Improving Appointment Attendance with CRM-Driven Communication
Built and launched multi-touch email and SMS automations to increase confirmation rates, reduce no-shows, and improve marketing–sales alignment.
Role
Data Structure and Automation Specialist
Focus Area
Campaign Automation & Lifecycle touchpoints
Duration
~ 1.5 weeks
Investigation & Discovery
At first, the issue didn’t seem like a system problem. But while reviewing appointment notes, I noticed a recurring theme in customer comments:
Considering the customers’ comments, I developed a hunch that the problem wasn’t lead quality or scheduling volume. It was communication.
To validate this, I mapped the post-booking experience in the legacy CRM and compared it directly to the new system.
In the old system, once an appointment was booked, customers received:
An immediate confirmation message
Automated reminders at set intervals
Multiple touchpoints leading up to the appointment
In the new CRM, I was unable to find any sort of communication between our company and clients after an appointment was booked.
That gap made me think about my own experiences as a customer. I recently went to the dentist and received multiple confirmation and reminder messages in the days leading up to my appointment. Without those reminders, I likely would have forgotten entirely.
This comparison made the issue clearer: during the CRM migration, a critical piece of the customer journey, automated appointment communication, had disappeared, leading to inconsistent communication and increased no-shows.
Solution & Enablement:
Because Salesforce is centrally owned, we submitted a request to reintroduce automated reminders. However, we were told it would take time to scope and implement. Given the ongoing business impact, we needed a faster solution.
Since we already used HubSpot as our marketing automation platform, I proposed building a reminder system there.
The first challenge was data. Direct Salesforce to HubSpot integration wasn’t allowed, so I designed an import structure that allowed appointment data to be reliably brought into HubSpot using custom objects and deals. I built reports to validate each import and ensure customer information, appointment status, timing, and cancellations were accurately brought in and reflected.
Once the data was in place, I worked with our marketing managers to design a multi-touch reminder workflow in HubSpot:
An email and SMS confirmation immediately after booking
A reminder one day before the appointment
A final reminder two hours prior
Logic to exclude or reintroduce canceled or rescheduled appointments
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