How are you using customer notifications to set expectations?

Thanks so much for starting this Gwen! We're actually just now looking at our notification settings — we've had them on default since we implemented last year.

A few questions if you don't mind! Do you send the 24-hour reminder at a specific time of day, or is it just 24 hours before the appointment? And what does your completion summary include — just the basics, or do you add things like warranty info or maintenance reminders?

Really appreciate any details you can share! Our team is trying to get ahead of the "where's my tech" calls too, they're such a time sink for dispatch.

Deja — we send the 24-hour at 6pm the day before, regardless of appointment time. Seems to hit when people are actually looking at their phones.

For completion, we keep it tight: job done, final amount if invoiced, and a link to our review request. We used to add maintenance reminders and saw unsubscribe rates jump. Customers want to feel done, not sold to.

Worth testing your own audience though. What industry are you in?

We do the same four touchpoints but honestly... the 24-hour reminder is the only one customers consistently engage with. The dispatch confirmation gets ignored, en route gets mixed reactions (some people love it, others text back "who is this"), and completion might as well not exist.

What I'd actually push back on: are we sure notifications reduce calls? In my experience, they just change what people call about. "I got your text, just confirming..." Still a phone call. Still eating dispatch time.

Not saying don't do them. Just... measure the actual outcome, not the send volume.

Ray's right. We tracked this for three months. Calls didn't drop — they shifted. We still staffed the same headcount in dispatch.

Where notifications actually helped was customer satisfaction scores. People feel informed even if they still call. That's worth something, but it's not the labor savings everyone promises.

We're keeping them. Just not pretending they're a cost center fix.

Such a great conversation here! I love seeing how everyone's thinking about the full customer journey.

A few things we want to make sure you're aware of — we recently published Getting the Most Out of FieldPulse Checklists which includes some guidance on customer-facing touchpoints, and there's a deeper dive on notification timing in our help center if anyone wants to explore further.

We'd also love to hear if anyone's experimenting with the customer portal in conjunction with notifications. Are you driving people to self-serve, or keeping everything push-based?

Feel free to DM me if you'd like to connect directly — we're always looking for feedback on what's working in the field!

so what i did was basically try the portal for like two months and then shut it off lol

customers would get the notification, click through, then call anyway because the portal didn't show what they actually wanted to know — like is this going to fix my problem or just diagnose it. they could see appointment time and tech name fine, but that's not what they were anxious about

so we went back to just texts with a direct reply number that goes to dispatch. way simpler. customers seem happier.

portals are great for some things maybe but for our customers it was just another thing to confuse them

Quick data point: we A/B tested SMS vs. email for our commercial accounts. Email won decisively — 40% higher open rates, and fewer "wrong number" bounces.

• Residential: SMS default, opt-in to email
• Commercial: Email default, SMS as backup

Worth the segment split if you have the customer data clean enough to execute.

Pro tip from the field: if you're using the "en route" trigger, make sure your techs actually understand what flips that status. I've seen guys hit "In Transit" when they're still loading the van in the parking lot, or when they're grabbing coffee on the way.

If the customer gets that text and you're not actually en route, trust erodes fast. Way worse than no notification at all.

We trained ours to wait until they're literally rolling. Took a week of reminders. Worth it.

lol yeah i definitely did the coffee thing for like a month before dispatch yelled at me

ngl tho customers do love the heads up. had a lady tell me she made coffee for me because she knew exactly when i was coming. never happened before the texts

Another way to think about the delay and rescheduling question: we use notifications for the straightforward updates and reserve calls for anything requiring negotiation or empathy.

Running 15 minutes late? Text. Need to move a 4-hour window to a different day entirely? Call. Customers seem to appreciate the efficiency of being informed without being dragged into a conversation they didn't want.

The framing matters though — "Your technician is running 15 minutes behind" lands better than "We need to reschedule." Same channel, different outcome.