Appointment confirmations and cancellations
Receiving an appointment booking confirmation has become a standard functionality which many of us take for granted in many different industries, from booking a table at you favourite restaurant to that important appointment you've been waiting for.
With the majority of our nation now owning a mobile device, we've now extended this functionality in EXACT to include SMS in addition to email.
Please Note: SMS Appointment confirmations is available from EXACT 13.956 and SMS Appointment cancellations available from EXACT 13.963. |
With industry figures reporting a significant difference in the open rate of SMS compared with email, SMS is a key tool in communicating with your patients in every aspect from appointment information, practice updates to marketing.
By using SMS in your communications, you will,
- Reduce Failed to Attend (FTA) rates through an increase in appointment awareness.
- Align your practice communication methods (appointment reminders, recalls, online booking, patient portal).
Selecting appointment communications methods
SMS confirmation and SMS cancellation communications are available from in EXACT, with this enabled your patients will receive your an appointment confirmation/cancellation when their appointment is booked/cancelled.
When booking or cancelling an appointment the confirmation/cancellation prompt will appear, depending on your practice configuration. Leaving the Send SMS/Send Email ticked will automatically send your patient the selected communication, alerting them of their booking/cancellation.
Tip: Hover over the Send SMS tick box to preview the message with patient details. |
Configuring your SMS Confirmation and Cancellation messages
To alter your confirmation and cancellation message settings,
- Go to Configure - Automatic Appointment Messages.
- The Automatic Appointment Messages configuration setup window will open, with your Confirm and Cancel settings on the first tab.
- Your Confirmation Messages section includes,
- Email Template setup with a tick box to enable/disable along with the assigned template.
- SMS Template setup with a tick box to enable/disable along with the assigned template.
- You can tick or remove the tick from the box to enable/disable the selected setting.
- Selecting the template followed by the Select a Template option gives you access to all your existing templates for the selected communication method, selecting a new one will replace the currently assigned template.
- Your Cancellation Messages section includes,
- Email Template setup with a tick box to enable/disable along with the assigned template.
- SMS Template setup with a tick box to enable/disable along with the assigned template.
- You can tick or remove the tick from the box to enable/disable the selected setting.
- Selecting the template followed by the Select a Template option gives you access to all your existing templates for the selected communication method, selecting a new one will replace the currently assigned template.
- You can configure your sending prompts using the Sending Settings.
- If you wish to send all configured confirmation/cancellation messages automatically, check the box to Send messages automatically without prompting.
- By default your system is set to Prompt before sending, this means a pop-up will appear when booking/cancelling an appointment for your team to decide the message is required.
- The option Prompt before sending has an additional setting 'Default SMS as ticked on prompt', this sets your practice default to tick SMS confirmation/cancellations as standard, allowing your team to decide if it is required or not.
- Select OK to save your changes.
For more information on configuring this setting or any of the settings in your Automatic Appointment Messages setup, please read Configuring automatic SMS and email communications (new patient welcome, confirmation & cancellation).
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