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I’ve long found that correspondence, whether business or personal, follows the rule of three: For every three emails I send, I get one back.

These aren’t cold pitches to potential customers. No, these are actual letters to friends and business associates. The sad truth is that most of us are pretty busy, and some of us are too busy to respond. Two-thirds are too busy, in fact.

While I’ve been okay laboring under this reality that I will write more people than those who will send a reply, what’s been bugging me lately has been the missed appointment.

Increasingly, people have been moving or canceling scheduled appointments with me. Again, friends and business associates alike.

It isn’t because I’ve suddenly gotten less popular — at least I hope that’s not the case. It has more to do with our busy world where there’s a constant schedule shuffle and more last-minute fires that crop up. The hustle and bustle also makes more people forget appointments, so jammed up are they by their schedule.

This is annoying, especially for those of us who take our appointments very seriously.

One solution to this problem can come through innovative use of predictive dialer software, however.

Predictive dialers such as the Spitfire Predictive Dialer can be coupled with text-to-speech functionality that enables automated outbound calling. With this functionality, sales pros or anyone who takes a lot of meetings can leverage the software to “remind” people of their upcoming appointments and make sure they are actually planning to show up.

This is done by having the dialer access the list of upcoming appointments and call each person prior to the meeting. The automated system not only can remind the person about the meeting, but it also can enable people to confirm they will still be attending.

While using a predictive dialer might not help with making friends more reliable (using a predictive dialer with friends would just be obnoxious, right?), it can make sense in a business context.

Time is money, and showing up for appointments that never happen can be a big waste. But with a predictive dialer, that need not be the case.