Nutrition Coaching Check-Ins

Nutrition coaching lives or dies on the check-in, and the check-in is almost always the first thing to slip. A coach with twenty clients is supposed to collect a weekly update from each one, read it, and respond with something specific. In practice the updates arrive as WhatsApp voice notes, emails, Instagram DMs and screenshots of a food-tracking app, spread across four inboxes and three days. The coach spends their Sunday evening assembling the week rather than coaching it.

What breaks first is the chasing. A client who skips a check-in is the client who most needs one, and they are precisely the client nobody follows up with, because following up requires someone to notice an absence rather than respond to a presence. Two missed check-ins becomes a month of silence, and the client cancels while believing the program did not work for them. Meanwhile the clients who do submit every week get an inconsistent response time (same day sometimes, four days other times) which is the thing that makes a coaching relationship feel unmanaged.

There is a second, quieter failure. Because everything arrives as unstructured text, nothing is comparable. The coach cannot see that a client's reported sleep and training adherence have both been sliding for three weeks, because those facts are buried in three paragraphs of prose in three different threads. And when a client mentions something that genuinely belongs with a registered dietitian, a physician or another qualified practitioner, there is no defined point at which that handoff happens. It depends entirely on whether the coach happens to read carefully that week. This build fixes all three: it makes the check-in a structured, scheduled, chased artefact; it makes adherence comparable week to week; and it makes the escalation to a qualified practitioner an explicit, triggered step in the system rather than a judgment call under time pressure.

Pipeline and stages

One pipeline, Nutrition Coaching, which tracks the coaching relationship rather than a sale:

• Inquiry: interested, nothing booked
• Discovery Booked: intro call on the calendar
• Onboarding: enrolled, intake and baseline submitted, habits not yet set
• Active - Week 1-4: the ramp, where the cadence is established
• Active - Steady: week 5 onward, submitting on schedule
• Adherence Watch: one missed check-in or a sustained drop in logged habits
• Coach Review Required: two missed check-ins, or a flagged response requiring a coach to read it before anything else happens
• Referred Out: escalated to a qualified practitioner; coaching may continue in parallel or pause, which the coach decides
• Paused: client-requested hold
• Completed: program finished; review and next-step conversation
• Lapsed: disengaged without formal completion

Calendars

• Discovery Call: 20 minutes, round-robin across coaches, used to set expectations about what the coaching is and is not
• Onboarding Session: 45 minutes, where the habit set is agreed with the client rather than assigned to them
• Every two weeks Coaching Call: 30 minutes, recurring, the standing appointment the written check-in feeds
• Ad-hoc Coach Call: 15 minutes, offered when a check-in is flagged or the client asks
• Program Review: 45 minutes at week 12, used for the continue, pause or complete decision

Custom fields

• Assigned Coach, Program Type, Program Start Date, Program Week: the week number, incremented weekly by automation
• Check-In Day: dropdown; the client's chosen day, which drives their individual send schedule
• Last Check-In Date, Check-Ins Submitted, Check-Ins Missed, Consecutive Missed
• Habit 1, Habit 2, Habit 3: short text; the client's current agreed habits in their own words, e.g. protein at breakfast, walk after lunch, water bottle on the desk
• Habit 1 Adherence, Habit 2 Adherence, Habit 3 Adherence: numbers 0-7, days achieved, written from each check-in
• Adherence Average: number; the mean across the three habits for the latest week
• Adherence Trend 3 Week: number; the change in Adherence Average across the last three submitted check-ins, which is what the coach actually reads
• Self-Reported Energy and Self-Reported Sleep: 1-5 scales, stored as the client's own ratings and labeled as such
• Client Stated Focus: free text from onboarding, repeated back in every coach prompt
• Flag Raised: yes/no, set when a check-in answer trips the escalation rule
• Flag Reviewed By and Flag Reviewed On: the audit trail proving a human read it
• Referral Made: date, and Referral Type: dropdown of practitioner categories the business refers to
• Practitioner Clearance On File: yes/no, where the business requires it before coaching begins

Tags

• nutrition-active, nutrition-onboarding, nutrition-paused, nutrition-completed, nutrition-lapsed
• checkin-due, checkin-overdue, checkin-submitted-this-week
• adherence-watch, adherence-strong
• flag-open: while a flagged check-in is awaiting coach review; all automated client-facing messaging halts while this tag is present
• referred-out, automation-paused-by-coach

Forms and surveys

• Nutrition Intake: taken at onboarding. Captures what the client wants to work on, their schedule, what they eat on a typical day, their cooking situation, what they have tried before, and anything they want the coach to know. It includes a plain statement that the coaching provides habit support and accountability, not clinical assessment, and asks the client to confirm they will raise anything clinical with a qualified practitioner.
• Weekly Check-In: the core artefact, deliberately short so it gets done. Days achieved for each of the three habits, the 1-5 energy and sleep self-ratings, one free-text what went well, one free-text what got in the way, an optional measurement or photo upload the client controls, and one yes/no: anything you want your coach to look at this week?
• Habit Reset: used at week 4 and week 8 to re-agree the three habits with the client rather than carrying stale ones forward
• Program Review: at week 12: progress against the client's own stated focus, which habits stuck, what to carry on, whether to continue
• Pause Request: so a pause is a recorded decision with an end date rather than a disappearance

BO's role and guardrails

BO's job in this build is logistics and prompting. It is deliberately narrow, and the narrowness is the point.

• BO sends the check-in on the client's chosen day, chases a missing one, confirms receipt, and books or moves coaching calls.
• BO reads back the numbers the client themselves submitted ("you logged protein at breakfast 5 of 7 days this week, up from 3") and nothing more. Reflecting a client's own logged data is reporting, not advice.
• BO does not give nutrition, dietary, supplement, training or medical advice of any kind. It does not suggest foods, amounts, substitutions, fasting windows, supplements or anything resembling a recommendation, even when asked directly and even when the answer seems harmless. The reply to any such question is that the coach will cover it, with the question routed to them.
• BO does not interpret, assess, diagnose or reassure. It never tells a client what a number means, whether a result is good, whether a symptom matters, or what is likely causing anything.
• BO escalates rather than engages on a defined keyword and intent set, anything about medication, a diagnosed condition, pregnancy, pain, a medical appointment, disordered or distressed eating, significant unexplained change, or any mention of harm. On any of these BO sends one neutral acknowledgement, applies flag-open, halts every sequence, and notifies the assigned coach and the clinical lead immediately. It offers no advice, no reassurance and no follow-up question.
• BO never quotes a figure for programs, renewals or extensions. It describes what a program includes and routes to a call at bookings.appbo.io.
• Every BO message is visibly from the business's assistant, and every thread sits in the shared inbox where the coach can take it over at any point. A coach reply applies automation-paused-by-coach for 72 hours.

Numbers and channels

• One provisioned number for coaching communication, so the whole check-in history lives in one thread per client and does not leave with a coach
• SMS for the check-in prompt, the chase and the receipt confirmation, because a short prompt on the right day is the most important message in the build
• Email for the longer weekly coach response, the habit reset and the program review
• A client portal view where the client can see their own submitted habit history, which does more for adherence than any reminder
• Internal channel for coach notifications and the flag queue, with the flag queue treated as a same-day obligation

1. Inquiry and expectation setting. A prospect submits the inquiry form. BO books a 20-minute Discovery Call and sends a short note stating plainly what the program is (habit coaching and accountability) and what it is not. That sentence appearing before the first call prevents most of the problems this build is designed to contain.
2. Enrollment and intake. The client enrolls. The opportunity moves to Onboarding, nutrition-onboarding is applied, and the Nutrition Intake form goes out with the Onboarding Session booking link. Where the business requires clearance from a qualified practitioner before coaching begins, Practitioner Clearance On File must read yes before the next step unlocks.
3. Habits are agreed, not assigned. On the onboarding call the coach and client agree three habits and write them into Habit 1, Habit 2 and Habit 3 in the client's own wording. The client picks their Check-In Day. Client Stated Focus is recorded verbatim.
4. The cadence starts. The opportunity moves to Active - Week 1-4, nutrition-active is applied, Program Week = 1, and the recurring Every two weeks Coaching Call is booked out for the first eight weeks in one go.
5. The check-in prompt lands on the chosen day. On Sunday morning, their chosen day, the client gets one SMS with their three habits named in their own words and the form link. It takes under two minutes to complete, which is the only reason it gets completed.
6. Submission writes structured data. On submit, the three adherence numbers, both self-ratings, both free-text answers and the anything for your coach flag are written to fields. Adherence Average and Adherence Trend 3 Week are recalculated, Last Check-In Date is stamped, Check-Ins Submitted increments and Consecutive Missed resets to zero.
7. Receipt and coach task, same hour. BO confirms receipt with the client's own numbers read back and nothing else. Simultaneously a coach task is created with the full week assembled in one place: the three numbers, the trend, both free-text answers, and the previous two weeks beside them for comparison.
8. The coach responds within the service standard. The coach writes one specific response. This is the product, and it is the one thing the system does not attempt to do. If they have not responded within 24 hours, the task escalates to the coaching lead.
9. A check-in is missed. The following week the client does not submit. checkin-overdue is applied and a reminder goes out that evening. Twenty-four hours later a second, shorter one goes out offering the option to reply with three numbers instead of opening the form, because removing friction beats adding pressure.
10. A second miss escalates to a human. Consecutive Missed reaches 2. The opportunity moves to Coach Review Required, automated client messaging stops, and the coach gets a task to make personal contact. A client who has gone quiet twice is not a messaging problem.
11. A flagged answer stops everything. Three weeks later the client's free-text answer mentions a medication change. The keyword and intent rule fires: Flag Raised = yes, flag-open applied, every sequence halted, and the coach plus the clinical lead notified immediately. The client receives one neutral acknowledgement saying their coach will come back to them directly, with no interpretation, no reassurance and no advice of any kind.
12. The escalation is a designed step, not a judgment call. The coach reviews the flag, stamps Flag Reviewed By and Flag Reviewed On, and takes the defined path: refer to a qualified practitioner from the business's referral list, record Referral Made and Referral Type, move the opportunity to Referred Out, and decide whether habit coaching continues in parallel or pauses. That decision is a human's; the system only guarantees it is made and recorded.
13. Habits get reset rather than carried. At weeks 4 and 8 the Habit Reset form runs before the coaching call so the three habits are renegotiated against what actually happened, and the check-in prompt starts naming the new ones.
14. Program review at week 12. The Program Review form and appointment go out, built from the client's own 12 weeks of logged data. Adherence by habit, the trend, their own stated focus from week one. The outcome is continue, pause or complete, and the opportunity moves accordingly. No automated renewal offer with a figure in it ever goes out; the conversation handles that.

1. Inquiry, Discovery Call and Expectation Setting

Trigger: nutrition inquiry form submitted, inbound message matching nutrition intent, or a referral added by a trainer.

• Action 1, immediate: create the contact, open an opportunity in Nutrition Coaching at Inquiry, record the source.
• Action 2, immediate: BO replies. "Hi {{first_name}}, thanks for getting in touch. Best first step is a 20-minute call so we can hear what you're working on and tell you straight whether this is the right fit. Next openings: {{discovery_link}}"
• Action 3, on booking: move to Discovery Booked, and send the scope note. "Before we speak, so there are no surprises: this is habit coaching and accountability. We help you build and hold routines around food and movement. It isn't clinical assessment or a prescribed diet, and if anything comes up that belongs with a dietitian, doctor or other qualified practitioner, we'll say so and point you there." This message is deliberately sent before the first conversation, not after.
• Action 4, 24 hours and 2 hours before: SMS reminders with the call link.
• Action 5, no booking after 1 day: one SMS nudge; after 3 days, one email; after 7 days, close to Lapsed and add to the general newsletter.
• Action 6, on attended and enrolled: hand to workflow 2. On attended and not enrolled, one follow-up SMS at 2 days and then close.

Exit: enrolled, closed, or STOP received.

2. Onboarding, Intake and Habit Setup

Trigger: enrollment recorded, or payment succeeded for a coaching program.

• Action 1, immediate: move to Onboarding, apply nutrition-onboarding, write Assigned Coach, Program Type, Program Start Date and Program Week = 0.
• Action 2, immediate: send the Nutrition Intake form and the Onboarding Session booking link together. "Welcome {{first_name}}. Two things to get us started: this form, which takes about eight minutes, and a 45-minute call with {{assigned_coach}} to agree your first habits. {{intake_link}} {{onboarding_link}}"
• Action 3, wait 2 days: if intake is incomplete, one reminder; at 4 days, a coach task rather than a third message.
• Action 4, clearance gate: where the business requires it, hold the onboarding session until Practitioner Clearance On File = yes. BO states only that the business needs the confirmation on file before coaching starts, with no discussion of why or of anything the client has disclosed.
• Action 5, on intake submitted: run the flag rule from workflow 6 against the free-text answers before the coach sees them, so anything requiring escalation is caught at intake rather than three weeks in.
• Action 6, after the onboarding session: the coach writes Habit 1, Habit 2, Habit 3, Client Stated Focus and Check-In Day. The workflow then moves the opportunity to Active - Week 1-4, applies nutrition-active, removes nutrition-onboarding, sets Program Week = 1, and books the recurring Every two weeks Coaching Call for the first eight weeks.
• Action 7, immediate: send the habit summary in the client's own words. "Here's what we agreed, {{first_name}}: {{habit_1}}, {{habit_2}}, {{habit_3}}. I'll check in with you every {{check_in_day}} and it takes two minutes."

Exit: habits set and cadence started, or onboarding abandoned after 14 days (moves to Lapsed with a coach task).

3. Weekly Check-In Dispatch

Trigger: scheduled daily at the business's chosen send hour, selecting contacts whose Check-In Day matches today.

Conditions: must carry nutrition-active. Suppress if nutrition-paused, flag-open, automation-paused-by-coach or checkin-submitted-this-week is present.

• Action 1: apply checkin-due, increment Program Week by 1 if the week has rolled over.
• Action 2: SMS naming the client's own habits. "Morning {{first_name}}, check-in time. How did you go this week on {{habit_1}}, {{habit_2}} and {{habit_3}}? Two minutes: {{checkin_link}}"
• Action 3, wait 6 hours: if not submitted, one email with the same link and the previous week's numbers shown for context, nothing more.
• Action 4, same day, week 1 and week 2 only: an extra short SMS 3 hours after the prompt, because the first two weeks set whether the habit of checking in forms at all. "Even a rough guess is fine, {{first_name}}, the point is the pattern, not precision."
• Action 5, end of day: if still not submitted, apply checkin-overdue, remove checkin-due, and hand to workflow 5.

Exit: submission received, or the day ends and workflow 5 takes over.

4. Submission Processing, Receipt and Coach Task

Trigger: Weekly Check-In form submitted.

• Action 1, immediate: write Habit 1 Adherence, Habit 2 Adherence, Habit 3 Adherence, Self-Reported Energy, Self-Reported Sleep, both free-text answers and the anything for your coach answer. Stamp Last Check-In Date, increment Check-Ins Submitted, reset Consecutive Missed to 0, remove checkin-due and checkin-overdue, apply checkin-submitted-this-week.
• Action 2, immediate: recalculate Adherence Average as the mean of the three adherence numbers, and Adherence Trend 3 Week as this week's average minus the average three submitted check-ins ago.
• Action 3, immediate: run the flag rule from workflow 6 against both free-text fields and the anything for your coach answer. If it fires, stop here: no receipt, no automated reflection, straight to workflow 6.
• Action 4, immediate, if no flag: BO confirms receipt using only the client's own numbers. "Got it, {{first_name}}. You logged {{habit_1}} {{habit_1_adherence}}/7, {{habit_2}} {{habit_2_adherence}}/7, {{habit_3}} {{habit_3_adherence}}/7. {{assigned_coach}} will come back to you within {{response_standard}}." No comment on whether the numbers are good, no suggestions, no encouragement that implies an assessment.
• Action 5, immediate: create the coach task with the week assembled: this week's three numbers and both self-ratings, the previous two weeks beside them, Adherence Trend 3 Week, both free-text answers in full, Client Stated Focus, and Program Week. Due within the service standard.
• Action 6, branch on trend. If Adherence Trend 3 Week has fallen by 2 or more, apply adherence-watch, move the opportunity to Adherence Watch, and mark the coach task as priority with a one-line note: "Adherence down {{trend}} over three weeks. Worth asking what changed." No client-facing message on this branch; the observation goes to the coach, who decides what to do with it.
• Action 7, wait 24 hours: if the coach task is still open, escalate to the coaching lead. If still open at 48 hours, notify the owner. The response standard is the product.
• Action 8, positive branch: if Adherence Average has been 5 or above for four consecutive weeks, apply adherence-strong and give the coach a prompt to acknowledge it personally. The system does not send the congratulations itself.

Exit: coach responded, or flag raised (hands to workflow 6).

5. Missed Check-In Chase and Human Escalation

Trigger: checkin-overdue applied at the end of the client's check-in day.

• Action 1, immediate: increment Check-Ins Missed and Consecutive Missed.
• Action 2, next morning: SMS, friction-removing rather than pressuring. "Missed you yesterday, {{first_name}}, no drama. If the form's a hassle, just reply with three numbers for {{habit_1}}, {{habit_2}} and {{habit_3}} and I'll log them for you."
• Action 3, wait 24 hours: if a numeric reply arrives, BO parses it into the adherence fields and routes to workflow 4 at Action 2. If nothing, send one final short message. "All good either way. Form's here if you get a minute: {{checkin_link}}" Then stop: two chases per missed check-in, no more.
• Action 4, branch on Consecutive Missed = 1: apply adherence-watch, move the opportunity to Adherence Watch, and add a line to the coach's weekly digest. No escalation yet.
• Action 5, branch on Consecutive Missed = 2: move the opportunity to Coach Review Required, stop all automated client-facing messaging, and create a same-day coach task: "{{first_name}} has missed two check-ins. Last submitted {{last_check_in_date}}, last adherence average {{adherence_average}}. Call or message personally today: do not send a template."
• Action 6, branch on Consecutive Missed = 3: notify the coaching lead and the owner. Create a decision task covering whether to pause the program, restructure it, or have a direct conversation about whether it is the right time for the client. Continuing to bill a client who has disengaged for three weeks without a conversation is the thing this branch exists to prevent.
• Action 7, on the next submission at any point: clear adherence-watch and checkin-overdue, reset Consecutive Missed, return the opportunity to Active - Steady, and give the coach a note so the return is acknowledged by a person.

Exit: check-in submitted, program paused, coach takes over, or STOP received.

6. Flag Detection and Practitioner Escalation

This is the most important workflow in the build and the one that must be configured before any client-facing messaging is switched on.

Trigger: any free-text field submitted by a client (intake, weekly check-in, habit reset, program review) or any inbound message in the coaching thread.

Conditions: the match list is agreed in advance with whoever holds clinical responsibility, and covers at minimum: medication names and any mention of starting, stopping or changing medication; named diagnoses and conditions; pregnancy or trying to conceive; pain, injury, dizziness, fainting; blood results or lab work; a doctor, hospital or clinic appointment; vomiting, purging, restricting, bingeing or any language suggesting disordered or distressed eating; rapid or unexplained change; and any mention of self-harm or crisis. The list should over-match deliberately.

• Action 1, immediate: set Flag Raised = yes, apply flag-open, and halt every automated sequence on the contact, including the check-in dispatch, the chase, the habit reset and the review. Nothing automated reaches this client again until a human clears the flag.
• Action 2, immediate: notify the Assigned Coach and the clinical or senior lead through the restricted flag channel and by direct task, with the submitted text quoted verbatim and nothing summarized or interpreted.
• Action 3, immediate: send the client one neutral acknowledgement and nothing else. "Thanks for telling me, {{first_name}}. I've passed this straight to {{assigned_coach}} and they'll come back to you directly." No interpretation, no reassurance, no suggestion, no follow-up question, no resources. On a crisis match, the acknowledgement is replaced by the business's own pre-approved crisis response text, written and signed off in advance by the clinical lead, and the notification is escalated immediately rather than queued.
• Action 4, wait 4 hours: if the flag is unreviewed, re-notify and escalate to the owner. Flag review is a same-day obligation and the system should be noisy about it.
• Action 5, on coach review: stamp Flag Reviewed By and Flag Reviewed On. The coach selects one of the defined outcomes rather than writing free text: refer out, continue with coach oversight, or no action required.
• Action 6, on refer out: write Referral Made = today and Referral Type, apply referred-out, move the opportunity to Referred Out, and send the business's standard referral message naming the practitioner category and the route in. The coach then decides whether habit coaching continues in parallel or pauses, and the system records which.
• Action 7, on no action required or continue with oversight: remove flag-open, resume the check-in cadence from the next scheduled day, and leave Flag Raised and the review stamps in place permanently as the audit trail.

Exit: flag reviewed and cleared by a named human. There is no automatic expiry and no timeout that clears a flag.

7. Habit Reset at Weeks 4 and 8

Trigger: Program Week reaches 4, then 8.

Conditions: suppress if flag-open, nutrition-paused or Consecutive Missed is 2 or more. A disengaged client needs the conversation in workflow 5, not a form.

• Action 1, 3 days before the coaching call: send the Habit Reset form. "{{first_name}}, four weeks in. Before we speak, have a look at how the three habits actually went and tell me which to keep, which to change and which to drop: {{habit_reset_link}}" The form shows the client their own four-week adherence per habit.
• Action 2, on submission: attach the answers to the upcoming coaching-call record and notify the coach.
• Action 3, after the call: the coach rewrites Habit 1, Habit 2 and Habit 3. The workflow then confirms the new set to the client in their own wording and the check-in prompt starts naming the new habits from the next cycle.
• Action 4, week 5 stage move: at Program Week = 5, move the opportunity from Active - Week 1-4 to Active - Steady, and drop the extra same-day nudge from workflow 3 Action 4.
• Action 5, no reset submitted by the call: the coach does it verbally on the call; the workflow simply makes sure the habits are not silently carried forward unchanged for twelve weeks.

Exit: new habits written, or the reset is handled on the call.

8. Program Review, Pause and Lapse Handling

Trigger: Program Week reaches 12; or Pause Request submitted; or Consecutive Missed reaches 4.

• Action 1, week 12, 5 days ahead: send the Program Review form and the 45-minute review booking link. "{{first_name}}, twelve weeks. Before we sit down, here's your own data: {{habit_1}} averaged {{habit_1_average}}/7, {{habit_2}} {{habit_2_average}}/7, {{habit_3}} {{habit_3_average}}/7. You started out wanting to work on {{client_stated_focus}}. Have a think about what to carry forward: {{review_link}}"
• Action 2, on review attended: the coach records the outcome. Continue returns the opportunity to Active - Steady with Program Week reset and a fresh habit set. Complete moves it to Completed, applies nutrition-completed, stops the check-in cadence, and sends a close-out summary of the client's own twelve weeks. Pause routes to Action 4.
• Action 3, continuation: no automated renewal message carrying a figure is ever sent. Where a new term is required, the workflow creates a coach task and offers a call link; the commercial conversation is human.
• Action 4, pause: apply nutrition-paused, remove nutrition-active, move to Paused, record the agreed end date, and suspend every sequence. Three days before the end date, BO sends one message: "Your pause ends {{pause_end_date}}, {{first_name}}. Want to pick up where you left off, or shall I give you another couple of weeks?" On resume, restore nutrition-active and restart the cadence at the next Check-In Day.
• Action 5, lapse: at Consecutive Missed = 4 with no coach contact logged, move to Lapsed, apply nutrition-lapsed, stop all client messaging, and create an owner task to close the engagement properly, including stopping any recurring payment. Do not send a win-back sequence to a lapsed coaching client; the owner decides whether and how to make contact.
• Action 6, completion follow-up: 30 days after Completed, one email from the coach asking how the habits have held without the structure, with a review-call link. One message only.

Exit: continued, completed, paused, resumed, lapsed and closed, or STOP received.

The check-in becomes a reliable weekly artefact instead of a scattered correspondence. It arrives on the day each client chose, it takes two minutes, it is chased when it does not appear, and it produces comparable numbers rather than prose. The coach opens one task with the week already assembled, including the two weeks before it, and spends their time writing the response rather than hunting for the inputs.

Absence becomes visible. The client who stops submitting is the client the program is losing, and the system now notices on day one rather than month two. The chase is light on the first miss and becomes a human conversation on the second, which is the correct escalation shape: automation for friction, people for disengagement.

Adherence becomes a trend rather than an impression. Adherence Trend 3 Week turns three weeks of scattered self-reports into a direction of travel, which is what a coach can actually act on. And because the habits are stored in the client's own words and re-agreed every four weeks, the prompt stays relevant instead of nagging about something the client stopped doing a month ago.

The escalation path stops depending on how carefully someone read that week. A defined keyword and intent set stops every automated message, flags the record, notifies two named people, and leaves an audit trail showing who reviewed it and when. The handoff to a qualified practitioner becomes a step in the process with a recorded referral, which protects the client and the business in equal measure. The system tracks adherence and prompts; it does not assess, diagnose, prescribe or advise, and nothing in it should be configured to.

What to measure

• Check-in submission rate: submitted divided by sent, weekly, and per coach. The single headline number for this build.
• Median hours from submission to coach response: the service standard; this is what clients actually perceive as coaching quality
• On-time submission rate: submitted on the chosen day without a reminder, versus submitted only after chasing
• Consecutive-miss recovery rate: clients at Consecutive Missed = 1 or 2 who return to submitting, split by whether the recovery followed the automated chase or the coach's call
• Adherence average and 3-week trend distribution across the active book, watched for cohort-wide dips that point at a program design problem rather than individual clients
• Program completion rate at week 12 and the continue rate at review
• Flag volume, and median time from flag raised to flag reviewed: the compliance metric. This should be hours. A growing backlog here is the most serious operational signal in the build.
• Referral count by type, tracked so the business knows whether its referral network is adequate for what clients actually bring
• Coach caseload against on-time response rate: reveals the point at which a coach's book is too big for the service standard

Prerequisites

• Scope of practice, written down and signed off. Before anything is configured, the business must state what its coaches are qualified and permitted to do, and what they are not. Every guardrail in this build is an expression of that document, and it cannot be written by the person building the automations.
• The escalation keyword and intent list, agreed by whoever holds clinical responsibility. This list decides when the system stops talking. Err heavily toward over-flagging: a false flag costs a coach five minutes, a missed one costs considerably more.
• A real referral network. Registered dietitians, physicians and other qualified practitioners the business can actually refer to, by name, with a route in. An escalation path that ends in see someone is not a path. Populate Referral Type from this list.
• A named clinical or senior lead who owns the flag queue, with a same-day review standard and cover for their absence.
• Agreed service standards: how quickly a coach responds to a submitted check-in, and what happens when they do not.
• The habit framework and the check-in question set, finalized. Resist adding questions. Every extra field lowers the submission rate, and submission rate is the whole build.
• Decide whether clearance from a qualified practitioner is required before coaching starts, and for which client categories. Build Practitioner Clearance On File as a hard gate where it is.

Integrations

• Stripe for program payments and recurring coaching subscriptions, with subscription state visible on the contact so a lapsed payment does not quietly continue a coaching relationship
• Google Calendar two-way sync per coach behind the discovery, onboarding, coaching-call and review calendars
• Client-facing habit or food-logging apps where the client already uses one: treat these as the client's own tool. Where a connector exists, pull only the summary figures the check-in asks for; do not ingest detailed food logs into the platform unless there is a clear reason and a retention policy for them.
• Slack for the coach notification channel and, separately, a restricted channel for the flag queue
• Zapier or Make for any body-composition or measurement device feed the business already uses

Number provisioning and messaging compliance

• Provision the coaching number and complete A2P 10DLC brand and campaign registration before switching on automated SMS. Register the campaign honestly as a mix of recurring customer-care prompts and marketing, since both run on this number.
• Take SMS consent explicitly at enrollment, with its own checkbox and wording that names the weekly check-in prompt and reminders specifically, since that is the bulk of the traffic.
• Honor STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END and QUIT. Important: a client who stops SMS has not left the program. Build the opt-out so it moves the check-in prompt to email and notifies the coach, rather than silently removing the client from their own coaching cadence.
• Enforce quiet hours, around 9pm to 8am in the client's timezone, on every sending workflow. Check-in prompts land on a chosen day at a chosen hour, which makes this easy to honor by design.
• Cap reminders at two per missed check-in. A third reminder does not produce a submission; it produces a cancellation.

Data protection

• This build collects self-reported information about eating, sleep, energy and sometimes measurements and photographs. Treat it as sensitive personal data whether or not it is legally classified as health information in a given jurisdiction, and configure it that way from day one.
• Restrict check-in content to the assigned coach and the clinical lead through role permissions. Photographs and measurements should be the most tightly restricted objects in the account, with uploads optional and client-controlled.
• Collect the minimum. The temptation is to add fields because the data might be interesting; every additional field is a liability and a drag on submission rate.
• Set explicit retention periods for check-in history, photographs and intake answers, with deletion on program completion plus the agreed window, and a documented process for a client's request to access or delete their data.
• Keep the flag audit trail: Flag Raised, Flag Reviewed By, Flag Reviewed On, Referral Made: as a deliberate record, separate from marketing data and retained per the business's own professional obligations.
• Depending on jurisdiction and on who delivers the coaching, health-information rules, professional scope-of-practice regulation, advertising standards for health claims, and general privacy law may all apply. Confirm the intake wording, the disclaimers, the escalation protocol, the retention schedule and the referral process with the client's own counsel and with whoever holds their professional indemnity cover. This guide describes how to build the mechanism and is not legal, clinical or professional advice.