Texting best practices Skip to main content

Texting best practices

Struggling to reduce no-shows at your dental practice?

Maybe you need to send reminder messages through text. Texting is cheap, easy and it is many patients’ preferred method of contact.

Take advantage of the smartphone craze

Did you know that the average American checks their phone every twelve minutes? While this might not be good for dinner parties, it’s great for getting in touch with people quickly. Text messages garner faster response times and higher response rates compared to emails and voicemail.

Appear up-to-date

Patients respond positively to new technology in your dental practice. Communicating via text is a good way to modernize patient interaction with little financial outlay.

Additional benefits

Texting makes it easy to send the same time-sensitive information to a large group of people at once. Whether you’ve got a special announcement, an emergency office closure or want to quickly fill a vacant slot in the schedule, a group text can be more efficient and less tedious than other mediums.

Texting best practices

  • Always include a confirmation component to appointment reminders
  • Text patients a rescheduling message when they cancel an appointment or are a no-show and include a link to the scheduling page on your website.
  • Use texting to share important post-op care instructions or reminders
  • Sending bills via text improves your open rate and software is now available that allows bills to be paid directly via text
  • Automate messages whenever possible
  • Combine text messaging with special offers, promotions or other marketing news

Choose the right texting platform

A small practice might get by with readily available computer-based services such as Google Voice, but larger practices should consider purchasing dental/medical office-specific software that makes it easy to set up custom messaging and automated systems.

Comments are closed.

Click to open and close visual accessibility options. The options include increasing font-size and color contrast.