Contact health: clients you can't reach

A reminder is only useful if it actually arrives. If a client's email bounces or their phone number is wrong, that reminder never sends, and without contact health you'd have no way of knowing. TimeToBook now watches for clients whose details can't receive reminders and flags them, so you can fix them before their next appointment.

There's nothing to switch on. It works automatically on every account.

How you'll spot a flagged client

• A red count on the Clients tab in the navigation whenever anyone needs attention.
• A banner at the top of your client list: "X clients can't receive reminders".
• A "Contact health" filter on the client list, so you can jump straight to Needs attention (or Dismissed).
• A short reason on each flagged client, plus a hint on how to fix it.

Why a client gets flagged

We only flag a client when we can prove something is wrong, never just a guess that an address "looks off". There are four reasons:

• Email bounced: the last email we sent came back rejected.
• Text message failed to send: the last SMS couldn't reach their phone.
• Email address is not valid: the address on file can't receive mail (usually a typo).
• Phone number is not valid: missing, extra, or malformed digits, so it won't route.

A client with no contact details at all is never flagged. Plenty of walk-ins never leave an email or a number, and that's a deliberate choice rather than a mistake to fix.

What happens to their reminders

While a client has an unresolved email problem, TimeToBook stops trying to email them, so confirmations and reminders are held back rather than sent into a void. This is what prevents a "reminder sent" being logged when the address could never have received it. Fixing the details resumes their reminders automatically.

Fixing it

Open the flagged client and correct the offending field:

• For an email problem, edit their email address.
• For a phone problem, edit their phone number.

As soon as you save a valid detail, the flag clears itself and their reminders resume. You don't need to do anything else.

Editing is the fix even for a bounce or a failed text: correcting the specific field that failed is what tells us the address or number is worth trying again. Changing an unrelated field won't clear a bounce.

Dismissing a flag

Sometimes the details are fine and you just don't want the reminder, like a client who prefers a phone call or a number you know is a landline. Use Dismiss on the flagged client to acknowledge it and drop them out of the Needs attention list. They move to the Dismissed filter, so nothing is lost, and the red count goes down.

Dismissing doesn't change whether we can reach them. It just tells us you've seen it and it's expected.

Related

• Managing clients: where flagged clients appear.
• Messages: the log of every email and SMS we've sent, including bounces and failures.
• SMS credits: how text reminders are paid for.