A patient who has just booked a first appointment cannot assess your clinical work yet. They have not met the practitioner, nor have they seen the room. What they have is a message from you. New Phorest research with 795 aesthetics patients in the UK, Ireland and the United States found that 87% consider booking confirmations important, and 84% say the same about appointment reminders.
When asked in our research which details mattered in those messages, they ranked appointment time first at 76%, then the date at 72%, the service booked at 66%, the clinic location at 58%, and a telephone number at 46%.
Most confirmation templates cover the first two.
What patients want a confirmation to say
| Detail | Share of patients who value it |
| Appointment time | 76% |
| Appointment date | 72% |
| Service booked | 66% |
| Clinic location | 58% |
| Telephone number | 46% |
Time and date are the easy part, because every booking system sends those. The useful figures sit further down the list.
Almost six in ten patients want the location in writing. For a clinic with more than one site, that is not a formality. A patient who books in one location and drives to another has a poor experience that had nothing to do with their treatment.
Almost half want a telephone number. That is a low bar, and a no-reply address fails it. A patient who wants to move an appointment and cannot find a way to ask will often just not turn up.
The service booked matters for a different reason. In aesthetics, patients often book something they have never had before, under a name they half-remember. Seeing it written down tells them they asked for the right thing.
Is an email confirmation enough on its own?
Half of UK and Ireland clinics have automatic email confirmations switched on. Fewer than one in five have them set up by text message. US clinics do the opposite. Four in five send confirmations by text, and fewer than two in five send them by email.
Neither pattern matches what patients told us they wanted. The two details ranked highest, time and date, are short. They fit in a text message, and a text gets read in the queue for coffee. The longer material, preparation guidance and what to expect on the day, needs the room that email gives it.
So the answer is not one channel or the other:
- Text message for the facts. Time, date, location, and the service booked.
- Email for the context. What happens at the appointment, how to prepare, who they will see.
What a reminder does that a confirmation message cannot
A confirmation answers a question the patient has already asked. A reminder arrives when they have stopped thinking about it.
That difference is worth something practical. Between booking and treatment, a patient forgets what they were told to do beforehand, and most aesthetic treatments ask for something. A reminder sent two or three days out is the last useful moment to say:
- Come with clean skin and no make-up
- Avoid alcohol the night before
- Leave the evening free afterwards
- Arrive ten minutes early to complete your forms
Most clinics treat reminders as protection for the diary. Patients treat them as instructions. The clinics getting the most out of them write for the second purpose, and get the first as a side effect.
How much of this should be automatic?
The argument for automating these messages is not the time it saves. It is that the message stops depending on who took the booking.
A patient who books at reception on a quiet Tuesday and a patient who books online over the weekend should receive the same information. When the sending is manual, they do not, and the difference is invisible to you and obvious to them.
Georgina Boyce, Head of Operations at Dr Rasha Clinic in London, sees preparation as clinical rather than administrative, saying, “Confirmations, reminders, and clear pre-care guidance help patients understand what to expect and how to prepare safely before they arrive. This supports a more focused consultation, gives the clinical team the information they need, and helps patients make informed decisions with confidence.”
That is the part worth taking from this article. A confirmation is not paperwork that follows a booking. It is the first working part of the appointment.
How Phorest supports this
Every message in this article is one a clinic can stop writing by hand:
- Appointment Reminders send confirmations and reminders automatically by text and email, so the same information reaches the patient who booked online on Sunday, and the one who booked at reception on Tuesday.
- Consultation Forms go out ahead of the appointment and come back completed, which is what lets a consultation start on time.
- Pre & Post Care attaches preparation guidance to the treatment rather than to whoever remembered to send it.
The gain is not the minutes saved at reception. It is that a patient’s experience stops depending on how busy the clinic was the day they booked.
One thing to change this week
| If your clinic is… | Change this |
| Building strong foundations | Book a test appointment under your own name, and read what arrives. Check all five details are in it |
| Scaling with confidence | Add text messages for the facts and keep email for preparation guidance |
| Leading at scale | Make the message identical across every location, so the experience does not depend on which site a patient chose |
The first thing a patient can judge
Nobody chooses a clinic because the confirmation email was well written. But it is the first thing a patient is able to judge, and it reaches them weeks before anyone touches their face.
FAQs:
What should a booking confirmation include?
Should appointment reminders be sent by text or email?
Are booking confirmations or reminders more important to patients?
Should booking confirmations be automated?
How far in advance should an appointment reminder be sent?
