Appointment reminders in a chat bot: six rules we ended up with
I build DOS AI (dosai.pro), a platform where a small business sets up an AI assistant for WhatsApp, Instagram and Telegram. Booking is a core feature there, and the part that sounds trivial, "send a reminder before the visit", turned out to hold most of the rules. None of this is about the model. The reminder texts are templates, not generated, and they cost the owner nothing. The work was…
The chat bot platform DOS AI (dosai.pro) is used by small businesses to set up AI assistants for WhatsApp, Instagram, and Telegram. A key aspect of this platform is the feature that sends appointment reminders. Despite the seemingly simple nature of sending a reminder before a visit, the process involves several rules that determine when a reminder is sent.
1. Reminders are only sent between 9:00 and 21:00 in the project's time zone. In cases where a reminder would be sent at night, it is instead sent the evening before at 20:30.
2. If a visit is scheduled for a time that is less than two hours before a reminder is scheduled, the reminder is not sent. Additionally, confirmations are not sent when the customer has already been notified by the bot, within the last 30 minutes of booking, or if the business's own system has already sent a confirmation.
3. Businesses are not allowed to initiate contact with a customer on WhatsApp via reminders. Reminders are only sent to customers who have previously communicated with the business on WhatsApp. If a customer does not have a history of communication with the business on WhatsApp, the booking is accompanied by a message explaining that the customer has never written to the business's WhatsApp number, along with a button for a human to manually send a reminder.
4. Each channel (WhatsApp, Instagram, and Telegram) has its own specific time frame for sending reminders. Instagram does not play a role in sending reminders, as businesses can only respond to customers within 24 hours of their last message. Telegram reminders are only sent if the customer initiated the chat with the bot.
5. When a booking is rescheduled or cancelled, the reminders associated with the booking are adjusted accordingly. If the booking is made through an external system, the booking ID is used to match the original and rescheduled bookings. If no ID is available, a reschedule is determined by a repeat booking within 2 hours by the same customer in the same conversation.
6. Each reminder in the system is assigned one of five labels: scheduled (with adjusted time based on the night rule), sent, not sent with a reason, not delivered, or removed. This allows customers to easily see the status of their reminders and provides a clear explanation for any reminders that were not sent.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
