Satisficing Over Optimizing

The Science Behind Satisficing Over Optimizing

Satisficing is a concept coined by Nobel Prize-winning economist and cognitive psychologist Herbert Simon in the 1950s, formed by blending 'satisfy' and 'suffice.' Simon's central insight was radical for its time: human beings are not optimisers. We don't scan every available option, weigh them against each other, and select the objectively best one. We can't, our cognitive bandwidth simply doesn't allow it. Instead, we scan options until we find one that clears a personal threshold of 'good enough,' and we stop there. We satisfice.

Rory Sutherland explores this principle compellingly in his 2019 book *Alchemy*, arguing that most institutions, businesses, governments, tech platforms, are designed by people who believe humans behave like rational optimisers. They build extensive choice architectures, comparison tools, and open-ended booking systems, assuming more options equals better outcomes. But this assumption is catastrophically wrong for a significant portion of the population, particularly when the person is already uncertain, slightly anxious, or low in motivation, which describes almost every lapsed patient you're trying to re-engage.

The psychological mechanism here is what researchers call 'choice overload' or the 'paradox of choice,' documented extensively by psychologist Barry Schwartz. In his research, Schwartz found that expanding the number of choices people face can actually reduce their likelihood of making any decision at all, and decrease their satisfaction when they do choose. When you present a lapsed patient with an open booking calendar showing 50 available time slots across three practitioners, you've transformed a simple re-engagement into a low-stakes but genuinely effortful decision task. The patient must now evaluate days, times, practitioners, and their own schedule, and most will abandon that task before completing it.

For allied health practices specifically, this dynamic is compounded by the ambivalence many lapsed patients already feel. They've drifted away from care, perhaps their acute pain resolved, life got busy, or they felt mild guilt about not completing their treatment plan. Asking them to navigate a complex booking system adds friction precisely at the moment they need the path forward to feel effortless. Satisficing theory tells us the solution isn't a better calendar interface, it's eliminating the need to evaluate altogether by presenting one clear, pre-selected, good-enough option.

The Research

How to Apply This in Your Practice

The primary tactical shift is deceptively simple: stop sending lapsed patients to open booking calendars and start sending them a single, specific recommendation. Instead of 'Click here to book your next appointment,' your message should read: 'We've set aside Thursday the 15th at 3:00pm for you, does that work, or would another time suit better?' This reframes the interaction entirely. The patient is no longer an evaluator facing a decision task; they're a responder facing a yes-or-no question. Cognitively, that's a dramatically lighter lift.

The language you use matters enormously here. Phrases like 'we've reserved' or 'we've set aside' carry an implicit social signal, someone has already done the thinking on the patient's behalf, and accepting requires almost no effort. This taps into what behavioural economists call the 'default effect': people are significantly more likely to accept a pre-selected option than to actively choose one from a menu. In your re-engagement workflow, the practitioner or their front desk should identify one genuinely available slot that suits the patient's historical appointment pattern (did they always come Tuesday mornings? Thursday afternoons?) and lead with that specific time. You're not lying about 'reserving' it, you're simply exercising the same role a good GP does when they say 'Come back and see me in two weeks, how's the 14th?'

For SMS re-engagement, which consistently outperforms email for response rates in allied health contexts, the satisficing message might look like this: 'Hi Sarah, it's been a while since we've seen you at [Practice Name]. We'd love to help you stay on top of your shoulder recovery. We have a spot available Thursday 15 May at 3pm, would that work for you? Reply YES to confirm or CALL US to find another time.' Note the structure: one specific offer, a soft clinical rationale, a frictionless confirmation method, and a secondary path that requires slightly more effort (calling), which filters for patients who are genuinely motivated but need a different time. The hierarchy of effort is intentional, easy path first, alternative path second.

At the workflow level, this requires a small but meaningful operational change. Rather than automating bulk messages that dump patients onto a booking link, your re-engagement system needs to identify a practitioner's next available slot in the patient's preferred time window before the message sends. Platforms like Routiq can do this matching automatically, pulling the patient's appointment history, identifying a suitable upcoming slot, and pre-populating the recommended time in the message. The result is communication that feels personally considered rather than algorithmically generated, which further reduces a lapsed patient's resistance to re-engaging.

Seeing It in Action

Your Action Plan

1. 1Audit your current re-engagement communications, if any of them direct lapsed patients to an open booking calendar without a pre-selected recommendation, redesign them around a single specific time offer before sending another campaign.
2. 2Pull your lapsed patient list and segment by historical appointment patterns (day of week, time of day, practitioner preference) so that pre-selected slot recommendations are genuinely matched to each individual's past behaviour.
3. 3Rewrite your re-engagement SMS or email template to lead with one specific available slot, use 'reserved' or 'set aside' language, and include a simple YES/CALL response mechanism rather than a booking link.
4. 4Build a two-path response structure into every re-engagement message, the easy path (reply YES to confirm the offered time) and the alternative path (call us to find another time), so that patients who can't make the suggested slot still have a low-friction way to engage rather than disengaging entirely.
5. 5Review your re-engagement conversion rates at 30 and 60 days after implementing the satisficing approach, comparing response and booking rates to your previous open-calendar method, the difference in conversion will tell you exactly how much choice overload was costing you.