Most clients simply do NOT care or want the email confirmations.

Hey guys, I'm new here, but maybe I could "help".

I'm a software engineer, this afternoon I was looking into some forums searching for ideas of apps to build, and I came across this thread.

Then I decided to build a little proof of concept app to solve this issue, it sends an SMS to the customer as soon as the appointment is scheduled/rescheduled.

Here is a rough demo 

Keep in mind this is just a proof of concept for now, it needs a few more tweaks and testing.

Would anyone be interested in paying for it?

Yes. I would pay to have this customize.  I see you using Twilio.  Nice - I am just not techie enough to figure this out on my own.

I have just engaged with a third party vendor to get this up and running through APIs with Acuity, but  would have much preferred to keep it in-platform.

What would be most useful would be:

- Ability to create a text tree with a confirmation message and response to a keyword (ex: Reply 'C' to Confirm) and then paths of texting based on whether the respondee confirmed or not.  This should be enable-able by appointment type vs. being universal.

This is STANDARD in many booking platforms, but just 1 text per booking is not reasonable when you're looking to get a first appointment in the books and clients aren't responding and/or no showing..

I just switched over from Gloss Genius. Their standard plan includes a text upon booking, a confirmation text 3 days before the appointment and a reminder text 1 day prior to appointment. I think its absolutely ABSURD acuity does NOT have this feature. It is crucial and a necessity! Nobody checks their email. I've lost 1 client due to no show because they didn't get a reminder and several other clients constantly text me about when is there appointment is. 

I'm switching back to Gloss Genius until this issue is resolved at Acuity. It seems like Acuity sees this issue but does NOT care to fix it.

Agreed! Came here searching to see if this was an option. I have had plenty of no shows bc of this and get way too many text messages from people asking when their appointment is because THEY DONT READ EMAILS.  PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE ACUITY FIX THIS ASAP. 

I have found a solution to this, though it lies outside Acuity.  I am using the platform called 'DialMyCalls' and Zapier, and it's pretty much point and click / intuitive.

1. Register on DialMyCalls, get a phone number, etc.  (I think there are several services which do similar things but this one is working well for me). and go through the steps to register your phone number for SMS campaigns (it's pretty intuitive and they have good live chat support too)

2. Get a Zapier account

3. Set up a new 'Zap' in Zapier. Start with acuity by Linking your Acuity Account + then having Zapier pull sample records. As long as all looks good, duplicate a record (click the button) and change out the client fields to your own info so you don't test sms with your clients).  Then set the appointment type and timing that you'd like to set the Zap for (you can do when the appointment is scheduled, and also a seperate zap for any time length before appointment start. I have created zaps for:

SMS when Scheduled (for client shceduled Appts)

SMS 1 day before appointment time

SMS 2 hours before appointment time.

After your have that step working successfully, then click the workflow and add DialMyCalls as the next step and 'Send a Message' as the action (you may want to also do the 'add a contact' as a follow on step, but i'd do that AFTER the send a message just in case it hits an error (like incorrectly formatted email), this way your SMS will send either way.  Go through the steps again, link the account + popluate the necessary aspects with the data from your acuity record. 

This approach also gets you a nifty two way texting channel set up with your customers. I have used this now to set a 'Reply 'C' to confirm' text flow for our new clients, and this helps with no-shows too. Once they reply, the conversation moves into the two way chat stream and I send a manual confirmation back from there. You can also save auto-replies from DialMyCalls which is pretty nice feature if you do a lot of manual intervention on bookings.

I've acutally switched off my Acutiy platform SMS messages now because I don't want mesasges to come from two different numbers.

If you get stuck and have any questions I'm following this topic you can ask back on here and i'll reply, or email me at greg@trt-alpha.com and i'll see if i can help.  Hope this helps you all as it was VERY fustrating to not have this option natively!

Update. I didn't even see this but there's a guide on how to connect the platform I mentioned above (DialMyCalls) and Acuity through Zapier for appointment texting:

https://www.dialmycalls.com/features/acuity-scheduling-integration