Handle Replies to Dental Appointment Reminders on WhatsApp
This recipe handles the replies to your appointment reminders. The reminder itself goes out from your practice management system or as a WhatsApp broadcast. The replies are where the front desk time goes: confirmations, “what time again”, “can we move it to next week”, and the patient who says they have a toothache now. AeroChat answers each one and keeps the appointment up to date in your practice system. Part of the dental clinic workflows.
What happens today
The front desk sends 30 reminders the afternoon before. Twenty replies arrive over the evening and the next morning. Most say “ok” or “confirm”. Three ask to move. One asks where to park. One says the tooth is now swollen. They all sit in the same inbox, and the reschedule request that needed a reply last night gets one at 9am, when the slot can no longer be refilled.
Why reminders matter
| Figure | What it measured |
|---|---|
| 78.6% | attendance with text message reminders |
| 67.8% | attendance with no reminder |
Source: Gurol-Urganci et al., Mobile phone messaging reminders for attendance at healthcare appointments, Cochrane, 2013. 8 randomised trials, healthcare appointments, not only dental.
A reminder that invites a reply on WhatsApp turns some of those missed appointments into moved ones. That only works if the replies get answered quickly.
How the reminder goes out
AeroChat replies inside conversations. It does not send the reminder on a timer. Send it in one of two ways:
- Your practice management system’s own reminder, by SMS, email or WhatsApp, if it already sends one. Ask patients to reply on WhatsApp if they need to change.
- A WhatsApp broadcast from AeroChat to the next day’s patients, using an approved message template. Broadcasts are included from the Growth plan.
Either way, end the reminder with a line such as “Reply here to confirm or change your appointment.”
The recipe
Copy this into AeroChat
When a patient replies to an appointment reminder, follow these steps.
- Find their next appointment in our practice management system using the phone number they are messaging from. If there is no match, ask for their name and appointment date and hand the conversation to the front desk.
- If they confirm, thank them, repeat the date, time and dentist, and mark the appointment as confirmed in our system.
- If they ask for the time, address or what to bring, answer from the appointment in our system and our clinic details in the knowledge base.
- If they want to reschedule, check the same dentist’s free slots of the same length within clinic hours in our system, offer up to three, and move the appointment. Apply our cancellation policy, for example free changes up to 24 hours before.
- If they want to cancel, cancel the appointment in our system and notify the front desk that the slot is free.
- If they do not say clearly whether they are coming, ask once: “Will you be able to make it?”
If the reply mentions pain, swelling, bleeding, a broken tooth or feeling unwell, stop and hand the conversation to a person straight away. Never give clinical advice. Reply in the patient’s language.
Change the cancellation policy and the wording of the confirmation to your own before you paste it.
What to connect
- Your practice management system. The same connection the appointment booking workflow uses. AeroChat finds the appointment by phone number, marks it confirmed, and moves or cancels it. Open Dental and Cliniko connect through their APIs: create or request an API key in the system’s settings and paste it in when AeroChat asks. If booking is already connected, this recipe reuses it.
- WhatsApp broadcasts, if you send reminders from AeroChat. Create a reminder template and get it approved by WhatsApp first.
Using a different system? If it has a public API, it connects to AeroChat the same way: describe what you want, paste in its key, and it runs.
Can’t find your tool? Message us in the chat on this page and we’ll tell you how it connects.
What you still decide
- When the reminder goes out, and whether you send a second one for long appointments.
- The wording of the reminder.
- What happens to patients who do not reply. Your team can call the unconfirmed ones the morning of the appointment, using the confirmed status in your practice system.
- Your cancellation policy for changes made after the reminder.
The result to expect
Reschedule requests sent the evening before get a new time that evening, so the freed slot is known before the clinic opens. The front desk starts the day with a list of confirmed patients and a short list to call. Toothache replies reach a person instead of sitting under twenty “ok”s.
Measure it with your own numbers: no-shows and same-day cancellations, for a month before and after you start.
Next: reschedule and cancel and symptom handover.
Try it with tomorrow’s list
Paste the recipe, send yourself a test reminder, and reply asking to move to next week. Then reply again saying the tooth is swollen and check it reaches your team.
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