Collects as they arrive, acts daily
Text clients a booking confirmation and reminders
Clients get an SMS when they book, plus reminders the day before and shortly before, never during quiet hours.
- Runs
- Collects as they arrive, acts daily
- Apps
- Twilio
- AI
- Optional
- Access
- write
Send this to your assistant
Create a ClickRuntime automation: when my booking tool posts a new appointment to this link, text the client a confirmation, then a reminder 24 hours and 2 hours before, and don't send anything between 9pm and 8am.
First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.
Why use it
Why teams use this automation
No-shows cost appointment-based businesses real money. A dentist or barber who has three empty slots a week because clients forgot loses hundreds of dollars a month, and a confirmation email buried in a promotions tab does not help. Texts get read within minutes, but sending them by hand means someone has to remember who booked what, and when to remind them.
As bookings arrive, this stores each one with the phone number and appointment time and sends a confirmation text immediately. Each day it checks which appointments are due for a reminder, sends them and marks them as sent, and it holds messages that would land during your quiet hours so no one is texted at midnight.
An AI step can optionally word the messages in a friendlier way. Clients see the details in their messages.
What you get out of it
Fewer empty appointment slots
A reminder the day before reminds forgetful clients and gives others time to cancel. Both outcomes beat a silent no-show, because a canceled slot can be offered to someone on a waiting list.
Confirmation gives clients certainty
A text straight after booking proves the appointment exists. Clients stop wondering whether the form worked, and you receive fewer calls and messages asking whether they are booked in. Fewer calls from nervous clients too.
No double reminders
Each appointment is marked once its reminder is sent, so a client never gets two texts for one visit. Repeats irritate people and some replies to a pushy sender are opt-outs.
Respects the clock
Messages that would fall in quiet hours are held until morning. Clients are not woken by a reminder, and your business avoids the complaints that come from late-night marketing-style texts.
Works with bookings from any source
Because bookings are passed in when they arrive, the source can be a form, a calendar tool or a script. You do not have to replace your booking system to start sending texts.
How it works
What happens, step by step
When a client books, your booking tool tells ClickRuntime, which saves the booking with their phone number and time.
The client gets a confirmation text straight away.
Every 15 minutes, ClickRuntime sends any reminders that are due: one the day before and one shortly before the appointment. Each reminder is sent only once.
Texts are only sent between 8am and 9pm, never during quiet hours.
Before it runs live
- Connect Twilio
- Paste your automation's link into the other app's webhook settings
What you get
Build your own
Need it to work differently?
Your own rules
Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.
Any number of apps
One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.
AI where it helps
Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.
On a schedule or on each event
Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.
Changes you can ask for
- Act only on the items that match your own rules, and skip the rest
- Change what the AI looks for, or how it writes the result
- Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
- Combine it with other Twilio steps into one automation
Under the hood
The code that runs this automation
from datetime import datetime, timedelta, timezone
from clickruntime import on_event, on_trigger, credentials, http, state
FROM = "+447700900000"
QUIET = range(8, 21) # only send 08:00–20:59 UTC
def sms(to, body):
sid = credentials.secret("TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID")
http.post(f"https://api.twilio.com/2010-04-01/Accounts/{sid}/Messages.json",
auth=(sid, credentials.secret("TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN")), data={"To": to, "From": FROM, "Body": body})
@on_event
def booked(event):
b = event.json # {"id", "name", "phone", "start": ISO time}
bookings = state.get("bookings") or {}
bookings[b["id"]] = {**b, "sent": []}
state.set("bookings", bookings)
sms(b["phone"], f"Hi {b['name']}, you're booked for {b['start'][:16].replace('T', ' ')}. Reply STOP to opt out.")
return {"stored": b["id"]}
@on_trigger
def reminders(event):
now = datetime.now(timezone.utc)
if now.hour not in QUIET:
return {"skipped": "quiet hours"}
bookings, sent = state.get("bookings") or {}, 0
for bid, b in list(bookings.items()):
start = datetime.fromisoformat(b["start"])
for label, before in (("day", timedelta(hours=24)), ("soon", timedelta(hours=2))):
if label not in b["sent"] and now >= start - before and now < start:
sms(b["phone"], f"Reminder: see you at {start:%H:%M} on {start:%a %d %b}.")
b["sent"].append(label)
sent += 1
if start < now:
bookings.pop(bid)
state.set("bookings", bookings)
return {"sent": sent}FAQ
Common questions
How far ahead is the reminder sent?
Can clients reply to cancel or confirm?
Do I need permission to text clients?
What permissions does it need?
Does it need AI?
How many runs does it use?
Can I change how it works?
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