Dental Appointment Rescheduling and Cancellation on WhatsApp
This recipe lets a patient move or cancel an appointment by sending a message, without a phone call. It checks the patient is who they say they are, offers new times with the same dentist, applies your cancellation policy and frees the old slot in your practice management system. Part of the dental clinic workflows.
What happens today
A patient writes at 7am: “sorry, I can’t make Thursday 3pm, can I change to next week?”. The receptionist reads it at 9, finds the booking, checks the dentist’s diary, replies with options and waits. The patient picks one at lunch. Meanwhile the Thursday 3pm slot sat in the diary as booked all morning, when it could have gone to someone on your waiting list.
Some patients who find rescheduling hard simply do not turn up.
The flow that works
- The patient asks to change or cancel. AeroChat checks they are messaging from the phone number on the patient record. If not, it asks for the name and date of the appointment and passes it to the front desk.
- It finds the appointment in your practice management system.
- For a change, it offers up to three new times with the same dentist and the same slot length. For a cancellation, it confirms which appointment and cancels it.
- It checks how far away the appointment is against your cancellation window. Inside the window, it states your policy plainly, for example that the deposit is kept.
- It moves or cancels the appointment in your practice system, confirms the change to the patient, and tells your team when a slot has been freed at short notice.
The recipe
Copy this into AeroChat
When a patient asks to reschedule or cancel an appointment, follow these steps.
- Check they are messaging from the phone number on their patient record in our practice management system. If the number does not match, do not share any appointment details. Ask for their full name and the appointment date, and hand the conversation to the front desk.
- Find their upcoming appointment in our system and confirm the date, time, dentist and treatment with the patient.
- If they want to reschedule, check the same dentist’s free slots of the same length within clinic hours in our system, and offer up to three closest to what they ask for. If they are happy to see another dentist, offer those times too and say who it is.
- If they want to cancel, confirm which appointment and cancel it.
- Check how far away the appointment is. Example policy: free changes and cancellations up to 24 hours before. Inside 24 hours, a deposit paid for the appointment is kept. State the policy plainly. If the patient asks for an exception, hand the conversation to the front desk.
- Move the appointment to the new time in our system, or cancel it.
- Confirm the change to the patient with the dentist, date, time and address. If the old appointment was within the next 48 hours, notify the front desk that the slot is free.
If the patient says they are cancelling because of pain, swelling or bleeding, stop and hand the conversation to a person straight away. Never give clinical advice. Reply in the patient’s language.
Change the cancellation window, the deposit rule and the notice period for freed slots to your own before you paste it.
What to connect
- Your practice management system. The same connection the appointment booking workflow uses. AeroChat reads the phone number on the patient record, finds free slots and moves or cancels the appointment there. 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.
- Your cancellation policy. Upload it to the AeroChat knowledge base so the wording matches what is on your website and forms.
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
- Your cancellation window and what happens to a deposit inside it.
- Whether a patient can switch to another dentist without asking the front desk.
- How many times a patient can reschedule before a person steps in.
- Who gets told when a slot is freed at short notice.
The result to expect
Changes happen when the patient asks, often before the clinic opens, so a slot freed for Thursday is visible to your team on Wednesday morning instead of Thursday afternoon. The front desk stops spending the first hour of the day on diary changes. Patients who would have stayed away without saying anything have an easy way to move instead.
Measure it with your own numbers: no-shows, and late cancellations that were refilled, for a month before and after you start.
Next: appointment reminder replies. See also live chat handover.
Test it on your own booking
Book yourself a test appointment, then message the clinic number asking to move it to next week. Check the appointment moved in your practice system.
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