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No-shows are expensive. Appointment confirmation calls have the Virtual Receptionist phone the customer a set number of hours before their appointment, confirm they’re still coming, and quietly flag the ones who want to reschedule or cancel — so your schedule reflects reality before the day arrives. It’s a workflow recipe, configured alongside your other automations. You choose whether each confirmation goes out as an AI phone call or a plain SMS.

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Where to set it up

Settings → Workflows → Appointment confirmation request. This recipe is part of the Growth and Pro voice features. If you don’t see it, confirm your plan includes the Virtual Receptionist.

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Configure it

  • How many hours before? — when to reach out, from 3 to 720 hours (30 days) ahead of the appointment.
  • Channel — AI phone call or SMS.
  • Call window (phone calls only) — the earliest and latest hour the AI is allowed to call, in your business time zone. Defaults to 9am–7pm. A confirmation that comes due outside this window waits until the window opens — no 6am wake-up calls.
  • SMS message — the text used for SMS confirmations and as the fallback when a call can’t connect. Editable.

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What the customer experiences (phone call)

  1. The call is placed inside your call window.
  2. The AI greets them, identifies itself as an automated assistant, and confirms the details: “I’m calling to confirm your [service] on [date] at [time]. Does that still work for you?”
  3. “Yes” / confirmed → the appointment is marked confirmed, no further action.
  4. “I need to reschedule” / “cancel” → the AI never changes the booking on the call. Instead, your team gets a task, and the customer gets an SMS with a secure self-serve link to reschedule or cancel themselves.
  5. No answer / voicemail → an SMS confirmation goes out as a fallback.
Calls are capped at 3 minutes and bill against your monthly voice minutes, same as inbound Virtual Receptionist calls.
The confirmation call speaks your org’s communication language. In bilingual mode it opens in English and switches to French if the caller responds in French.

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Outcomes you’ll see

Each appointment records a confirmation status you can see on the calendar / appointment:
StatusMeaning
ConfirmedCustomer said yes.
Reschedule requestedCustomer wants a new time — task created, manage link sent.
Cancel requestedCustomer wants to cancel — task created, manage link sent.
No answerDidn’t pick up — SMS fallback sent.
UnclearCouldn’t determine — worth a manual follow-up.
The full call (transcript, recording, summary) is saved to the contact’s timeline like any other Virtual Receptionist call.

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Why it never auto-cancels

A confirmation call confirms; it doesn’t mutate your calendar. If a customer asks to cancel or move the appointment on the call, the AI hands them a secure manage link and flags your team rather than acting on a single spoken sentence. This avoids a misheard “no” wiping out a real booking, and it keeps a clear audit trail of who changed what.

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Next

The Virtual Receptionist

How inbound AI calls work, and the voice minutes they share.

All workflow recipes

The other automations you can pair with confirmations.