GarageDoorBossPro Blog — Scheduling & Dispatch

Night-Before Reminders for Garage Door Appointments

The most expensive garage door visit is the one where the tech drives across town and nobody is home. The door is closed, the keypad code is wrong, the car is in the bay, and the customer forgot the appointment was today. A reminder the night before catches most of those problems while there is still time to fix them.

The Reminder Before the Texts on the Day

The two automatic texts that go out during the visit are covered in The Arrived Text: Telling the Homeowner the Garage Door Tech Is in the Driveway and the on-the-way article before it. The night-before reminder is the one that comes first.

In GarageDoorBossPro, customers can choose a night-before alert among their alert preferences in the customer app, along with when they are next and when the tech arrives. Automated reminders go out by text and email. The office does not have to call down tomorrow's list at four in the afternoon.

Which Jobs Need It Most

Any scheduled job benefits, but some garage door jobs benefit more than others:

• Yearly tune-ups. The customer signed up months ago and is not thinking about it. The reminder is often the first they have heard of the visit.
• Installs. The homeowner needs to clear the garage, move cars and maybe stay home for the walkthrough. A reminder gives them the evening to get ready.
• Commercial maintenance. Someone at the business has to plan around the tech being at the dock or the rolling door.
• Rescheduled jobs. A job that moved once is the most likely to get forgotten. The reminder confirms the new day.

Same-day repairs do not get a night-before reminder, of course. They are booked that morning, and the on-the-way and arrived texts do the job instead.

What a Good Reminder Covers

A night-before reminder should answer the questions that cause wasted trips. The visit is tomorrow. Someone needs to provide access, or the keypad code needs to work. The car should be out of the bay if the problem door is the one it is parked behind. Pets should be inside.

For installs, it can also be the moment to remind the customer about anything the installer will need: room to work around the opening, shelving or storage moved back from the door, and a plan for where the car will sit while the old door comes out.

The customer does not need a paragraph. They need to remember, and to know what to do before the tech gets there. Plain, short wording works best. Keep it in standard characters, too: plain dashes and quotes keep texts short.

Reschedules the Night Before

The reminder is also the best moment to find out a job will not work. A customer who replies “Can we do Friday instead?” the night before is a gift compared with one who is not home when the van pulls in. Replies come to the office through two-way texting. The office moves the job to Friday on the board, the route for tomorrow closes up, and the empty slot can be filled.

That last part matters. A night-before cancellation leaves a hole in tomorrow's route, and the Waiting List map is the quickest way to fill it with a due tune-up nearby. For more, see Filling a Garage Door Route by Area: Building Days From the Map.

Building Tomorrow, Then Reminding

Reminders depend on tomorrow's schedule being set the day before. If the office builds tomorrow's routes at 7am tomorrow, there is nothing to remind anyone about tonight. Most shops that get the most out of reminders build the next day's planned work, like installs, tune-ups and commercial visits, during the afternoon, and leave room on the repair van for same-day calls.

Building ahead has other payoffs. The techs can look at tomorrow's route on the phone tonight. Saved views make it quick to check tomorrow by van. And the night-before reminder goes out on its own because the jobs are already on the board.

Reminders and the Text Allowance

Reminder texts count toward the plan's monthly text allowance, which includes 500, 1,000 or 2,000 texts sent and received on Start, Pro or Crew in the US and Canada. Email reminders are also available. Customers who prefer email can get their reminder that way, and customers who do not want reminders at all can turn them off.

Fewer Wasted Trips

A reminder costs nothing in tech time. A wasted trip costs a drive, a time slot, and often a second visit. For a shop running one to a few vans, catching even a couple of those a week makes the reminder one of the most useful messages it sends.

For how reminders fit with the dispatch board, routing and the rest of the customer texts, go back to the garage door scheduling software page.