Help CenterAutomated SMS Notifications help streamline communication with your clients while reducing the amount of manual follow-up your staff needs to perform. By automatically sending appointment confirmations, reminders, completed groom notifications, and thank-you messages, you can improve client engagement, reduce missed appointments, and keep pet owners informed throughout their visit. Automated messaging helps create a more professional customer experience, saves valuable staff time, and ensures important information is delivered consistently without requiring additional effort from your team.
Use automated SMS notifications: If you're interested in using automated text messages, check this option and be sure to read the warning thoroughly.
Choose Dismiss to cancel or Agree to opt in.
Scroll down to find reminder settings.
Once you opt in, the automated options will be displayed. (Note that options are still being added so you may see more options available.)
Each module has these options.
Confirmation SMS: These are sent as soon as you add the appointment.
Thank you SMS: These are sent as soon as the pet is checked out.
Appointment Reminders: These are sent based on your settings, X number of days before their checkin date.
Grooming has additional option for Completed SMS. These are sent as soon as you mark the groom complete on the schedule.
Desktop users:
‼️IMPORTANT: In order for SMS confirmation texts to go, you must enable confirmation emails. This is on in File, Business Info, Email tab, module tab.
Check the ones you would like to enable. Once selected, you will be able to enter custom text for each item.
Information in brackets will automatically load that info, such as module, pet name, dates.
You can edit these messages as needed.
Appointment reminders are now available! As mentioned above in this section, after you enable and agree to the automated SMS terms, you'll have the above options along with appointment reminders shown here:
Simply enable the reminders, choose how many days in advance and at what time you want the reminders to go out. You may also request a reply YES or NO on the reminders with the options to:
On NO reply, cancel appointment and send email confirming their NO response. Here's what this means:
If you enable the "Cancel appointment on No Reply" setting, this will automatically update your database and mark the appointment as cancelled when the customer replies "no" to the SMS message. You MUST have "track cancelled reservations" enabled. Please see here if you don't: https://help.kennelconnection.com/portal/en/kb/articles/cancellation-emails. Without this option enabled, the appointment will NOT be cancelled in your system!
If you enable the "send email confirming their no response", this will do two things. It will send them an immediate SMS reply stating their appointment has been cancelled AND it will also send them an email message (if you have their email address on their client card) stating their appointment has been cancelled.
📝Important Note: You can enable YES/NO on confirmation and automatic reminder texts. The system will not cancel an already confirmed appointment. So if your client replies YES to the confirmation text and then replies NO to the automatic reminder text, KC will not cancel the appointment because it has already been confirmed.
To avoid this issue, you will want to turn off the YES/NO feature on confirmation texts and only leave them enabled for automatic reminders.
Click on Messaging, SMS Settings. Under each module for the confirmation text, uncheck the options for the YES/No feature.
You can enable this feature under the Automatic reminder section.
**Please note that mass SMS messaging/texting is not allowed to deliver groups of auto-reminders the system uses an outbox system. Your reminders will NOT be instant. All the appointments matching the criteria to receive a reminder, (at the time you set your reminders to send), will be generated and added to an outbox that you cannot see. These will send one at a time until all are delivered. It may take a minute or two for the first one to be received and the rest will send until none are left. Depending on how many you have, it may take a little time to send all messages.
BE SURE TO CLICK SAVE in the upper right when done.
Common Uses for Automated SMS Notifications
- Appointment Confirmations – Instantly notify clients when an appointment is booked and provide important visit details.
- Appointment Reminders – Reduce no-shows by automatically reminding clients about upcoming appointments before their scheduled check-in date.
- YES/NO Appointment Confirmations – Allow clients to quickly confirm or cancel appointments by replying to a text message.
- Grooming Completion Notifications – Automatically notify pet owners when their pet's grooming service is complete and ready for pickup.
- Checkout Thank You Messages – Send a personalized thank-you message after a visit to improve client engagement and customer satisfaction.
- After-Hours Auto Replies – Let clients know your business is currently closed and provide information on when they can expect a response.
- Reduce Incoming Phone Calls – Keep clients informed automatically, reducing the need for staff to make confirmation calls or answer appointment-status questions.
- Improve Client Communication – Deliver timely updates directly to clients' mobile devices using a communication method most customers regularly monitor.
- Increase Appointment Attendance – Reminder and confirmation texts help reduce missed appointments and last-minute cancellations.
- Save Staff Time – Automate routine communications so staff can focus on pet care and customer service rather than manual outreach.