People & Pups Case Study

GoReminders has helped businesses dramatically cut down on no-show appointments.

How People & Pups started using GoReminders to save time scheduling and managing appointments and cut down on no-show rates.

Background

People & Pups is a private dog training business specializing in highly individualized reinforcement training that has served the Waco, Texas area for over 3 years. Similar to other dog training businesses, People & Pups is appointment based offering private consultation, training, group classes and video sessions. Kim, the owner and sole operator of her private dog training business, also balanced a career as a full-time sales assistant. Time is a commodity for Kim and her growing business, and unfortunately People & Pups was experiencing a high no show rate and lack of preparedness from clients. These are common issues that bring many businesses to GoReminders for a simple and effective solution.

GoReminders helps business owners save time scheduling and managing appointments.

People & Pups offers 8 weekly private training sessions at the clients homes and four 6-week long group training sessions (4 clients each) on Saturdays. Due to the high demand for People & Pups services, private sessions are often booked 2 months in advance. Within the first year of business, People & Pups was experiencing at least 1 no-show per week for private training appointments, and at one point, experienced 3 no-shows in a single week. Consistent no-show appointments can be detrimental to a small business.

“I would show up to people’s houses and they had forgotten, they weren’t home or they were on vacation — I decided that I had to do something about it.”

Additionally, customers were neglecting to review the re-cap training videos before group sessions. In order to get the most value from the limited sessions, customers needed to prepare beforehand. With Kim’s busy work schedule as a sales assistant, she desperately needed an appointment reminder solution. The future of People & Pups was at risk, so Kim took to her Facebook community to inquire what her network used for their businesses or what they could suggest to remedy her growing scheduling difficulties. A friend then recommended GoReminders.

Results

Kim began using GoReminders to schedule and manage appointments, and to send automated appointment reminders to customers. After the first few weeks of using GoReminders, Kim also began using the automated online Booking feature, Message Sequences and Google Calendar integration. Immediately, People & Pups was started to benefit from becoming a GoReminders user.

People & Pups services are in high demand with clients booking appointments up to 2 months in advance. However, prior to using GoReminders, customers would often forget they had an appointment scheduled. The GoReminders built-in reminder feature was critical for Kim’s peace of mind because of the high cost of a no-show customer.

“It was very frustrating, especially when you can move someone to fill that spot”.

It wasn’t long after that People & Pups customers began requesting the ability to book appointments directly through the business’ website. The GoReminders Booking feature allows customers to easily book appointments online. GoReminders also allows businesses to add custom fields to the Booking Form to include important additional information pertaining to the appointment.

Adding the Booking Form to the People & Pups website cut down on a lot of the time Kim was spending on manually scheduling appointments and gave her customers the ease of booking whenever they wanted to. Additionally, Kim made some custom fields mandatory such as a field for addresses for private appointments and additional information about clients’ pets.

“GoReminders’ simple customization options make it a no-brainer!”.

Managing a full-time job and being the sole operator of a private business makes organization crucial. The Google Calendar integration feature allowed Kim to have both her personal and business calendars in one place which allowed her to make better informed decisions when accepting new appointments.

Additionally, People & Pups hold 6-week long group sessions in an off-site facility. Clients would often forget the location of the facility or arrive unprepared to group sessions. With GoReminders, Kim created custom reminders that included the address to the facility and a link to a video for her clients to watch before their next scheduled session. Our features allow you to send reminders or other important information to your clients at any time. This added value is the kind of service People & Pups wanted to provide to their clients.

After using GoReminders for 2 years, People & Pups has experienced only 1 no-show cancellation.

Conclusion

Maintaining a full-time job and managing a small business is not for the faint of heart, especially when time is your most valuable asset. People & Pups was a new business experiencing no-show rates detrimental to its success and longevity. Kim Jukes addressed the problem early on and found GoReminders. GoReminders not only helped to reduce no-show rates to zero, but also allowed Kim Jukes and People & Pups to realize additional value for its customers.

“It’s been amazing for my business to keep stuff together — Customers absolutely love it”.

In the future, Kim Jukes plans to use the GoReminders Message Blast feature, which allows you to send bulk messages to select customers, preset groups of customers, or all of your customers at once. Kim also noted that she wished she had used Message Blasts during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic to send messages to People & Pups clients about class cancellations and other important information.

Want to see how GoReminders can work for your business? Try GoReminders full access 14-day free trial (no credit card needed). We look forward to helping you grow!