Booking over messages starts with “is there a slot tomorrow?” and goes on: which service? what time? what name? which number? A simple booking form gathers all of that in one tidy request that reaches you in a table rather than scattered chats.
The fields you really need
- Full name.
- Phone number, the one that matters most because it is how you confirm.
- Email, optional.
- The service: consultation, first visit, follow-up, with an “Other” option.
- Preferred date and preferred time.
- Notes before the appointment, optional.
Every extra field slows the booking down. What you only need on the day itself, such as a full address or a medical history, can be asked when you confirm or at the visit.
A request, not a final booking
The form collects the day and time the customer prefers, but it does not know your calendar. So say in the form's description that the appointment is confirmed once you get in touch, then confirm it yourself with a call or a message. That way nobody thinks a slot is booked before you have checked it.
How to cut missed appointments
- Confirm soon after the request arrives; the closer the confirmation, the clearer it is.
- Send a reminder the day before.
- Make cancelling or moving easy: a “can't make it” message beats an empty chair.
- If a day's slots are limited, close the form automatically after a set number of responses or on a date you choose.
A reminder is more than courtesy: a Cochrane systematic review of text message reminders for healthcare appointments found low to moderate quality evidence that they raise attendance compared with no reminder.
Receiving the requests
In Formza an email reaches you for every new request if you turn notifications on, the requests sit in the responses table, and they can go straight to Google Sheets, where you add a column for each appointment's status. If your customers speak more than one language, the same link carries Arabic and English and each customer picks theirs.
The “Appointment booking” template comes with these fields in Arabic and English. Try it, then copy it and rename the services to match yours.
Sources
- Gurol-Urganci I. et al. — Mobile phone messaging reminders for attendance at healthcare appointments, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2013 (cochranelibrary.com).
